# Useful Tools and How to Get Them

This is a list of F/OSS tools that have proved useful to me, both in academic
and coding work.


## Python

Python is an excellent, easy-to-use programming languages with a wealth of
standard and third-party libraries. Get it and learn it!

Python can be obtained from: <http://www.python.org>


## A General Purpose Editor

Even if you just plan to edit text files it is really worth investing the time
and effort to learn how to use a really good text editor. If possible this
editor should be command-line oriented so that the skills you learn are still
usable in a command-line only environment (for example when you log in to a
remote machine). To this end there are two main options:

  * Vim
  * Emacs

These have both been in very active development for over 2 decades and this
shows in their depth of functionality and power. Those only familiar with GUI
WYSIWYG editors (such as Word or OpenOffice) may find that they take a little
getting used to but as long as you are prepared to take a look at a basic
tutorial you can be up and running in half-an-hour. They will repay your
investment over a life-time.

My recommendation is to use Vim but I'm biased! It is important to note that
both come with classic GUI wrappers so that those who prefer a windowing
environment can still use them in that way.


## LaTeX

LaTeX is a well-known document format which is very widespread for high quality
print-ready output, especially in academia. In addition you still have
plain-text human-editable sources which is allows for easy integration with
versioning tools and no need to worry much about obsolescence.

To work with LaTeX you will need to:

  1. Install the LaTeX system itself.
  2. Get an editor to help you with editing and previewing your LaTeX
     documents.

### The LaTeX System Itself

Installing the LaTeX system itself usually involves getting a preprepared
distribution such as teTeX (unix) of MikTeX (windows). Do a quick online search
for LaTeX and your OS should tell you what you need to do (note: most
distribution are quite large ~700MB and so may take a while to download).

### An Editor

Editors such as Vim or Emacs have good support for LaTeX, however they will
leave 'building' of the LaTeX files into PDFs up to you. Thus, if you want a
complete editing solution, along with additional traditional GUI-like support
it is recommended that you try out a GUI-based package such as [LyX][lyx] (on a
mac [TeXShop][texshop] might be a better bet).

[lyx]: http://www.lyx.org/
[texshop]: http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/


## Versioning Tools

Coding has a long history of using versioning tools to facilitate
collaboration. These benefits extend to collaborative work on anything else.
Furthermore, even if sole editor, the support for logging changes, branching,
merging and preserving file histories are invaluable.

At present the recommended tools to use are either:

  * Subversion (semi-centralized)
  * Mercurial (distributed)

Subversion is probably more wide-spread and if you are just getting started
(and someone else is maintaining the repository) is probably the simplest to
use. To get started:

  1. Install a subversion client. For example:
    * The standard (command-line) client distributed on the main subversion site.
    * (Windows) TortoiseSvn (just search to find it).
  2. Using this client check out the repository url (this will be given to you
     by an existing member of the project).

[subversion]: http://subversion.tigris.org/