alex-gurung/latengineering_notebook

Latex-based FTC Engineering Notebook template for teams looking for a new (and better) way to approach their ENs.

Template Engineering Notebook

Engineering notebook (template by FTC Team 12787 Fools Team Ahead)

Welcome to Our Engineering Notebook!!!

Have a look around, this document tells you how everything works and how to use this template yourself!

Repository Organisation (What's Currently Here?)

• src/
  • Contains actual content of your notebook
  • cover/
    • Contains the cover page and any unique, initial pages that we need
  • engineering/
    • The content of the Engineering Section of the notebook
    • (Robot related parts of team)
  • images/
    • place to store any images you want to put in the notebook
  • mentors/
    • If you have mentors put any relevant info. here!
  • outreach/
    • Any outreach events or programs
  • team/
    • includes information about the team
  • tools/
    • If you want to highlight any tools put them in here and reference them in the tools.tex file
• main.tex
  • LaTex file you actually compile, pulls info. from all of the other sections in src/
• README.md
  • This file! Readme's are what's shown when you open this page on Github, and are a great place to give a little introduction to your project! They're also useful to store some basic information, and are written in Markdown, a very basic markup language.
• add_reflections.exe
  • An executable file that adds your daily reflections to your Engineering Notebook! You can run it from command line, or you can just double click on it like any other application
• create_day.exe
  • An executable file that creates a new day for daily reflections! It's run the same way as add_reflections.exe
• delete_day.exe
  • An executable file that deletes a new day from your daily reflections. It's run the same way as add_reflections.exe
• pull_tags.exe
  • An executable file that pulls all of your tags from your daily reflections, and auto-generates a glossary page!

I'm Updating Reflections, What Do I Have to Do Again?

Daily updates

Folder hasn't been created yet:

• Manual Method:
  • make a new folder under src/engineering/ with the day in year.month.day format
    • Each day directory has four things:
      • Day file
        • In year.month.day.tex format
        • Should have title, table, notes, updates, tags
      • Notes file
        • In notes.tex format
        • Details general notes for the day, any pictures, etc
        • Basically stuff that doesn't fit in a short reflections thing
      • Updates file
        • In updates.tex format
        • Any import systems updates should go here
        • For example, if we completed the relic system or finished an autonomous program, make note of it
      • Tags file
        • In tags.tex format
        • Look below for acceptable tags (list is flexible but let everyone know if you change it)
        • Helps us track progression of specific systems that were worked on, and for the judges we can point to what days each system was worked on
• Quicker (but still manual) Alternative:
  • copy and paste, make necessary changes
  • Things that need to be changed:
    • year.month.day/ directory name
    • year.month.day.tex file name (within that directory)
      • Also within it the table should be cleared (see below) and the section title updated
    • Empty notes.tex, updates.tex, tags.tex
    • name_year.month.day/ directory name
      • Empty that directory
• AUTOMATED : Recommended (and easiest) method
  • From the base directory (one up from src/)
  • Run create_day.exe
    • Fill in the prompts, make sure to follow the format prescribed

Adding Your Reflections/Updates

• Manual Method:
  • Go to the appropriate directory, something along the lines of src/engineering/year.month.day/
  • Add any notes to notes.tex, tags to tags.tex, and updates to updates.tex
  • Go to the name_year.month.day directory and add a {{name}}_year.month.day.tex file ({{name}} is your name)
    • Fill that file with your reflections, plain text will work, but if you want fancier formatting latex will work too
  • Go back to the year.month.day directory and edit year.month.day.tex
    • In the table, add a row for your name and in the reflections column put \input{src/engineering/year.month.day/name_year.month.day/{{name}}_year.month.day in place of "What I Did"
      • ({{name}} is your name)
    • See below for table specifics
• AUTOMATED : Recommended (and easiest) method
  • From the base directory (one up from src/)
  • Run add_reflections.exe
    • Fill in the prompts, make sure to follow the format prescribed

Deleting A Day

• Manual Method:
  • Delete the appropriate directory, something along the lines of src/engineering/year.month.day/
  • Go to src/engineering/engineering.tex and remove the two lines that correspond to the day (including the \clearpage that follows the \include statement )
• AUTOMATED : Recommended (and easiest) method
  • From the base directory (one up from src/)
  • Run delete_day.exe
    • Fill in the prompts, make sure to follow the format prescribed

Quick Latex Reference (Google is your friend for the rest)

Tables, How Do They Work?

Here's a sample table:

\begin{center}
    \begin{tabular}{ |p{2cm}|p{10cm}| }
        \hline
        \textbf{Name} & \textbf{What We Did/Reflections} \\
        \hline
        Eric & \textit{What I Did} \\
        \hline 
        John & \textit{What I Did} \\
        \hline 
        Kieran & \textit{\input{src/engineering/2017.09.23/name_2017.09.23/kieran_2017.09.23}} \\
        \hline 
        Jacques & \textit{What I Did} \\
        \hline 
        William & \textit{What I Did} \\
        \hline 
        Alex & \textit{\input{src/engineering/2017.09.23/name_2017.09.23/alex_2017.09.23}} \\
        \hline 
        Mansi & \textit{What I Did} \\
        \hline
    \end{tabular}
\end{center}

What does it all do?

• \begin{center}
  • Centers the table
• \begin{tabular}{ |p{2cm}|p{10cm}| }
  • Creates a table with a 2cm column and a 10cm column
  • If you want more columns, add more |p{width}| sections
  • If you want more rows, add more of the lines
  • You can change the respective width of the columns by editing the {2cm} or {10cm} sections, but these widths have worked so far for us
• \hline
  • Creates a row separator (a line separating two rows), not needed for a row to exist but good for formatting
• \textbf{Name} & \textbf{What We Did/Reflections} \\
  • Does a lot of things, let's split it up
  • \textbf{Name}
    • Sets the first column to be a bolded Name
  • &
    • Marker that allows LaTex to split up the columns (& goes between each column)
  • \textbf{What We Did/Reflections}
    • Same as with the Name but with What We Did/Reflections
  • \\
    • Defines the end of a row, also used in text to force a new line (not recommended for that purpose)

Daily Update Organisation

Daily updates are done in their respective sub-folders

Tag formatting

Comma separated, use allowed set (ask group for changing set)

Sample Tags

• Chassis
• Autonomous
• Autonomous-*
  • Autonomous related
• Teleop
• Teleop-*
  • Teleop related
• Relic
• Glyph
• Jewels
• Outreach
• Brainstorm
• Field