Labs formatting guidelines
==========================

 * To create a new lab, the chapter must start with a 'subchapter'
   command, as in:

\subchapter{Bootloader – U-Boot}{Objectives: Set up serial
  communication, compile and install the X-Loader and U-Boot
  bootloaders, use basic U-Boot commands, set up TFTP communication
  with the development workstation.}

 * You can use \section{} and \subsection{} to create sections in your
   lab document.

 * To add some fixed-sized font text (function names, file or
   directory paths, commands) inside a paragraph of normal text, use
   the \code macro as follows:

Blabla. Look in the \code{/usr/bin} directory. Blabla.

   Note that the \code{} macro doesn't require escaping of $ or _
   signs :

You can look for the \code{platform_device_register()} function in the
\code{$HOME/linux/blabla.c} file.

   This macro *MUST* be used instead of {\tt }, because \code{}
   provides proper line wrapping on dashes, slashes and so on, which
   helps in keeping the line of text within the width of the page.

   Note that this macro cannot be used in section titles or chapter
   titles. In this case {\tt } needs to be used (and inside {\tt },
   the _ or $ signs have to be escaped).

 * To add some fixed-size font text as a complete paragraph, use the
   'verbatim' environment:

In order to build the kernel run:

\begin{verbatim}
make blabla_defconfig
make
\end{verbatim}

   Here as well, it does not require escaping of $ or _ signs.

 * To add URLs, use the \url{http://foobar.com} macro. This will
   create a clickable link in the resulting PDF file.

 * If needed, you can locally reduce the size of a
   \begin{verbatim}...\end{verbatim} environment by doing:

\small
\begin{verbatim}
...
\end{verbatim}
\normalsize

   This must be used parsimoniously because changing the font size all
   the time is not very pretty. But since the verbatim environment
   does not do line wrapping, it may sometimes be necessary.

   Note that in addition to \small, you can also use other sizes, see
   http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Useful_Size_Commands.

Slides formatting guidelines
============================

  * A new training should start with a file containing the setup of the
    various variables needed such as authors and a slide created using the
    titleframe macro. This new file should be created in the common/ directory
    with the name <training-name>-title.tex

  * Every new chapter should be splitted in order to allow its possible use in
    other trainings as well. Each new file should contain only one subsection
    and should be named <training-name>-<section-name>-<subsection-name>.tex.
    New sections should be in a separate file named
    <training-name>-<section-name>-title.tex. All the aggregation would be done
    by the Makefile 

Syntax Highlighting
===================

The LaTeX package minted is included to have a nice syntax
highlighting and advanced code formatting features. It uses pygments
as backend, so in order to use it, one needs to install the
debian/Ubuntu package python-pygments.

A basic example for C code is:

\begin{minted}{c}
....
\end{minted}

Of course, it can take a lot of options that you can find in the
minted's documentation present at:
http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/minted/minted.pdf

Emacs usage in LaTeX
====================

Install the AUCTex package which contains an improved Emacs
environment for editing LaTeX documents:

sudo apt-get install auctex

In your ~/.emacs.el file, add the following lines:

(load "auctex.el" nil t t)
(require 'latex)
(add-to-list 'LaTeX-verbatim-macros-with-braces "code")
(add-to-list 'LaTeX-verbatim-macros-with-braces "url")

The important point here is that this tells Emacs to consider the
\code{} and \url{} macros as a verbatim macro, so that even if special
characters such as $, _ or % are not escaped inside those macros,
Emacs text colorization will not go crazy.

Nice keyboard shortcuts with AUCTex:

 * C-c RET to insert a macro, or embed the selected text into a
   macro. Very useful to quickly place a few words inside a \code{}
   macro

 * C-c C-e to insert an environment, such as verbatim, or embed the
   selected text into such an environment.

Diagrams
========

The recommended program to do diagrams is Dia:

 apt-get install dia

When saving a file, please make sure to unselect the "Compressed saved
files" option, so that the .dia files are raw XML files, and not
gzipped compressed files. Having raw XML files is much better for
version control, and will allow, to some extent, merging .dia diagrams
after conflicts.

Here are some suggested color couples you can use for the border and
background of boxes and other elements. Using similar colors for all
diagrams will make our training documents much more coherent and nice
to look at.

 * Blue boxes
    borders:    #5CACFF
    background: #ADD8E6

 * Yellowish boxes
    borders:    #D9CB2F
    background: #FFF8A8

 * Grey boxes
    borders:    #868686
    background: #E5E5E5

 * Brownish boxes
    borders:    #A32804
    background: #FFD192

 * Purple boxes
    borders:    #2F004A
    background: #EFB9FF

 * Green boxes
    borders:    #6A8954
    background: #C5E387

 * Red/pink boxes
    borders:    #CC1F1A
    background: #FFACAC

If you want to easily add all those colors to Dia, add the following
fragment to ~/.dia/persistence (or replace the existing
role="color-menu" XML tag) :

------------------8<-----------------8<-----------------------------
<dia:list role="color-menu">
 <dia:attribute name="listvalue">
  <dia:string>##5CACFF
#ADD8E6
#D9CB2F
#FFF8A8
#868686
#E5E5E5
#A34804
#FFD192
#2F004A
#EFB9FF
#6A8954
#C5E387
#CC1F1A
#FFACAC#</dia:string>
 </dia:attribute>
</dia:list>
------------------8<-----------------8<-----------------------------
