Rob's LaTeX Page
Rob's favorite links to all things LaTeX.
Evangelism: Why Use LaTex
Basic Documentation
Documentation and Resources on the Internet
Getting the Software
There are many sources for LaTeX, almost all of them free. Here are some
I, or people I respect, have used:
BibTex
Graphics, Equations, and the WWW
Support tools for LaTeX
- My texit-macosx script , which is a
simple shell script for executing all the pdflatex commands you will
typically need to make LaTeX documents. Just save it somewhere and
perhaps rename it to be shorter to call and then launch it from a
terminal window, e.g.,
texit-macosx.sh sample
will run the script on the sample.tex file.
- AucTex the
best tool I have found for emacs support for LaTeX. See below for details of setting this up.
- LaTeX Track
Changes, an system for marking up changes in LaTeX using a
standalone Java app or an Emacs mode.
- Detexify,
which is not the same as detex, but rather an interactive web service
to identify symbols and their LaTeX equivalent code.
-
Nelson Beebe's latex.el file, editing support for LaTeX (and
BibTeX) in emacs. Also very good, better in some ways than Auctex
but at least check, it lacked coloration.
- Chikrii Softlab Word to LaTeX
conversion (note academic pricing)
-
Conversion programs from LaTeX to other programs
-
Conversion programs from other text programs to LaTeX
- LaTeX to RTF
Converter, sadly only available for Windoze.
- A general resource
for PDF files , their format, conversion programs, etc. (Thanks
to Ashley Smith for this tip)
-
Solid PDF to Word for Mac, a Mac based converter
-
Another conversion from pdf to Word (Now for Mac)
- Setting up colors in Emacs to determine which
colors Emacs uses to mark different elements of LaTex files.
- My personal view on LaTeX tools for
whatever that's worth! Very out of date and incomplete so don't take
this too seriously.
Specific Tips (table of contents)
I have not used classix LateX in years but
rather pdfLaTeX.
The advantages include:
- Output is directly in pdf.
- Included graphics can be in pdf, tiff, jpg, or png formats.
- Never have to deal with postscript again!!!!
- Everything that worked in regular LaTeX (except including postscript
files) will work in PdfLaTeX.
Resubmitting documents like papers and grant applications often requires
the authors to mark those sections that have changed since a previous
version. LaTeX has support for this through the changebar package,
typically part of a standard installation of LaTeX but also available via a
Google search.
Once you have installed the package, perform the following steps to
create a vertical bar in the right margin of the page next to sections that
you have changed.
- In the header, add the line
\usepackage{changebar}
- Then around every piece of the text that has changed, place these two
commands:
\cbstart
\cbend
- For example,
\cbstart
Each year, there are changes in the Handbook and we mark such changes from
the previous edition with a vertical bar in the right margin, as with this
paragraph. Such markings may not be visible in the HTML version of the
handbook---please see the pdf edition for clarification.
\cbend
Things have changed recently so that it is now easier to control how
citations appear in the document. To get some control over citations,
use the cite.sty package (i.e.,
\usepackage{cite}
To have
citation numbers appear as superscripts, change this to be
\usepackage[super]{cite}
and that may be all you ever need to
know. For more info, read the cite.sty file.
With the requirement of many granting agencies to submit applications using
a san serrif font like Helvetica or Arial, there are several tricks in
LaTeX.
Mine looks like this and gives an 11-point like font that NIH has
accepted without problem on several occasions.
\usepackage{times}
% This command somehow makes Helvetica fonts
\renewcommand\rmdefault{phv}
To get complex units to look good needs some math mode but without the math
fonts, which requires the use of
\mathrm
for example
$\mathrm{\mu A / cm ^ 2}$
creates "micro-Amps per cm squared" with the correct fonts.
LaTeX is not always efficient in the way it uses space on a page, sometimes
leaving large white spaces and big gaps between elements of the document.
There are several packages that support text wrapping and other tricks to
getting better use of page space in LaTeX. Here are some pointers to a
few.
-
Tricks on saving space and text from a Cambride University site
- Desciption of
the floatflt package that allows text to wrap around figures.
-
Wrapfig my current favorite system for text wrapping. There is a
nice stackexchange article that describes a common problem and how to deal
with it.
- Picinpar is
a standard package, part of most releases. The
key usage information (that is not well documented) is to bracket a
region containing the figure with \begin{figwindow} and \end{figwindow}.
The regular figure description has to be embedded into the
\begin{figwindow} command with the arguments that indicate the number
of line of paragraph above the figure and then a letter to place the
figure on the page, e.g.,
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{picinpar}
\begin{figwindow}[3,l,%
{\includegraphics[height=2in]{leadfield.eps}},%
{\label{fig:leadfield} Electrocardiographic lead field for use
in the student lab for Bioengineering 6000 class.}]
In this lab, you will record the standard limb leads in sequence,
according to the diagram below:
The goal for the Frank electrode system is to capture the
three-dimensional extent of the heart dipole. For this, it is
necessary to measure potential differences not just in the frontal
plane, as in the limb leads, but along the antero-posterior
(front-to-back) axis of the body. The diagram below illustrates the
original Frank lead system \cite{RSM:Fra56} and we will use a
simplified version of this.
\end{figwindow}
Note that despite what the documentation says, this does not work for
centering a figure and having text wrap around both sides.
- You can use either floatflt package
or wrapfig package.
For example:
\begin{floatingfigure}[r]{0.4\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.4\textwidth]{lake1}
\caption{Text wrap around figure}
\noindent \hrulefill
\label{test}
\end{floatingfigure}
and
\begin{wrapfigure}{r}{0.4\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.4\textwidth]{lake1}
\caption{Text wrap around figure}
\noindent \hrulefill
\label{test}
\end{wrapfigure}
The difference between floatingfigure and wrapfigure is
that the text typed after \end{floatingfigure} will be forced
to be a new paragraph.
LaTeX folks (at least Leslie Lamport) seem to frown on the use of
underlining but if you do like to use it, the package ulem.sty is your
friend. With \usepackage{ulem}, you have the following new
commands:
- \uline{important} underlined text
- \uuline{urgent} double-underlined text
- \uwave{boat} wavy underline
- \sout{wrong} line drawn through word
- \xout{removed} marked over with //////.
- {\em phasized\/} and \emph{asized} In LaTeX, by default, these are
underlined; use \normalem or [normalem] to restore italics
- \useunder{\uwave}{\bfseries}{\textbf}
use wavy underline in place of bold face
Note that this package changes \em and \emph to be underline. To change
this behavior back to normal, use the \normalem command, for example
\usepackage{ulem}
\normalem
The thesis is often one of the first major projects for a student in
LaTeX (it sure was for me) and there are some nice tools specific to that
task.
Getting and setting up Auctex is easy, either for a sysadmin type or a
mere mortal. If you do not have local support, here are the steps:
- Go to
here and get the latest stable version (who needs to live
dangerously when writing is already hard enough)
- Note that Auctex also includes
Preview LaTeX, which I have not yet tried but provides a nice
preview for segments of complex LaTeX code.
- The modern way to install packages in emacs is to use the
M-x list-packages
command, which lists a set of possible emacs packages. Place the
cursor next to Auctex, select "i" and then "x" to install the
package.
- Alternatively, you can go to the web site for
downloading Auctex and follow instructions there.
- Put the folder in your local emacs lisp folder, typically
something like ~/emacs/lisp
- Read the INSTALLATION file, where you will find the commands
make
make lispdir=$HOME/emacs/lisp install
- The nasty part of installing this yourself is the need to put the
info files somewhere and set up your own info directory. You can
ignore this and just read the PDF
version of the manual I have prepared.
- To set up parameters for Auctex, add the following lines to your
.emacs file:
(load "auxtex.el" nil t t ))
(setq TeX-auto-save t)
(setq TeX-parse-self t)
(setq-default TeX-master nil)
(setq LaTeX-indent-level 4)
(setq LaTeX-item-indent -2)
- Run emacs on your latest LaTeX document and have a real blast!
One of the mysteries of Emacs version 21 is how to set up colors for
the different elements of a document. This used to happen with highlight
packages but now it is built in and hence more powerful and sometimes more
difficult to use. Here are some points to note in fumbling around with
this feature.
- You must enable font lock to have any highlighting. To do this on a
global basis, put this command in your .emacs file.
(global-font-lock-mode t)
- To customize the faces (colors, fonts, etc.) used by Font Lock for
fontifying different parts of buffer text, use the command
M-x customize-face
You will then have a funky UI that will allow you to make changes in
color for any type of element in the LaTeX file. Read the
instructions at the top of the page and play around until you get the
hang of it.
- Changes you make permanent in the UI above appear at the end of the
.emacs file looking something like this:
(custom-set-faces
'(font-lock-comment-face ((t (:foreground "pink")))))
- If you want to really get fancy, you can look at the set of keywords
that highlighting uses to set color and font. For this, go to the
mode you like (or dislike) most and enter
C-h v
font-lock-keywords
Then read the documentation at the top or jump to the encoded list of
keywords at the bottom.
Last modified: Tue Oct 31 21:22:05 MDT 2017