Easy to follow LaTeX layout tutorial?

Question

I want to host a page using LaTeX and distribute text fragments / blocks in predefined places.

Something like that

+--------------------------------------------------------+ | +-------------+ | | |bla bla bla| | | |bla bl ab lab| +-------------+ | | |bla bla bla| |bla bla bla| | | |bla bl ab lab| |bla bl ab lab| | | +-------------+ |bla bla bla| | | |bla bl ab lab| | | +-------------+ +----+ | | |more| | | Ich und Du |text| | | Müllers Kuh +----+ | | | +--------------------------------------------------------+ 

My guess is that I should use this with a mini-disk or with boxes like

 \begin{minipage}[b][2cm]{8cm} \mbox{more} \newline \mbox{text} \newline \end{minipage} 

Is there a tutorial or an “how” page that you know that shows me how to do this - not a list all LaTeX idioms , for this I have several books. But my books are more focused on team lists, scientific publishing, and math.

Answer 1

If you need “fixed” layouts, I would probably look at Tikz and use the absolute positioning that it offers. The Tikz manual describes this in detail (find "Link to the current Node page - Absolute positioning" after executing texdoc pgf). A simple example:

 \documentclass{article} \usepackage{tikz} \begin{document} \begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay] \node [xshift=1cm,yshift=1cm] at (current page.south west) [text width=7cm,fill=red!20,rounded corners,above right] { This is an absolutely positioned text in the lower left corner. No shipout-hackery is used. }; \end{tikzpicture} \begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay] \node [xshift=10cm,yshift=5cm] at (current page.south west) [text width=7cm,fill=green!20,rounded corners,above right] { A second box placed absolutely. }; \end{tikzpicture} \end{document}