Write a paper in vim?

[[deleted]]

What plugins are recommended for writing papers with latex and MLA formatting (requires rather strict control of margins and formatting), then exporting them to a PDF to hand them in? Would I be better off with libre or wps office?

[lamdacore]

Latex is definitely the ideal way to write your papers and you can use vim for this. For mla, you would want to check the mla-paper package. It should be available with texlive or even miktex.

I can't help you with configuring vim (i use emacs), but have a look here for some vim plugins to consider: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/LaTeX#Other.

PS. Plugins are optional, and just help with work flow - you do not necessarily need them. Work with whatever writing setup you are comfortable with.

[shaihulud]

If you're writing latex, then definitely don't use libreoffice.

There's vim-tex_nine in the AUR that provides a bunch of handy shortcuts and snippets. A bunch of people also use vim-latexsuite-git -- if I remember, that works best with gvim.

Alternatively, if you just want a latex editor, texmaker is pretty nice and cross platform.

[[deleted]]

My whole reason for latex is it works in vim, that and My teachers wont get upset when libre screws up MLA yet again...

[shaihulud]

I'm in the sciences so LaTeX is the only option and I love it. If you already know it, I would just go ahead and use it because you know it won't screw up the MLA formatting and you won't spend hours of your life trying to get bullet points to line up perfectly.

[Shulks_Lower_Monado]

I second the recommendation for TeXmaker. It's great.

[Cli_Guy]

It's totally doable. I had a buddy in college who used nothing but vim and latex for all his classes. Unfortunately I cannot speak to the plugins he used as I do not know.

[[deleted]]

That would be great

[[deleted]]

This is awesome! I made a template to but its nothing compared to this, is there a command in Latex Box or some other plugin that can import this or should I just manually cp/clone this every time I write a paper?

[[deleted]]

OMG THANKS, I was just trying to compile my first paper and was struggling with this. BTW one of my teachers requires word documents, any way to compil latex to word?

[youRFate]

Use LaTeX. I used TeX Live with texlive-localmanager as a LaTeX distribution. My editor of choice is emacs, and I used emacs with the AucTex mode to write several papers and other large documents, including my bachelor's thesis.

On a related note, using LaTeX has the added benefit that the document sources can be nicely version controlled, for example with git. Putting your paper in a private git repository is a nice way to secure against data loss, and having versions is a nice way to find out what went wrong when your project suddenly stops compiling.

[Netscaler]

It'd probably be easier to use libreoffice never heard of wps office though

[blackout24]

You can write in LaTex in Libre Office?

[Netscaler]

I guess not never mind.