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I am a student in pure math. And I would like to learn LaTeX in the next 3 months. After searching in Quora and some other websites. I find a lot of experts saying that although it is hard to get start, getting used to use AuCtex is very benefitial and time saving. So now I find myself very passionate to try it. However, so far, I am not able to find any material which is readable for such an absolute beginner without any experience in lisp, editor and LaTeX. Now my question is: For a person without any knowledge of lisp, editor and LaTeX. How to get start of learning it in 3 months? It is acceptable for me to spend some time on learning programming and LaTeX. I am just asking about What exactly May I read or do. And help would be appreciate, thanks in advance!

Y.X.
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    Yes. I started with Emacs and AUCTeX. Within three months I had written a draft of a substantial chapter of my thesis (in the humanities, mind you). The sophistication of that first draft chapter in terms of LaTeX code was not impressive, and my use of Emacs+AUCTeX was not impressive either. But that's the beauty of both: it is a continual learning process. But it's not like you can't get the job done just knowing the basics. For Emacs, the first thing to do is to open the editor and click on Emacs Tutorial. That'll explain the basics of navigation, etc. Start there. – jon Nov 28 '16 at 05:12
  • @jon Yes. I have done with that tutorial . And I found that it is basically about the keyboard shortcut, but there is not something with how to do with LaTeX or how to run a program or how to compile. So what next can we do? – Y.X. Nov 28 '16 at 05:17
  • Have you installed AUCTeX? When you visit a .tex file, are you using AUCTeX? (Often, this means adding some settings to your .emacs file.) If so, running C-c C-c will run latex (or pdflatex or xelatex or lualatex). Your question is very broad. Skim the AUCTeX manual. Ask questions about specific things when you have them. Of course, some of those questions may belong on Emacs SX. – jon Nov 28 '16 at 05:48
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    There are some useful resources about AUCTeX here on TeX.se: "Useful shortcuts or key bindings or predefined commands for emacs+AUCTeX", "What is your favorite Emacs and/or AUCTeX command/trick?", "A simpleton's guide to (…)TeX workflow with emacs". – giordano Nov 29 '16 at 16:28

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I advise against learning LaTeX and Emacs from scratch together. In the beginning you'll never know where to look for the error. Emacs is a real beast. There are many possibilities to cause errors on the Emacs side, which seem at the first look to be errors of LaTeX and the other way round.

You'll have so many issues to tackle with: get forward and backward search work, spell checking, math, pdfTeX or LuaLaTeX?, encoding and so on.

Buy a book with an introduction into LaTeX, use the editor which the author recommends. As far as I know, there is no book that introduces into LaTeX and starts with Emacs + AucTeX. Guess why.

Saying this, I've been using Emacs for almost a decade and its a very good. And I always advise to use KOMA-script as a backbone for a document.

Keks Dose
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    having been required to learn emacs as a prerequisite before being fully introduced to tex (before either latex or auctex existed) i can confirm that the emacs tutorial is a good way to become familiar with the basics. but i think that whether or now koma-script is a good "default" basis for learning latex depends a lot on where one is located in the world. in much of europe, yes. but in north america, becoming familiar with the basic original classes would be much more useful; they lack many features, but do cover the important structures. then add mathtools. – barbara beeton Nov 28 '16 at 19:39
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For them who are using linux and gnome here is a way to learn quick the emacs shortcuts : https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/378380/debian9-gnome-see-basic-emacs-commands-in-background-image

I will try to expand my answer for kde too...

If someone of you think that my answer is off-topic, don't hesitate to delete it. But I think may help some linux users and give a good idea to the rest of you...

I don't just use that method for emacs only but for basic latex commands too and it is very useful "trick".

My background image used:

enter image description here

koleygr
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  • Even though I'm not currently using Linux, this answer was still helpful for me, because the underlying idea, find a cheat sheet of commands and make it a desktop background, is still useful and platform-agnostic. – Chill2Macht Feb 25 '18 at 01:07
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    Thanks @Chill2Macht... (Understood your point but I have to say that emacs is cross platform too -just commenting to not leave the readers of your comment to misunderstand that it doesn't work on win or mac- and that most of today's OSs can accept shortcuts for almost any command.. and this makes the idea useful for other OSs... If they can't do it we always can use an alternative [just a reminder :P] ). – koleygr Feb 25 '18 at 01:23