LaTeX Beginner's Guide La Te X Stefan Kottwitz

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LaTeX
Beginner's Guide
Table of Contents
LaTeX
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more
Why Subscribe?
Free Access for Packt account holders
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Time for action - heading
What just happened?
Pop quiz
Have a go hero - heading
Reader feedback
Customer support
Downloading the example code
Errata
Piracy
Questions
1. Getting Started with LaTeX
What is LaTeX?
How we can benefit
The virtues of open source
Separation of form and content
Portability
Protection for your work
Comparing it to word processor software
What are the challenges?
Installing LaTeX
Time for action – installing TeX Live using the net installer wizard
What just happened?
Time for action – installing TeX Live offline
What just happened?
Installation on other operating systems
Creating our first document
Time for action – writing our first document with TeXworks
What just happened?
Have a go hero – checking out advanced LaTeX editors
Summary
2. Formatting Words, Lines, and Paragraphs
Understanding logical formatting
Time for action – titling your document
What just happened?
Exploring the document structure
Understanding LaTeX commands
How LaTeX reads your input
Time for action – trying out the effect of spaces, line breaks, and empty
lines
What just happened?
Commenting your source text
Printing out special symbols
Time for action – writing special characters in our text
What just happened?
Formatting text – fonts, shapes, and styles
Time for action – tuning the font shape
What just happened?
Choosing the font family
Time for action – switching to sans-serif and to typewriter fonts
What just happened?
Switching fonts
Time for action – switching the font family
What just happened?
Summarizing font commands and declarations
Delimiting the effect of commands
Time for action – exploring grouping by braces
What just happened?
Time for action – exploring font sizes
What just happened?
Using environments
Time for action – using an environment to adjust the font size
What just happened?
Saving time and effort – creating your own commands
Time for action – creating our first command using it as anabbreviation
What just happened?
Gentle spacing after commands
Time for action – adding intelligent spacing to command output
What just happened?
Creating more universal commands – using arguments
Time for action – creating a macro for formatting keywords
What just happened?
Using optional arguments
Time for action – marking keywords with optional formatting
What just happened?
Pop quiz – commands
Have a go hero – saving effort using optional arguments
Using boxes to limit the width of paragraphs
Time for action – creating a narrow text column
What just happened?
Common paragraph boxes
Have a go hero – exploring further features of \parbox
Boxes containing more text
Time for action – using the minipage environment
What just happened?
Have a go hero – creating a footnote inside a minipage
Understanding environments
Breaking lines and paragraphs
Improving hyphenation
Time for action – stating division points for words
What just happened?
Have a go hero – exploiting the hyphenat package
Improving the justification further
Time for action – using microtype
What just happened?
Breaking lines manually
Time for action – using line breaks
What just happened?
Have a go hero – exploring line breaking options
Preventing line breaks
Managing line breaks wisely
Exploring the fine details
Time for action – exploring ligatures
What just happened?
Understanding ligatures
Choosing the right dash
Setting dots
Time for action – using differently spaced dots
What just happened?
Time for action – comparing dots to ellipsis
What just happened?
Setting accents
Time for action – experimenting with accents
What just happened?
Using special characters directly in the editor
Time for action – using accents directly
What just happened?
Turning off full justification
Time for action – justifying a paragraph to the left
What just happened?
Creating ragged-left text
Time for action – centering a title
What just happened?
Using environments for justification
Time for action – centering verses
What just happened?
Displaying quotes
Time for action – quoting a scientist
What just happened?
Quoting longer text
Time for action – quoting TeX's benefits
What just happened?
Time for action – spacing between paragraphs instead of indentation
What just happened?
Pop quiz – lines and paragraphs
Summary
3. Designing Pages
Defining the overall layout
Time for action – writing a book with chapters
What just happened?
Reviewing LaTeX's default page layout
Defining the margins yourself
Time for action – specifying margins
What just happened?
Using the geometry package
Choosing the paper size
Specifying the text area
Setting the margins
Obtaining package documentation
Time for action – finding the geometry package manual
What just happened?
Have a go hero – constructing the page layout with typearea
Changing the line spacing
Time for action – increasing line spacing
What just happened?
Have a go hero – examining a package source file
Using class options to configure the document style
Time for action – creating a two-column landscape document
What just happened?
Have a go hero – trying KOMA-Script classes
Creating a table of contents
Time for action – adding a table of contents
What just happened?
Sectioning and the contents
Time for action – shortening the table of content entries
What just happened?
Designing headers and footers
Time for action – customizing headers with the fancyhdr package
What just happened?
Understanding page styles
Customizing header and footer
Using decorative lines in header or footer
Changing LaTeX's header marks
Breaking pages
Time for action – inserting page breaks
What just happened?
Have a go hero – exploring page breaking options
Enlarging a page
Time for action – sparing an almost empty page
What just happened?
Using footnotes
Time for action – using footnotes in text and in headings
What just happened?
Modifying the dividing line
Time for action – redefining the footnote line
What just happened?
Using packages to expand footnote styles
Pop quiz
Summary
4. Creating Lists
Building a bulleted list
Time for action – listing LaTeX packages
What just happened?
Nesting lists
Time for action – listing packages by topic
What just happened?
Creating a numbered list
Time for action – writing a step-by-step tutorial
What just happened?
Customizing lists
Saving space with compact lists
Time for action – shrinking our tutorial
What just happened?
Choosing bullets and numbering format
Time for action – modifying lists using enumitem
What just happened?
Suspending and continuing lists
Producing a definition list
Time for action – explaining capabilities of packages
What just happened?
Have a go hero – adjusting the dimensions of lists
Pop quiz
Summary
5. Creating Tables and Inserting Pictures
Writing in columns
Time for action – lining up information using the tabbing environment
What just happened?
Time for action – lining up font commands
What just happened?
Typesetting tables
Time for action – building a table of font family commands
What just happened?
Drawing lines in tables
Understanding formatting arguments
Increasing the row height
Beautifying tables
Time for action – adding nicer horizontal lines with the booktabs package
What just happened?
Have a go hero – adjusting lengths
Spanning entries over multiple columns
Time for action – merging cells
What just happened?
Inserting code column-wise
Time for action – using the array package
What just happened?
Spanning entries over multiple rows
Time for action – merging cells using the multirow package
What just happened?
Adding captions to tables
Time for action – adding a caption to our font table
What just happened?
Placing captions above
Have a go hero – customizing captions
Auto-fitting columns to the table width
Generating multi-page tables
Coloring tables
Using landscape orientation
Aligning columns at the decimal point
Handling narrow columns
Pop quiz – tables
Inserting pictures
Time for action – including a picture
What just happened?
Scaling pictures
Choosing the optimal file type
Including whole pages
Putting images behind the text
Managing floating environments
Time for action – letting a figure float
What just happened?
Understanding float placement options
Forcing the output of floats
Limiting floating
Avoiding floating at all
Spanning figures and tables over text columns
Letting text flow around figures
Time for action – embedding a picture within text
What just happened?
Breaking figures and tables into pieces
Pop quiz – pictures and floats
Summary
6. Cross-Referencing
Setting labels and referencing
Time for action – referencing items of a top list
What just happened?
Assigning a key
Referring to a key
Referring to a page
Producing intelligent page references
Time for action – introducing variable references
What just happened?
Fine-tuning page references
Referring to page ranges
Using automatic reference names
Time for action – referring cleverly
What just happened?
Combing cleveref and varioref
Referring to labels in other documents
Have a go hero – turning references into hyperlinks
Pop quiz
Summary
7. Listing Content and References
Customizing the table of contents
Time for action – refining an extensive table of contents
What just happened?
Adjusting the depth of the TOC
Shortening entries
Adding entries manually
Creating and customizing lists of figures
Time for action – creating a list of diagrams
What just happened?
Creating a list of tables
Using packages for customization
Generating an index
Time for action – marking words and building the index
What just happened?
Defining index entries and subentries
Specifying page ranges
Using symbols and macros in the index
Referring to other index entries
Fine-tuning page numbers
Designing the index layout
Creating a bibliography
Time for action – citing texts and listing the references
What just happened?
Using the standard bibliography environment
Using bibliography databases with BibTeX
Time for action – creating and using a BibTeX database
What just happened?
Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
Understanding BibTeX entry types
Choosing the bibliography style
Listing references without citing
Changing the headings
Have a go hero – using natbib
Pop quiz
Summary
8. Typing Math Formulas
Writing basic formulas
Time for action – discussing quadratic equations and roots
What just happened?
Embedding math expressions within text
Displaying formulas
Numbering equations
Adding subscripts and superscripts
Extracting roots
Writing fractions
Greek letters
Script letters
Producing an ellipsis
Comparing in-line formulas to displayed formulas
Changing the font, style, and size
Customizing displayed formulas
Time for action – typesetting multi-line formulas
What just happened?
Aligning multi-line equations
Numbering rows in multi-line formulas
Inserting text into formulas
Fine-tuning formulas
Using operators
Exploring the wealth of math symbols
Binary operation symbols
Binary relation symbols
Inequality relation symbols
Subset and superset symbols
Variable sized operators
Arrows
Harpoons
Symbols derived from letters
Variable sized delimiters
Miscellaneous symbols
Writing units
Building math structures
Creating arrays
Writing binomial coefficients:
Typesetting matrices
Stacking expressions
Underlining and overlining
Setting accents
Putting a symbol above another
Writing theorems and definitions
Have a go hero – checking out the mathtools package
Pop quiz
Summary
9. Using Fonts
Preparing the encoding
Time for action – directly using special characters
What just happened?
Installing additional fonts
Choosing the main font
Time for action – comparing Computer Modern to Latin Modern
What just happened?
Loading font packages
Latin Modern – a replacement for the standard font
Kp-fonts – a full set of fonts
Serif fonts
Times Roman
Charter
Palatino
Bookman
New Century Schoolbook
Concrete Roman
Sans-serif fonts
Helvetica
Bera Sans
Computer Modern Bright
Kurier
Typewriter fonts
Courier
Inconsolata
Bera Mono
Exploring the world of LaTeX fonts
Pop quiz
Summary
10. Developing Large Documents
Splitting the input
Time for action – swapping out preamble and chapter contents
What just happened?
Including small pieces of code
Including bigger parts of a document
Compiling parts of a document
Creating front and back matter
Time for action – adding a dedication and an appendix
What just happened?
Designing a title page
Time for action – creating a title page
What just happened?
Working with templates
Time for action – starting with a template
What just happened?
Have a go hero – evaluating and enhancing templates
Pop quiz
Summary
11. Enhancing Your Documents Further
Using hyperlinks and bookmarks
Time for action – adding hyperlinks
What just happened?
Time for action – customizing the hyperlink appearance
What just happened?
Time for action – editing PDF metadata
What just happened?
Creating hyperlinks manually
Creating bookmarks manually
Math formulas and special symbols in bookmarks
Benefitting from other packages
Time for action – visiting the TeX Catalogue Online
What just happened?
Time for action – installing a LaTeX package
What just happened?
Designing headings
Time for action – designing chapter and section headings
What just happened?
Coloring your document
Have a go hero – creating colorful tables
Pop quiz
Summary
12. Troubleshooting
Understanding and fixing errors
Time for action – interpreting and fixing an error
What just happened?
Using commands and environments
Writing math formulas
Handling the preamble and document body
Working with files
Creating tables and arrays
Working with lists
Working with floating figures and tables
General syntax errors
Handling warnings
Time for action – emphasizing on a sans-serif font
What just happened?
Justifying text
Referencing
Choosing fonts
Placing figures and tables
Customizing the document class
Avoiding obsolete classes and packages
General troubleshooting
Have a go hero – examining LaTeX's log files
Pop quiz – troubleshooting
Summary
13. Using Online Resources
Web forums, discussion boards, and Q&A sites
Usenet groups
comp.text.tex
Newsgroups in other languages
Web forums
LaTeX-Community.org
TeX and LaTeX on Stack Exchange
Time for action – asking a question online
What just happened?
Frequently Asked Questions
UK TeX FAQ
Visual LaTeX FAQ
MacTeX FAQ
AMS-Math FAQ
LaTeX Picture FAQ
Mailing lists
texhax
tex-live
texworks
List collections
TeX user group sites
TUG – the TeX users group
The LaTeX project
UK TUG – TeX in the United Kingdom
Local user groups
Homepages of LaTeX software and editors
LaTeX distributions
LaTeX editors
Cross-platform
Windows
Linux
Mac OS X
LaTeX archives and catalogs
CTAN – the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network
The TeX Catalogue Online
The LaTeX Font Catalogue
TeX Resources on the Web
Friends of LaTeX
XeTeX
LuaTeX
ConTeXt
LyX
LaTeX blogs
The TeXblog
Some TeX Developments
LaTeX Alive
LaTeX for Humans
The TeX community aggregator
Summary
A. Pop Quiz Answers
Chapter 2: Formatting Words, Lines, and Paragraphs
Commands
Lines and paragraphs
Chapter 3: Designing Pages
Chapter 4: Creating Lists
Chapter 5: Creating Tables and Inserting Pictures
Tables
Pictures and floats
Chapter 6: Cross-Referencing
Chapter 7: Listing Content and References
Chapter 8: Typing Math Formulas
Chapter 9: Using Fonts
Chapter 10: Developing Large Documents
Chapter 11: Enhancing Your Documents Further
Chapter 12: Troubleshooting
Index
LaTeX
Beginner's Guide
LaTeX
Beginner's Guide
Copyright © 2011 Packt Publishing
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First published: March 2011
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Credits
Author
Stefan Kottwitz
Reviewers
Kevin C. Klement
Joseph Wright
Acquisition Editor
Eleanor Duffy
Development Editor
Hyacintha D'Souza
Technical Editor
Sakina Kaydawala
Copy Editor
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About the Author
Stefan Kottwitz studied mathematics in Jena and Hamburg. Afterwards, he
worked as an IT Administrator and Communication Officer onboard cruise ships
for AIDA Cruises and for Hapag-Lloyd Cruises. Following 10 years of sailing
around the world, he is now employed as a Network & IT Security Engineer for
AIDA Cruises, focusing on network infrastructure and security such as managing
firewall systems for headquarters and fleet.
In between contracts, he worked as a freelance programmer and typography
designer. For many years he has been providing LaTeX support in online forums.
He became a moderator of the web forum http://latex-community.org/ and of the
site http://golatex.de/. Recently, he began supporting the newly established Q&A
site http://tex.stackexchange.com/ as a moderator.
He publishes ideas and news from the TeX world on his blog at http://texblog.net.
I would like to thank Joseph Wright and Kevin C. Klement for reviewing this
book. Special thanks go to Markus Kohm for his great valuable input. I would
also like to thank the people of Packt Publishing, who worked with me on this
book, in particular my development editor Hyacintha D'Souza.
About the Reviewers
Kevin C. Klement is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst. Besides using LaTeX in his academic work in the
history of logic and analytic philosophy, he is a maintainer of the PhilTeX blog,
and an active participant in many online LaTeX communities, including PhilTeX,
LaTeX Community, and TeX.SE.
Joseph Wright is a research assistant at the University of East Anglia. As well as
using LaTeX for his academic work as a chemist, he is a member of the LaTeX3
Project, runs the blog Some TeX Developments and is one of the moderators on
the TeX.SE site.
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Preface
LaTeX is a high-quality open source typesetting software that produces
professional prints and PDF files. However, as LaTeX is a powerful and
complex tool, getting started can be intimidating. There is no official support and
certain aspects such as layout modifications can seem rather complicated. It may
seem more straightforward to use Word or other WYSIWG programs, but once
you've become acquainted, LaTeX's capabilities far outweigh any initial
difficulties. This book guides you through these challenges and makes beginning
with LaTeX easy. If you are writing mathematical, scientific, or business papers,
then this is the perfect book for you.
LaTeX Beginner's Guide offers you a practical introduction to LaTeX. Beginning
with the installation and basic usage, you will learn to typeset documents
containing tables, figures, formulas, and common book elements like
bibliographies, glossaries, and indexes. Lots of step-by-step examples start with
fine-tuning text, formulas and page layout and go on to managing complex
documents and using modern PDF features. It's easy to use LaTeX, when you have
LaTeX Beginner's Guide at hand.
This practical book will guide you through the essential steps of Latex, from
installing LaTeX, formatting, and justification, to page design. Finally, you will
learn how to manage complex documents and how to benefit from modern PDF
features. Right from the beginning, you will learn to use macros and styles to
maintain a consistent document structure while saving typing work. This book
will help you learn to create professional looking tables as well as include
figures and write complex mathematic formulas. You will see how to generate
bibliographies and indexes with ease. Detailed information about online
resources like software archives, web forums, and online compilers complement
this introductory guide.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Getting Started with LaTeX, introduces LaTeX and explains its
benefits. It guides you through the download and installation of a comprehensive
LaTeX distribution and shows you how to create your first LaTeX document.
Chapter 2, Formatting Words, Lines, and Paragraphs, explains how to vary font,
shape, and style of text. It deals with centering and justification of paragraphs and
how you can improve line breaks and hyphenation. It introduces the concept of
logical formatting and teaches you how to define macros and how to use
environments and packages.
Chapter 3, Designing Pages, shows how you can adjust the margins and change
the line spacing. It demonstrates portrait, landscape, and two-column layout. In
this chapter, we will create dynamic headers and footers and learn how to control
page breaking and how to use footnotes. Along the way, you will also learn about
redefining existing commands and using class options. Furthermore, you will get
familiar with accessing package documentation.
Chapter 4, Creating Lists, deals with arranging text in bulleted, numbered, and
definition lists. We will learn how to choose bullets and numbering style and how
to design the overall layout of lists.
Chapter 5, Creating Tables and Inserting Pictures , shows you how to create
professional-looking tables and how to include external pictures in your
documents. It deals with typesetting captions to tables and figures. We will learn
how to benefit from LaTeX's automated tables and figures placement and how to
fine-tune it.
Chapter 6, Cross-Referencing, introduces means of intelligent referencing to
sections, footnotes, tables, figures, and numbered environments in general.
Chapter 7, Listing Content and References, deals with creating and customizing
of a table of contents and lists of figures and tables. Furthermore, it teaches how
to cite books, how to create bibliographies, and how to generate an index.
Chapter 8, Typing Math Formulas, explains mathematical typesetting in depth. It
starts with basic formulas and continues with centered and numbered equations. It
shows how to align multi-line equations. In detail, it shows how to typeset math
symbols such as roots, arrows, Greek letters, and operators. Moreover, you will
learn how to build complex math structures such as fractions, stacked
expressions, and matrices.
Chapter 9, Using Fonts, takes us into the world of fonts and demonstrates various
fonts for Roman, sans-serif, and typewriter fonts in different shapes. By the way,
you will learn about character encoding and font encoding.
Chapter 10, Developing Large Documents, helps in managing large documents by
splitting them into several files. It shows how to swap out settings, how to reuse
code, and how to compile just parts of a bigger documents. After reading this
chapter, you will be able to create complex projects building upon sub-files.
Furthermore, we deal with front matter and back matter with different page
numbering and separate title pages. We will work it out by creating an example
book. By doing this, you will get familiar with using document templates, finally
being able to write our own thesis, book, or report.
Chapter 11, Enhancing Your Documents Further , brings color into your
documents. It shows you how to modify headings of chapters and all kinds of
sections. We will learn how to create feature-rich PDF documents with
bookmarks, hyperlinks, and meta-data. While doing this, we visit the TeX
Catalogue Online to look out for further useful LaTeX packages and we will go
through a package installation.
Chapter 12, Troubleshooting, provides us with tools for problem-solving. We
will learn about different kinds of LaTeX's errors and warnings and how to deal
with them. After reading this chapter, you will understand LaTeX's messages and
you will know how to use them for fixing errors.
Chapter 13, Using Online Resources, guides you through the vast amount of
LaTeX information on the Internet. We will visit a LaTeX online forum and a
LaTeX Question & Answer site. This chapter points the way to huge LaTeX
software archives, to homepages of TeX user groups, to mailing lists, Usenet
groups, and LaTeX blogs. It tells you where you can download LaTeX capable
editors and where you can find enhanced versions of TeX, such as XeTeX,
LuaTeX, and ConTeXt. Finally, you will know how to access the knowledge of
the world-wide LaTeX community and how to become a part of it.
What you need for this book
You need access to a computer with LaTeX on it. An online connection would be
helpful regarding installation and updates. LaTeX can be installed on most
operating systems, so you can use Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, or Unix.
This book uses the freely available TeX Live distribution, which runs on all
mentioned platforms. You just need an online connection or the TeX Live DVD to
install it. In the book, we work with the cross-platform editor TeXworks, but you
could use any editor you like.
Who this book is for
If you are about to write mathematical or scientific papers, seminar handouts, or
even plan to write a thesis, then this book offers you a fast-paced and practical
introduction. Particularly when studying in school and university you will benefit
a lot, as a mathematician and a physicist as well as an engineer or a humanist.
Everybody with high expectations who plans to write a paper or a book may be
delighted by this stable software.
Conventions
In this book, you will find several headings appearing frequently. To give clear
instructions of how to complete a procedure or task, we use:
Time for action - heading
1. Action 1
2. Action 2
3. Action 3
Instructions often need some extra explanation so that they make sense, so they are
followed with:
What just happened?
This heading explains the working of tasks or instructions that you have just
completed.
You will also find some other learning aids in the book, including:
Pop quiz
These are short multiple choice questions intended to help you test your own
understanding.
Have a go hero - heading
These set practical challenges and give you ideas for experimenting with what
you have learned.
You will also find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different
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Code words in text are shown as follows: "The command \chapter produced a
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\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{book}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Exploring the page layout}
In this chapter we will study the layout of pages.
\section{Some filler text}
\blindtext
\section{A lot more filler text}
More dummy text will follow.
\subsection{Plenty of filler text}
\blindtext[10]
\end{document}
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the
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\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage[a4paper, inner=1.5cm, outer=3cm, top=2cm,
bottom=3cm, bindingoffset=1cm]{geometry}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Exploring the page layout}
In this chapter we will study the layout of pages.
\section{Some filler text}
\blindtext
\section{A lot more filler text}
More dummy text will follow.
\subsection{Plenty of filler text}
\blindtext[3]
\end{document}
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
texdoc geometry
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the
screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Save
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Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Chapter 1. Getting Started with
LaTeX
Are you ready to leave those "what you see is what you get" word processors
behind and to enter the world of real, reliable, and high-quality typesetting?
Then let's go together!
It's great that you decided to learn LaTeX. This book will guide you along the
way to help you get the most out of it. Let's speak briefly about LaTeX's benefits
and the challenges, and then we shall prepare our tools.
In this chapter, we will:
Get to know LaTeX and talk about the pros and cons compared to word
processors
Install a complete LaTeX software bundle, including an editor
Write our first LaTeX document
So, let's get started.
What is LaTeX?
LaTeX is a software for typesetting documents. In other words, it's a document
preparation system. LaTeX is not a word processor, but is used as a document
markup language.
LaTeX is a free, open source software. It was originally written by Leslie
Lamport and is based on the TeX typesetting engine by Donald Knuth. People
often refer to it as just TeX, meaning LaTeX. It has a long history; you can read
about it at http://www.tug.org/whatis.html. For now, let's continue by looking at
how we can make the best use of it.
How we can benefit
LaTeX is especially well-suited for scientific and technical documents. Its
superior typesetting of mathematical formulas is legendary. If you are a student or
a scientist, then LaTeX is by far the best choice, and even if you don't need its
scientific capabilities, there are other uses — it produces very high quality output,
it is extremely stable, and handles complex documents easily no matter how large
they are.
Further remarkable strengths of LaTeX are its cross-referencing capabilities, its
automatic numbering and generation of lists of contents, figures and tables,
indexes, glossaries, and bibliographies. It is multilingual with language-specific
features, and it is able to use PostScript and PDF features.
Apart from being perfect for scientists, LaTeX is incredibly flexible—there are
templates for letters, presentations, bills, philosophy books, law texts, music
scores, and even for chess game notations. Hundreds of LaTeX users have written
thousands of templates, styles, and tools useful for every possible purpose. It is
collected and categorized online on archiving servers.
You could benefit from its impressive high quality by starting with its default
styles relying on its intelligent formatting, but you are free to customize and to
modify everything. People of the TeX community have already written a lot of
extensions addressing nearly every formatting need.
The virtues of open source
The sources of LaTeX are completely free and readable for everyone. This
enables you to study and to change everything, from the core of LaTeX to the
latest extension packages. But what does this mean for you as a beginner? There's
a huge LaTeX community with a lot of friendly, helpful people. Even if you
cannot benefit from the open source code directly, they can read the sources and
assist you. Just join a LaTeX web forum and ask your questions there. Helpers
will, if necessary, dig into LaTeX sources and in all probability find a solution
for you, sometimes by recommending a suitable package, often providing a
redefinition of a default command.
Today, we're already profiting from about 30 years of development by the TeX
community. The open source philosophy made it possible, as every user is invited
to study and improve the software and develop it further. Chapter 13, Using
Online Resources, will point the way to the community.
Separation of form and content
A basic principle of LaTeX is that the author should not be distracted too much by
the formatting issues. Usually, the author focuses on the content and formats
logically, for example, instead of writing a chapter title in big bold letters, you
just tell LaTeX that it's a chapter heading—you could let LaTeX design the
heading or you decide in the document's settings what the headings will look like
—just once for the whole document.
LaTeX uses style files extensively called classes and packages , making it easy
to design and to modify the appearance of the whole document and all of its
details.
Portability
LaTeX is available for nearly every operating system, like Windows, Linux, Mac
OS X, and many more. Its file format is plain text—readable and editable, on all
operating systems. LaTeX will produce the same output on all systems. Though
there are different LaTeX software packages, so called TeX distributions , we
will focus on TeX Live , because this distribution is available for Windows,
Linux, and Mac OS X.
LaTeX itself doesn't have a graphical user interface; that's one of the reasons why
it's so portable. You can choose any text editor. There are many editors, even
specialized in LaTeX, for every operating system. Some editors are available for
several systems. For instance, TeXworks runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS
X; that's one of the reasons why we will use it in our book. Another very
important reason is that it's probably best-suited for beginners.
LaTeX generates PDF output—printable and readable, on most computers and
looks identical regardless of the operating system. Besides PDF, it supports DVI,
PostScript, and HTML output, preparing the ground for distribution both in print
and online, on screen, electronic book readers, or smart phones.
To sum up, LaTeX is portable in three ways—source, its implementation, and
output.
Protection for your work
LaTeX documents are stored in human readable text format, not in some obscure
word processing format, that may be altered in a different version of the same
software. Try to open a 20 year old document written with a commercial word
processor. What might your modern software show? Even if you can read the file,
its visual appearance would certainly be different than before. LaTeX promises
that the document will always be readable and will result in the same output.
Though it's being further developed, it will remain backwards compatible.
Word processor documents could be infected with viruses, malicious macros
could destroy the data. Did you ever hear of a virus "hiding" in a text file? LaTeX
is not threatened by viruses.
Comparing it to word processor software
We've already described some advantages of the typesetting system LaTeX
compared to word processing software. While LaTeX encourages structured
writing, other word processors may compel you to work inconsistently. They
might hide the real formatting structure and encrypt your document in some
proprietary file format. Compatibility is a big problem, even between versions of
the same software.
There are some interesting articles available online comparing LaTeX to other
software. Of course, they are expressions of opinion. Some are years old and
therefore do not cover the most recent software, but they discuss important points
that are still valid today. You will find them listed in Chapter 13, Using Online
Resources.
What are the challenges?
The learning curve could be steep, but this book will to help you master it.
Though writing LaTeX looks like programming, don't be afraid. Soon you will
know the frequently used commands. Text editors with auto completion and
keyword highlighting will support you. They might even provide menus and
dialogs with commands for you.
Do you now think it will take a long time until you would learn to achieve
creditable results? Don't worry; this book will give you a quick start. You will
learn by practicing with a lot of examples. Many more examples can be read and
downloaded from the Internet. In Chapter 13, we will explore the Internet
resources.
We shall continue with the setup of LaTeX on our computer.
Installing LaTeX
Let's start off with the installation of the LaTeX distribution–TeX Live. This
distribution is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and other Unix-like
operating systems. TeX Live is well maintained and it is being actively
developed.
Note
Another very good and user-friendly LaTeX distribution for Windows is
MiKTeX. It's easy to install like any other Windows application, but it's not
available for other systems like Linux or Mac OS X. You can download it from
http://miktex.org.
At first, we will visit the TeX Live homepage and take a survey of the installation
possibilities. Feel free to explore the homepage in depth to study the information
offered there.
Open the TeX Live homepage at http://tug.org/texlive.
We will cover two ways of installation. The first will be online and requires an
Internet connection. The other method starts with a huge download, but may be
finished offline.
Let's check out the two installation methods.
Time for action – installing TeX Live
using the net installer wizard
We will download the TeX Live net installer and install the complete TeX Live
distribution on our computer.
1. Click on downloading over the net or navigate to
http://tug.org/texlive/acquire-netinstall.
2. Download the net installer for Windows by clicking on install-tl.zip.
3. Extract the file install-tl.zip using your favorite archiving program. For
example, WinZip, WinRar, or 7-Zip can do it for you.
4. Open the folder install-tl-* and double-click the Windows batch file
install-tl:
5. The net installer will automatically detect your language. If it's showing the
wrong language, you can force the choice of the language using the lang
option at the command prompt such as install-tl –lang=en:
6. The installation wizard will pop up, as shown in the following screenshot:
7. Click on the Next button, now it offers to change the installation folder, but
it's fine to retain it. In our book, we will refer to this default location:
8. Click on the Next button. As shown in the following screenshot, choose one
of the options, for example, for the creation of shortcuts:
9. Click on the Next button. You can then confirm the settings and actually start
the installation by clicking on the Install button:
10. The next screenshot shows how you can monitor the installation progress:
11. Finally, click on the Finish button and you're done.
What just happened?
You have completed the installation of TeX Live 2010. Now your Start menu
contains a folder called TeX Live 2010 containing six programs:
DVIOUT DVI viewer—a viewer program for the classic LaTeX output
format DVI. Today, most people choose PDF output, so you probably won't
need it.
PS_VIEW—a viewer program for the PostScript format; again you probably
won't need it, except if you would like to use the PostScript language or read
such documents.
TeX Live documentation—well, that's useful regarding setup and use of
your software!
TeX Live Manager—that's your tool for package management, for example,
installation and update of LaTeX packages.
TeXdoc GUI—it's a graphical user interface offering access to a huge
amount of LaTeX-related information. There's a lot of it stored in your
computer by now. Use it to gather information whenever needed; it could be
quicker than searching online.
TeXworks editor—this is an editor developed to create LaTeX documents
comfortably. We will make extensive use of it.
Note
TeXworks is also shipped with MiKTeX 2.8 and higher.
If you would like to stay in control over what should be installed on your
computer, start the install-tl-advanced batch file instead of install-tl:
The TeX documentation available online contains more information for advanced
users.
Now, we will go through the offline installation of TeX Live 2010.
Time for action – installing TeX Live
offline
We will download a compressed ISO image of TeX Live 2010 with a size of
about 1.2 gigabytes. After extraction, we can choose to burn it on DVD or to
extract it to our hard disk drive and run the installation from there:
1. Visit the download area at http://www.tug.org/texlive/acquire-iso.html.
2. Download texlive2010.xz. If possible, use a download manager,
especially if your Internet connection is not stable.
3. Extract texlive2010.xz and you will get the file texlive2010.iso. If
your archiving program doesn't support the .xz file format, obtain, for
instance, the program 7-Zip version 9 or later from http://7zip.org and use it
for extraction.
4. Either burn the ISO file on a DVD using a burning software supporting the
ISO format or extract it to your hard disk drive. 7-Zip is also capable of
doing that for you.
5. Among the extracted files or on your DVD, you will find the installer batch
files install-tl and install-tl-advanced that we've already seen.
Choose one, start it, and go through the installation like in the previous
installation.
What just happened?
It was similar to the first installation, but this time you've got all the data and you
won't need an Internet connection. This complete download is especially
recommended if it's foreseeable that you will do another installation of TeX Live
later or if you would like to give it to friends or colleagues.
Note
After an offline installation, it's recommended to run an update of TeX Live soon,
because packages on a DVD or within an image could already be outdated. Use
the TeX Live Manager to keep your system up-to-date if you are connected to the
Internet.
Installation on other operating systems
If you work on Mac OS X, you may download a customized version of TeX Live
at http://www.tug.org/mactex/. Download the huge .zip file and double-click on
it to install.
On most Linux systems, installation is easy. Use your system's package manager.
With Ubuntu, you may use Synaptic, on SUSE systems use YaST, with Red Hat a
RPM frontend, and on Debian systems use Aptitude. In the respective package
manager, look out for texlive.
If you want to stay on the edge, you could download and install the most current
version of TeX Live from its homepage, instead of the version from the operating
system's repositories. But be aware that installing third party sources may harm
the integrity of your system.
Now that we've prepared the ground, let's start to write LaTeX!
Creating our first document
We have installed TeX and launched the editor; now let's jump in at the deep end
by writing our first LaTeX document.
Time for action – writing our first
document with TeXworks
Our first goal is to create a document that's printing out just one sentence. We
want to use it to understand the basic structure of a LaTeX document.
1. Launch the TeXworks editor by clicking on the desktop icon or open it in the
Start menu.
2. Click on the New button.
3. Enter the following lines:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
This is our first document.
\end{document}
4. Click on the Save button and save the document. Choose a location where
you want to store your LaTeX documents, ideally in its own folder.
5. In the drop-down field in the TeXworks toolbar, choose pdfLaTeX:
6. Click the Typeset button .
7. The output window will automatically open. Have a look at it:
What just happened?
You have just seen the first few minutes of the life of a LaTeX document. Its
following hours and days will be determined by editing, typesetting, and so on.
Don't forget to save your document frequently.
As announced in contrary to the classic word processor software, you cannot see
the effect of changes immediately—but the result is just one click away.
Have a go hero – checking out advanced LaTeX
editors
Do you have experience in working with complex programs? Do you like using a
feature-rich and powerful editor? Then have a look at these LaTeX editors. Visit
their websites to find screenshots and to read about their features:
TeXnicCenter— a very powerful editor for Windows,
http://texniccenter.org/
Kile— a user-friendly editor for operating systems with KDE, such as Linux,
http://kile.sourceforge.net/
TeXShop—an easy-to-use and very popular editor for Mac OS X,
http://pages.uoregon.edu/koch/texshop/
Texmaker—a cross-platform editor running on Linux, Mac OS X, Unix, and
Windows systems, http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/
The mentioned editors are free open source software.
Summary
We learned in this chapter about the benefits of LaTeX. It will be our turn to use
the virtues of LaTeX to achieve the best possible results.
Furthermore, we covered:
Installation of TeX Live
Using the editor TeXworks
Creation of a LaTeX document and generation of output
Now that we've got a functional and tested LaTeX system, we're ready to write
our own LaTeX documents. In the next chapter, we will work out the formatting of
text in detail.
Chapter 2. Formatting Words, Lines,
and Paragraphs
In the last chapter, we installed LaTeX and used the TeXworks editor to write
our first document. Now we will speak about the structure of a document and
we will focus on the text details and its formatting.
In this chapter, we shall:
Speak about logical formatting
Learn how to modify font, shape, and style of text
Use boxes to limit the text width
See how to break lines and how to improve hyphenation
Explore justification and formatting of paragraphs
By working with examples and trying out new features, we shall learn some basic
concepts of LaTeX. By the end of this chapter, we will be familiar with
commands and environments. You will even be able to define your own
commands.
Understanding logical formatting
In the previous chapter, we wrote a small example document. Let's extend it a bit
to get an illustrative example for understanding the typical document structure.
Time for action – titling your
document
We will take the first example and insert some commands that will produce a
nice-looking title.
1. Type the following code in the editor; modify the previous example if you
like:
\documentclass[a4paper,11pt]{article}
\begin{document}
\title{Example 2}
\author{My name}
\date{January 5, 2011}
\maketitle
\section{What's this?}
This is our second document. It contains a title and a
section with text.
\end{document}
2. Click the Typeset button.
3. View the output:
What just happened?
In the first chapter, we talked about logical formatting. First, let's look at this
example from that point of view. We told LaTeX that:
Our document is of the type article. It will be printed on A4 paper using a
size of 11 points for the base font.
The title is "Example 2".
You are the author.
The document was written on January 5, 2011.
Concerning the content of the document:
It begins with a title.
The first section shall have the heading "What's this?"
The following text is "This is our second document."
Note, we did not choose the font size of the title or heading; neither did we make
something bold or centered. Such formatting is done by LaTeX but nevertheless
you're free to tell LaTeX how it actually should look.
Note
We did not need to press the Save button. TeXworks automatically saves the
document if we click the Typeset button.
Exploring the document structure
Let's look at the details. A LaTeX document doesn't stand alone—commonly the
document is based on a versatile template. Such a fundamental template is called
a class . It provides customizable features, usually built for a certain purpose.
There are classes for books, for journal articles, for letters, for presentations, for
posters, and many more; hundreds of reliable classes can be found in Internet
archives but also on your computer now, after you've installed TeX Live. Here
we have chosen the article class, a standard LaTeX class suitable for smaller
documents.
The first line starts with \documentclass. This word begins with a backslash;
such a word is called a command . We used commands to specify the class and to
state document properties: title, author, and date.
This first part of the document is called the preamble of the document. This is
where we choose the class, specify properties, and in general, make document-
wide definitions.
\begin{document} marks the end of the preamble and the beginning of the actual
document. \end{document} marks the end of it. Everything that follows would
be ignored by LaTeX. Such a piece of code, framed by a \begin … \end
command pair, is called an environment .
In the actual document, we've used the command \maketitle that prints the title,
author, and date in a nicely formatted manner. By the \section command, we
produced a heading, bigger and bolder than normal text. Then we let some text
follow. What we wrote here, in the document environment, will be printed out.
On the contrary, the preamble will never produce any output.
Let's look at commands in detail.
Understanding LaTeX commands
LaTeX commands begin with a backslash, followed by big or small letters.
LaTeX commands are usually named with small letters and in a descriptive way.
There are exceptions: you will see some commands consisting of a backslash and
just one special character.
Commands may have arguments , given in curly braces or in square brackets.
Calling a command looks like the following:
\command
Or:
\command{argument}
Or:
\command[optional argument]{argument}
There could be several arguments, each of them in braces or brackets. Arguments
in curly braces are mandatory. If a command is defined to require an argument,
one has to be given. For example, calling \documentclass would be futile if we
hadn't stated a class name.
Note
Arguments in square brackets are optional; they may be given but it's not a must. If
no optional argument is provided, the command will use a default one. For
instance, in the first example in Chapter 1, Getting Started with LaTeX, we wrote
\documentclass{article}. This document has been typeset with a base font
size of 10pt, because this is the class default base font size. In the second
document, we wrote \documentclass[a4paper,11pt]{article}; this way, we
replaced default values with the given values, so now the document will be
adjusted for A4 paper using a base font size of 11pt.
There are commands generating output—try \LaTeX—and commands setting
properties, changing fonts or layout. Generally, the names of commands are
chosen according to their purpose. We will have a more detailed look in this
chapter, but first let's see how LaTeX treats what we type.
How LaTeX reads your input
Before we continue writing, let's look at how LaTeX understands what you've
written in the editor.
Time for action – trying out the effect
of spaces, line breaks, and empty lines
We will take the first example and insert spaces and line breaks.
1. Modify the previous example as follows:
\documentclass[a4paper,11pt]{article}
\begin{document}
\title{Example 3}
\author{My name}
\date{January 5, 2011}
\maketitle
\section{What's this?}
This is our
second document.
It contains two paragraphs. The first line of a paragraph
will be
indented, but not when it follows a heading.
% Here's a comment.
\end{document}
2. Typeset.
3. View the output:
What just happened?
Though we've inserted some spaces, the distances between the words in the
output remained the same. The reason is that LaTeX treats multiple spaces just
like a single space. Also, a single line break has the same effect like a single
space. It doesn't matter how you arrange your text in the editor using spaces or
breaks, the output will stay the same.
A blank line denotes a paragraph break. Like spaces, multiple empty lines are
treated as one.
Briefly said, spaces separate words, empty lines separate paragraphs.
Commenting your source text
You've seen that the last line seems to be missing in the output. That's because the
percent sign introduces a comment . Everything following a percent sign until the
end of the line will be ignored by LaTeX and won't be printed out. This enables
you to insert notes into your document. It's often used in templates to inform the
user what the template does at that certain place. Note also that the end of the line,
normally behaving like a space, will be ignored after a percent sign.
Tip
Easing experimenting by trial and error
If you want to disable a command temporarily, it may be favorable to insert a
percent sign instead of deleting the command. That way, you're able to undo this
change easily by removing the %.
If the percent sign behaves that way, what should we do if we want to write
100% in our text? Let's figure out how to do it.
Printing out special symbols
Common text mostly contains upper and lowercase letters, digits, and punctuation
characters. Simply type them with your editor. However, some characters are
reserved for LaTeX commands; they cannot be used directly. We already
encountered such characters, and besides the percent sign, there are the curly
braces and so on. There are LaTeX commands to print such symbols.
Time for action – writing special
characters in our text
We will write a very short example printing out an amount of dollars and a
percent number, then we shall try more symbols:
1. Create a new document and enter the following lines:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Statement \#1:
50\% of \$100 makes \$50.
More special symbols are \&, \_, \{ and \}.
\end{document}
2. Typeset and view the output:
What just happened?
By putting a backslash before such a special symbol, we turned it into a LaTeX
command. This command has the only purpose of printing out that symbol.
Note
The command for printing a backslash is \textbackslash. If you would like to
know what \\ might be used for, it is used as a shortcut for a line break command.
That's a bit odd, but line breaks occur frequently whereas backslashes are rarely
needed in the output, therefore this shortcut has been chosen.
There's a wealth of symbols that we can use for math formulas, chess notation,
zodiac signs, music scores, and more. We don't need to deal with those symbols
for now, but we shall return to that subject in Chapter 8, Typing Math Formulas,
when we will need symbols to typeset math formulas.
Now that we know how to enter pure text, let's find out how we can format it.
Formatting text – fonts, shapes, and
styles
LaTeX already does some formatting. For example, we've seen that section
headings are bigger than normal text and bold faced. Now we will learn how to
modify the appearance of the text ourselves.
Time for action – tuning the font
shape
We will emphasize an important word in a text and we will see how to make
words appear bold, italic, or slanted. We shall figure out how to highlight words
in a part of some text that's already emphasized:
1. Create a new document containing the following code:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Text can be \emph{emphasized}.
Besides being \textit{italic} words could be \textbf{bold},
\textsl{slanted} or typeset in \textsc{Small Caps}.
Such commands can be \textit{\textbf{nested}}.
\emph{See how \emph{emphasizing} looks when nested.}
\end{document}
2. Typeset and have a look at the output:
What just happened?
At first, we used the command \emph, giving one word as an argument to this
command. This argument will be typeset in italic shape, because this is the default
way how LaTeX emphasizes text.
Text-formatting commands usually look like \text**{argument}, where **
stands for a two letter abbreviation like bf for bold face, it for italic, and sl for
slanted. The argument will then be formatted accordingly like we've seen. After
the command, the subsequent text will be typeset as it was before the command—
precisely after the closing curly brace marking the end of the argument. We
checked it out.
We've nested the commands \textit and \textbf , which allowed us to achieve
a combination of those styles, and the text appears both italic and bold.
Most font commands will show the same effect if they are applied twice like
\textbf{\textbf{words}}: the words won't become bolder. Only \emph
behaves differently. We've seen that emphasized text will be italic, but if we use
\emph onto a piece of this text again, it will change from italic to normal font.
Imagine an important theorem completely typeset in italics—you should still have
the opportunity to highlight words inside this theorem.
\emph is so called semantic markup , because it refers to the meaning, not just to
the appearance of text.
Tip
Emphasizing twice, such as marking bold and italic at the same time, might be
considered to be a questionable style. Change the font shape wisely—and
consistently.
Choosing the font family
Compare the font of our examples and the standard font you see in this book.
While the LaTeX font has a decorative appearance, the text font of this book looks
simple and clean. Our code examples are different in another way: every letter
has the same width. Let's see how we can implement this in our writings.
Time for action – switching to sans-
serif and to typewriter fonts
Imagine that we start to write an article about LaTeX's Internet resources. To get
a clearly readable heading, we shall use a font without frills. The body text will
contain a web address; we choose a typewriter font to stress it:
1. Create a LaTeX document with the following code:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\section{\textsf{\LaTeX\ resources on the internet}}
The best place for downloading LaTeX related software is
CTAN.
Its address is \texttt{http://www.ctan.org}.
\end{document}
2. Typeset and look at the result:
What just happened?
We encountered more font commands. By using \textsf, we've chosen the sans-
serif font in the section heading. We used the command \texttt to get the
typewriter font for the web address. Those commands can be used just like the
font commands we've learned before.
The letters in the LaTeX standard font have so-called serifs , those small
decorative details at the end of a letter's strokes. Serifs shall improve readability
by leading the reader's eyes along the line. Therefore, they are widely used in
body text. Such fonts are also called Roman fonts . This name led to the command
\textrm for the Roman text—the default font with serifs.
Headings are often done without serifs; the used font is called a sans-serif font .
Such fonts are also a good choice for screen text because of the better readability
on lower resolutions. So you might want to choose a sans-serif font when you
produce an e-book.
If every letter of a font has the same width, the font is called monospaced or a
typewriter font. Besides, on typewriters, such fonts were used with early
computers; today they are still preferred for writing source code of computer
programs, both in print and in text editors. So if you want to typeset a program
listing or LaTeX source code, consider using a typewriter font. Like we did in the
previous example, this book is using a typewriter font to distinguish code and
web addresses from the normal text.
Switching fonts
Putting too much text into a command's argument could be unhandy. Sometimes we
would like to set font properties of longer passages of text. LaTeX provides other
commands, which work like switches.
Time for action – switching the font
family
We will modify the previous example using font family switching commands:
1. Modify the example to get the following code:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\section{\sffamily\LaTeX\ resources in the internet}
The best place for downloading LaTeX related software is
CTAN.
Its address is \ttfamily http://www.ctan.org\rmfamily.
\end{document}
2. Typeset and compare the output to the previous one; it's the same.
What just happened?
By using the command \sffamily, we switched over to sans serif font. This
change has been made inside an argument, so it's valid only there.
We used the command \ttfamily to switch to a typewriter font. The typewriter
font will be used from this point onwards. By using \rmfamily, we returned to
Roman font.
These commands don't produce any output, but they will affect the following text.
We will call such a command a declaration .
Now have a closer look at the section number: it's a digit with serifs, which
doesn't match the remaining sans-serif heading. Moreover, changing the font
within a \section command feels wrong—and rightly so! The better way is to
declare the section heading font once for the complete document. We will learn
how to globally modify heading fonts in Chapter 11, Enhancing Your Documents
Further, after we prepared some more tools.
Summarizing font commands and declarations
Let's list the font commands and their corresponding declarations together with
their meanings:
Note
The corresponding declaration to \emph is \em.
Delimiting the effect of commands
In the previous example, we've reversed the effect of \ttfamily by writing
\rmfamily. To be safe, we could write \normalfont to switch back to the base
font. However, there's an easier way.
Time for action – exploring grouping
by braces
We shall use curly braces to tell LaTeX where to apply a command and where to
stop that:
1. Modify our first font shape example to get this code:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
{\sffamily
Text can be {\em emphasized}.
Besides being {\itshape italic} words could be {\bfseries
bold},
{\slshape slanted} or typeset in {\scshape Small Caps}.
Such commands can be {\itshape\bfseries nested}.}
{\em See how {\em emphasizing} looks when nested.}
\end{document}
2. Typeset and check out the output:
What just happened?
We started with an opening curly brace. The effect of the following command
\sffamily lasted until we stopped it with the corresponding closing brace. That
closing brace came at the end of the highlighted code. This highlighting shows the
area of the code where \sffamily is valid.
We replaced every font command by the corresponding declaration. Remember,
\em is the declaration version of \emph. Further, we surrounded every
declaration and the affected text by curly braces.
An opening curly brace tells LaTeX to begin a so called group . The following
commands are valid for the subsequent text until a closing curly brace appears
causing LaTeX to stop using the commands or declarations written in this group.
Till a command is valid, that's called its scope .
Groups can be nested as follows:
Normal text, {\sffamily sans serif text {\bfseries and bold}}.
We have to be careful to close each group; opening and closing braces should
match.
Note
Braces which enclose an argument of a command don't form a group. Together
with the argument, these braces are gobbled by the command. If necessary, use
additional braces.
Time for action – exploring font sizes
We will try out every font size available by LaTeX's default font size commands.
For testing, we exceptionally use them in the body text—their main use is in the
macro definitions:
1. Create a document with the following code:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\noindent\tiny We \scriptsize start \footnotesize \small
small,
\normalsize get \large big \Large and \LARGE bigger,
\huge huge and \Huge gigantic!
\end{document}
2. Typeset and observe the output:
What just happened?
At first, we used \noindent . This command suppresses the paragraph
indentation. Then we used all 10 available size declarations, starting small with
\tiny and ending really big with \Huge. There are no corresponding commands
taking arguments, so we would have to use curly braces to delimit their scope, as
we learned to before.
The actual resulting font size depends on the base font. If your document has a
base font of 12 pt, then \tiny would result in text bigger than with a base font of
10 pt. We have to see it in relation. Use \footnotesize , if you wish to get the
same size like LaTeX uses for footnotes; use \scriptsize , if you create a style
with a size matching LaTeX subscripts and superscripts. It's still a kind of logical
formatting though they are quite low-level commands.
Normally, font size declarations are used only in definitions of macros in the
preamble, just as it does apply to the other font commands. You will rarely
encounter font size or shape commands in good body texts, except freely designed
passages like title pages—and test examples like the ones here.
Using environments
When you use several declarations and you group them by curly braces, will you
always know which closing brace matches which of the previously entered
declarations? An environment forms a group. Using an environment instead of just
curly braces improves the readability of your code.
Time for action – using an
environment to adjust the font size
We will produce a title with a larger and bigger font:
1. Create another small document with this code:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{huge}
\bfseries
A small example
\end{huge}
\bigskip
This is just another small illustrative example.
\end{document}
2. Typeset to see the result:
What just happened?
By writing \begin{huge}, we told LaTeX to switch to a huge font size just like
with the \huge command. \end{huge} informs LaTeX that this size change
should end now. From this point onwards, the font size is the same as before
\begin{huge}.
Inside this environment, we use the declaration \bfseries . Note that the effect
of this declaration ended together with the end of the environment.
The empty line before \end{huge} denotes a paragraph break. Using the
command \bigskip , we skipped some space vertically.
For every declaration there's a corresponding environment carrying the same
name except the backslash. Using environments instead of braces might make
complex code easily understandable.
Note
Commonly it's advisable to end the paragraph before a font size change, not after
it. That's because TeX calculates the interline spacing depending on the current
font size when it reaches the end of the paragraph. That's the reason we used the
blank line before \end{huge} instead of afterwards.
Saving time and effort – creating your
own commands
If you're frequently using the same term in your document, it would be annoying to
type it again and again. What if you later decided to change that term or its
formatting? To avoid searching and replacing in the whole document, LaTeX
allows you to define your own commands in your preamble. They are also called
macros . Give it a name. Later in the document you just need to use this name
whenever you want to change this term. We need to do it just once in the macro
definition. This will affect the whole document. Let's see how it works.
Time for action – creating our first
command using it as anabbreviation
We will define a short command printing out the name of the TeX Users Group:
1. Type this code into a new document:
\documentclass{article}
\newcommand{\TUG}{TeX Users Group}
\begin{document}
\section{The \TUG}
The \TUG\ is an organization for people who are interested
in \TeX\ or \LaTeX.
\end{document}
2. Typeset and look at the result:
What just happened?
\newcommand in the highlighted line defines our command. The first argument is
the name we chose for it, and the second argument is the text we want it to put out
in the document.
Now, whenever we type \TUG in our document, the complete name will appear. If
we later decide to change the name or its formatting, we just need to change this
\newcommand line. Then it will be applied for the complete document.
You may use formatting commands inside your command definition. Let's say you
would like to change the formatting of all occurrences of this name to be typeset
in small caps; just change the definition to the following:
\newcommand{\TUG}{\textsc{TeX Users Group}}
You have also seen that we've used the command \TeX . This command just prints
out the name of the basic typesetting system formatted like in its logo. It's an
abbreviation command like we've written now and \LaTeX works similarly. Note
that we had to use a backslash after \TeX! The following space would just
separate the command from the following text; it won't produce a space in the
output. Using the backslash followed by a space forces the output of the space that
would otherwise be ignored. You may try omitting that backslash to be convinced.
Gentle spacing after commands
A backslash following a command could easily be forgotten. Can't we modify the
command in order to automate that? Tasks like this, which aren't supported by
LaTeX directly, could be solved by using packages. These are collections of
styles and commands.
Time for action – adding intelligent
spacing to command output
We will load the package xspace. Its only purpose is to fulfill this need.
1. Modify the previous example to get the following code:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xspace}
\newcommand{\TUG}{\textsc{TeX Users Group}\xspace}
\begin{document}
\section{The \TUG}
The \TUG is an organization for people who are interested in
\TeX\ or \LaTeX.
\end{document}
2. Typeset, see that the spacing between the words is correct, even without the
backslash:
What just happened?
\usepackage{xspace} tells LaTeX to load the package called xspace and to
read in all of its definitions. From now on we may use all commands contained in
that package. This package provides the command \xspace that inserts a space
depending on the following character: If a dot, a comma, an exclamation, or a
quotation mark follows, it won't insert a space, but if a normal letter follows, then
it will. Usually, that's exactly what we want.
Imagine you've mentioned the TUG several times in your document and now
you've got the idea to use the TeX logo style in its name. There's no need for
changes in the document. Now only the command in the preamble needs
adjustment:
\newcommand{\TUG}{\textsc{\TeX\ Users Group}\xspace}
Tip
The heading in our last example doesn't contain small caps—have you seen it?
Not all font properties can be combined, depending on the chosen font. For
instance, fonts with small caps together with variations like bold and italic are
rare. Therefore, some people even fake small caps if they don't want to change to
a more complex font.
By defining and using commands, you can ensure that the formatting remains
consistent throughout your whole document.
Creating more universal commands – using
arguments
Imagine that your text contains a lot of keywords that you want to be printed in
bold. If you use the \textbf{} command on all the keywords, what would
happen if you later decide to use an italic shape instead or a typewriter font? You
would have to change that formatting for each keyword. There's a better way:
defining your own macro and using \textbf{} only inside that.
Time for action – creating a macro
for formatting keywords
We will use \newcommand again, but this time we will introduce a parameter that
will contain our keyword. Let's just use it on some terms that we've got to know in
this chapter:
1. Type this code example:
\documentclass{article}
\newcommand{\keyword}[1]{\textbf{#1}}
\begin{document}
\keyword{Grouping} by curly braces limits the
\keyword{scope} of \keyword{declarations}.
\end{document}
2. Typeset and notice the look of the keywords in the output:
What just happened?
Let's look at the highlighted line in the code. The number 1 in the square brackets
marks the number of arguments that we want to use in the command. #1 will be
replaced by the value of the first argument. #2 would refer to a second argument,
and so on.
Now if you want to modify the appearance of all keywords to be italic, just
modify the definition of \keyword and the change will be global.
Using optional arguments
In one preceding example, we've used \newcommand with two arguments. In the
previous example, there were three arguments. The additional argument has been
put in square brackets. That's the way we mark optional arguments : those
arguments may be given or may be omitted. If omitted, they would have a default
value. We've already noticed that with the \documentclass command. But how
can we define a command with optional arguments ourselves?
Time for action – marking keywords
with optional formatting
We will use \newcommand another time, this time with an optional parameter
concerning the formatting and a mandatory argument for the keyword:
1. Modify the previous example to get this code:
\documentclass{article}
\newcommand{\keyword}[2][\bfseries]{{#1#2}}
\begin{document}
\keyword{Grouping} by curly braces limits the
\keyword{scope} of \keyword[\itshape]{declarations}.
\end{document}
2. Typeset and check out the result:
What just happened?
Let's look again at the bold marked line in the code. By using [\bfseries], we
introduced an optional parameter. We refer to it with #1. Its default value is
\bfseries. Since we used a declaration this time, we added a pair of braces to
ensure that only the keyword is affected by the declaration.
Later in the document, we gave [\itshape] to \keyword, changing the default
formatting to italics.
Here's the definition of the \newcommand:
\newcommand{command}[arguments][optional]{definition}
command
The name of the new command, starting with a backslash followed by lowercase and/or
uppercase letters or a backslash followed by a single non-letter symbol. That name must not be
already defined and is not allowed to begin with \end.
arguments
An integer from 1 to 9, the number of arguments of the new command. If omitted, the
command will have no arguments.
optional
If this is present, then the first of the arguments would be optional with a default value given
here. Otherwise all arguments are mandatory.
definition
Every occurrence of the command will be replaced by definition and every occurrence of the
form #n will then be replaced by the nth argument.
\newcommand is our key to introduce logical formatting. We should avoid using
LaTeX font commands inside the document—you are on the right track if they
appear only in the preamble of the document. Use \newcommand to create styles
for keywords, code snippets, web addresses, names, notes, information boxes, or
differently emphasized text. How did we achieve the consistent structure of this
book? Using styles is the key!
Pop quiz – commands
1. Imagine your document contains some addresses of websites. Let's say we
want them to be typeset in typewriter font. According to this book, which of
the following possibilities would be the best way to print out, for instance,
http://ctan.org?
a. \texttt{http://ctan.org}
b. {\ttfamilyhttp://ctan.org}
c . \newcommand{\CTAN}{\texttt{http://ctan.org}} in the preamble
and \CTAN in the body text
d . \newcommand{\site}[1]{\texttt{#1}} and \newcommand{\CTAN}
{http://ctan.org} in the preamble and \site{\CTAN} in the body text
2. Which kind of punctuation marks are used to enclose optional arguments?
a. Parentheses: ()
b. Square brackets: []
c. Curly braces: {}
Have a go hero – saving effort using optional
arguments
Most website addresses begin with http://. But there are sites that differ—
some may start with ftp://, so called FTP server, some sites begin with
https://, so called secure web server. Visit, for instance, ftp://ctan.org, and you
will enter a file server instead of a web server.
Extend the definition of \site of our last pop quiz. Introduce an optional
argument denoting the protocol of the site, that is, how the address starts. Default
should start with http://. It shall work like the following:
\site{www.tug.org} prints out http://www.tug.org in typewriter font
\site[ftp]{ctan.org} prints out ftp://ctan.org in typewriter font
Tip
Web addresses in texts
There's a package called url designed for typesetting web addresses. Write
\usepackage{url} in your preamble; this will provide the command \url. This
command takes an address for the argument and will print it out with typewriter
font. Furthermore, it is able to handle special characters in addresses like
underscores and percent signs. It even enables hyphenation in addresses, which is
useful for websites with a very long name.
Using boxes to limit the width of
paragraphs
We won't always write the text just from left to right over the complete text width.
Sometimes, we'd like a paragraph to have a smaller width, for instance, when we
would like to put text and a picture side-by-side.
Time for action – creating a narrow
text column
We would like to explain the acronym TUG in a text column of only 3 cm width:
1. Create a new document containing these four lines:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\parbox{3cm}{TUG is an acronym. It means \TeX\ Users Group.}
\end{document}
2. Typeset and take a critical look at the output:
What just happened?
We used the command \parbox to create a column. We stated the width of 3 cm
in the first argument and the contained text in the second argument to \parbox.
\parbox takes the argument text and formats the output to fit the specified width.
We see that the text is fully justified. Our example shows an obvious problem:
insisting on full justification could lead to undesirable big gaps in the text.
Possible solutions are:
Introducing hyphenation: the word acronym could easily be divided
Improving justification: LaTeX could do better
Giving up full justification: narrow text could look better when it's only left
justified
We will check out all of these options. But first, let's see how \parbox is
working.
Common paragraph boxes
Usually we just need a text box with a certain width; occasionally we would like
to have some additional alignment to the surrounding text. So the common
definition of the \parbox command is:
\parbox[alignment]{width}{text}
alignment
Optional argument for the vertical alignment. State t to align at the top line of the box; write b to
align at its bottom line. The default behavior is to place the box such that its center is in line with
the center of the current text line.
width
The width of the box. It can be given for example in ISO units like 3 cm, 44 mm, or 2 in.
text
The text that you want to put in that box. It should be a short piece of common text. For
complicated contents, we will get to know other methods.
Here's a demonstration of the effect of the alignment parameters:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Text line
\quad\parbox[b]{1.8cm}{this parbox is aligned at its bottom
line}
\quad\parbox{1.5cm}{center-aligned parbox}
\quad\parbox[t]{2cm}{another parbox aligned at its top line}
\end{document}
The command \quad produces some space; we used it to separate the boxes a bit.
Here's the output:
From now on we will call such a box a parbox.
Have a go hero – exploring further features of \parbox
\parbox is capable of doing even more. Here's the complete definition:
\parbox[alignment][height][inner alignment]{width}{text}
height
If this optional argument isn't given, the box will have just the natural height of the text inside.
Use this argument if you want to change the height of the box to make it bigger or smaller.
inner
alignment
Especially, if the height of the box is different to the natural height of the contained text, you
might want to adjust the text position. The argument means:
c—vertically center the text in the box
t—place text at the top of the box
b—place text at its bottom
s—stretch the text vertically if possible
If you omit this argument, the alignment argument will be used here as the default value.
Take our previous demonstration example and try the effect of the optional
arguments. Use the command \fbox that helps to visualize the effect; if you write
\fbox{\parbox[...]{...}{text}}, the complete parbox will be framed.
Boxes containing more text
Parboxes are suitable for boxes with only a little text inside. In case of a box
containing a large amount of text, the closing brace could easily be forgotten or
overlooked. The minipage environment would then be a better choice.
Time for action – using the minipage
environment
We will use the minipage environment instead of \parbox to get a text with a
width of just 3 cm.
1. Modify the parbox example to get the following code:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{minipage}{3cm}
TUG is an acronym. It means \TeX\ Users Group.
\end{minipage}
\end{document}
2. Typeset and look at the output:
What just happened?
By using \begin{minipage}, we started a "page in a page". We specified the
width of 3cm by the mandatory argument. From this point onwards, the text lines
will have a width of 3cm. They will be automatically wrapped and fully justified.
We ended this restriction with \end{minipage}. Any text typed afterwards
would run over the complete body text width.
Note: There won't be a page break in such a "minipage".
Have you been a hero struggling with the \parbox and all of its optional
arguments? The minipage environment accepts all those arguments as well with
the same meaning.
Have a go hero – creating a footnote inside a minipage
Of course, LaTeX supports footnotes. You guessed it right—the corresponding
command is called \footnote{text}. Try it in one of our examples. You will
get a footnote mark inside the text and the text of the footnote will be put into the
bottom of the page.
A minipage is like a small page inside a normal page. Think of using a footnote
inside such a "page"; do you want to see the footnote text inside this small page?
The minipage environment supports it, just try it—use \footnote inside the
minipage in the previous example.
Understanding environments
LaTeX environments are started with \begin and ended with \end. Both
commands require the name of the environment as their argument.
Simple environments look like the following:
\begin{name}
…
\end{name}
Such environments can be used for each declaration called \name.
Like commands, environments may also have arguments. Exactly like in the case
of commands, mandatory arguments are written in curly braces and optional
arguments in square brackets. So you will encounter:
\begin{name}{argument}
…
\end{name}
And:
\begin{name}[optional argument]{argument}
…
\end{name}
Environments are like declarations with a built-in scope. With \begin, the
environment introduces a change in layout, font, or other properties. There must
be an \end command, where this change will be canceled. The effect of the
environment name is delimited to the piece of code between \begin{name} and
\end{name}.
Furthermore, the effect of all local declarations used inside an environment will
end together with the surrounding environment.
Breaking lines and paragraphs
Generally, when you're writing text, you don't need to care about the line
wrapping. Just type the text with your editor; LaTeX will make it fit to the line
and take care of the justification. If you want to begin a new paragraph, in
consequence of getting a line break in the output, just insert an empty line before
you continue with your text.
Now we will find out how to control the line wrapping. First we will see how to
improve the automatic line breaking. Then we will learn commands to insert
breaks directly.
Improving hyphenation
If you look at longer texts, you will notice that it's outstanding how the text is fully
justified by LaTeX and how the spacing between words is evenly distributed on
the lines. If necessary, LaTeX will divide words and put hyphens at the end of the
line in order to break the lines in a better way. LaTeX already uses very good
algorithms to hyphenate words, but it may happen that it can't find an acceptable
way to divide a word. The previous example pointed out this problem: breaking
the word acronym would improve the output, but LaTeX does not know where to
divide it. We shall find out how to solve that.
Time for action – stating division
points for words
No matter how good the justification skill is, text in very narrow columns is
extremely hard to justify. The previous example showed it pitiless. We will tell
LaTeX how a word could be divided:
1. Insert the following line into the preamble of the previous example:
\hyphenation{acro-nym}
2. Typeset and look at the output:
What just happened?
We've told LaTeX that the word acronym may have a division point between
acro and nym. That means a hyphen might be put after acro at the end of the line
and nym goes to the following line.
The \hyphenation command tells LaTeX where the division points of a word
may be. Its argument may contain several words separated by spaces. For each
word, we can indicate several points. For instance we could extend the argument
by more division points and more word variants like this:
\hyphenation{ac-ro-nym ac-ro-nym-ic a-cro-nym-i-cal-ly}
You could also indicate division points in the body text by inserting a backslash
followed by a hyphen, like ac\-ro\-nym. But if you do it in the preamble, you'll
collect all rules there and they will be used consistently. Use it especially in the
rare cases when LaTeX's automation fails.
Tip
Preventing hyphenation
If you want to prevent the hyphenation of a certain word at all, there are two
ways: either declare it in the preamble by using it in the \hyphenation argument
without any division points, like \hyphenation{indivisible}, or you protect it
inside the text using the \mbox command: The following word is
\mbox{indivisible}.
Have a go hero – exploiting the hyphenat package
The hyphenat package extends the possibilities:
\usepackage[none]{hyphenat} prevents hyphenation throughout the
document.
\usepackage[htt]{hyphenat} enables hyphenation for typewriter text.
Otherwise such monospaced fonts won't be hyphenated by LaTeX.
Such optional arguments to \usepackage are called package options. They
configure the behavior of a package. The mentioned options may be combined,
separated by commas. Even if you don't use the option none, you can disable
hyphenation for short pieces of text using the command \nohyphens{text}. Try
out these features if you want to profit from them. The package documentation
explains more features that you might need sometimes, such as hyphenation after
special characters like numerals and punctuation characters—TeX would not
break there.
Improving the justification further
Today's most popular TeX compiler is pdfTeX, which directly produces PDF
output. When Hàn Thế Thành developed pdfTeX, he extended TeX by micro-
typographic capabilities. When we typeset directly to PDF, we're actually using
pdfLaTeX and we can benefit from the new features by using the microtype
package.
Time for action – using microtype
We will improve our previous example by loading the microtype package :
1. Insert the following line into the preamble of the previous example:
\usepackage{microtype}
2. Typeset and look at the output:
What just happened?
We have loaded the microtype package without any options, relying on its
default behavior. It introduces font expansion to tweak the justification and uses
hanging punctuation to improve the optical appearance of the margins. This may
reduce the need of hyphenation and improves the "grayness" of the output. You've
seen its effect on a narrow column—imagine the improvement on wide text—keep
that in mind and try it out later!
Though microtype provides powerful features and options for the advanced
typesetter, we usually won't need to do more than just load it to profit from it.
There's an extensive package documentation if you want to study it in depth.
microtype does nice tweaking, but it's not a cure-all; we should still take care of
proper hyphenation.
Breaking lines manually
We might choose to end a line overriding the automatism. There are several
commands with different effects.
Time for action – using line breaks
We will type the beginning of a famous poem by Edgar Allan Poe. As the author
has specified where a verse has to end, we shall insert line breaks there.
1. Create a document containing these lines:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\emph{Annabel Lee}\\
It was many and many a year ago,\\
In a kingdom by the sea,\\
That a maiden there lived whom you may know\\
By the name of Annabel Lee
\end{document}
2. Typeset and view the output:
What just happened?
The very short command \\ ended a line; the following text was put to the next
line. That's different to a paragraph break: we're still in the same paragraph. The
command called \newline has the same effect.
There's another command called \linebreak, which tells LaTeX to end the line
but to keep the full justification. Therefore, the space between the words would
be stretched to reach the right margin. This could cause unpleasant gaps—that's
why that command is rarely used.
Have a go hero – exploring line breaking options
Both introduced commands understand optional arguments.
\\[value] would insert additional vertical space after the break depending
on the value, like \\[3mm].
\\*[value] is a variation of the same but prevents a page break before the
next line of text.
\linebreak[number] can be used to influence the line break slightly or
strongly: If number is 0, a line break is allowed, 1 means it's desired, 2 and
3 mark more insistent requests, and 4 will force it. The latter is the default
behavior if no number was given.
Change the heading of our poem example to the following:
\emph{Annabel Lee}\\[3mm]
This will insert some space between our heading and the poem fragment. Try the
options further and check out their effects. If you're daring, try \linebreak
instead of \\ to end a poem line just to see its effect.
Preventing line breaks
The command \linebreak has a direct counterpart: \nolinebreak. This
command prevents a line break at the current position. Like its counterpart, it
takes an optional argument. If you write \nolinebreak[0], you recommend to
not break the line there. Using 1, 2, or even 3 makes the request stronger and
\nolinebreak[4] forbids it completely. The latter will be presumed if you don't
provide an argument.
The already mentioned command, \mbox[text], does not only disable
hyphenation of a word, it will also prevent a line break for the complete text.
LaTeX will break lines at spaces between words if meaningful. The symbol ~
stands for an interword space where no break is allowed: if you would write
Dr.~Watson, the title Dr. would never stand lonely at the end of a line.
Managing line breaks wisely
Bad hyphenation could still disappear as the document grows, so stating some
sensible hyphenation rules would not do any harm but could prove to be useful.
But only use \\, \newline, and \linebreak for line adjustment when you're
working on the final version of your document! While you're still editing your
text, you don't need to worry about line breaks. They still may change during the
writing process. Bad looking justification could still change and become better
without intervention. On the other hand, if you break a line manually but later
insert text before, the result could be an unwanted short line.
So don't waste your energy on formatting while you're writing.
Exploring the fine details
Typographic conventions may require paying attention to small details; there are
different dashes, and the space around a dot may vary depending on the context.
The space after some letters may depend on the following one, so much so that
some letters may even be joined to a single one. Such constructions are called
ligatures. Let's have a closer look at them.
Time for action – exploring ligatures
We will check out Example 3 to discover a ligature. Afterwards, we will have a
close look at the default ligatures:
1. Open Example 3 in TeXworks, click the Typeset button. Move the mouse
pointer into the output window, right over the word first, and then click the
left button.
2. Go to the editor window, and then add a paragraph break by with empty line
and the following letter combinations: ff fi flffiffl -- ---
3. Add a paragraph break, repeat the preceding line, but this time insert \/
between the letters: f\/f f\/i f\/l f\/f\/i f\/f\/l -\/- -\/-\/-
4. Typeset and compare the letters in the output:
What just happened?
By left-clicking the mouse in the output window, you activated TeXworks'
magnifying glass. It allows inspecting the output in detail as the area around the
mouse pointer will be enlarged. You can see that two or even three letters have
been joined, but not in the last line: the command \/ prevented this.
Understanding ligatures
If the letter i follows the letter f, the dot of the letter i could collide with the head
of the f. It could be avoided in two ways: either by increasing the space between
those two letters or by combining them. The latter will result in a ligature. This
will automatically be done by LaTeX when the used font provides such ligatures.
Sometimes this behavior might be undesirable, for instance, in compound words
like "halflife". In this case, you can suppress this behavior by inserting \/ getting
half\/life.
Curly braces can be used to achieve the same effect. For instance, in -{}- and {-
}{-}, the dashes cannot be joined because this would cross group boundaries.
Tip
If you don't like ligatures, for instance, because your PDF reader doesn't support
search or copy and paste of ligatures, completely suppressing ligatures could be
done easily by passing the option noligatures to the microtype package:
\usepackage[noligatures]{microtype}.
Choosing the right dash
We've seen several kinds of dashes up until now. Let's sort them out:
A short dash is used to mark hyphenation or compound words. In LaTeX: -
A longer dash is used to indicate a range of some values, such as 2-3 hours.
Generally this dash has the same width like a digit. In LaTeX: --
Even wider is the dash commonly used to mark a parenthetical thought. In
LaTeX: ---
Hyphenation is always done using the short dash. Regarding the wider dashes, it's
a matter of style which kind of dash should be used, and further whether there
should be a space around the dash or not. You decide—but now you know how to
typeset those dashes.
Setting dots
How wide is the space following a dot? Some styles require additional space
after the period that ends a sentence, but not after the period marking an
abbreviation. Furthermore, three consecutive dots, forming an ellipsis, aren't
usually written by just typing three dots. Let's figure this out.
Time for action – using differently
spaced dots
We shall typeset a short text containing periods to see the default behavior.
Afterwards, we will create an example where LaTeX's automation fails; we shall
see how to correct it. We will learn how to simplify all this spacing using a
different style.
1. Create a new document in TeXworks:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\TeX\ was designed by Donald E. Knuth.
It has become a de facto standard in mathematics.
\end{document}
2. Typeset to see the output:
3. Now add a paragraph break followed by this line:
Look at the spacing etc. in LaTeX. See it?
4. Check out the spacing after the two periods in the output:
5. Correct the spacing by inserting a backslash and \@:
Look at the spacing etc.\ in LaTeX\@. See it?
6. Now remove the extra \ and \@ we've added, insert the declaration
\frenchspacing into the preamble, and typeset to see the difference:
What just happened?
The first step shows typical text and its output. As you can see, LaTeX adds a
little space after the period ending a sentence. But not following the letter E: in
case of periods after capital letters, LaTeX assumes that it's an abbreviation,
therefore it doesn't add the extra space.
Generally, this automatism is helpful. However, you might encounter exceptions:
in step 3, we constructed such a situation where LaTeX's assumptions are wrong.
We've got unwanted extra space after etc. and missed a space after the last
period.
In step 5, we corrected it: the backslash followed by a space (a "quoted space")
produces the normal interword space, the \@ before the dot states that the
following dot stands at the end of a sentence. Now the spacing is correct.
If you prefer to avoid this extra space or if the style you're following requires it,
you could switch off this default sentence spacing. We've done it in step 6 with
the declaration \frenchspacing. Now the spacing after sentences will be as it is
between words.
The counterpart to \frenchspacing is \nonfrenchspacing, which is default.
Time for action – comparing dots to
ellipsis
We will write an ellipsis in two ways: firstly by simply writing dots, secondly by
using a dedicated command. Let's compare!
1. Create a new document in TeXworks:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Here are three dots... compare them to the ellipsis\ldots
\end{document}
2. Check out the difference:
What just happened?
We used the command \ldots to print out an ellipsis—three consecutive dots
with a wider spacing. Such dots may indicate a pause, an unfinished thought, or an
omitted word. When we just accumulated dots, they were typeset tightly together.
However, it's common to print those dots wider.
Setting accents
Some languages have letters with accents that you can't simply type with your
editor. In case you need to write such letters: let's see how to do it.
Time for action – experimenting with
accents
We will write some words having letters with accents in Portuguese and in
French.
1. Create a new document:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
N\~{a}o compreendo. H\'{a} aqui algu\'{e}mque fale
ingl\^{e}s?
Comment \c{c}a va? O\`{u} se trouve l'a\'{e}roport?
\end{document}
2. Typeset to see the generated accents:
What just happened?
LaTeX provides some special commands to produce a variety of accents. They
may be combined with any letter. Such a command consists of a backslash
followed by one character. The accent will be put above or below the letter that
has to follow in curly braces. The following table will list these commands and
their effect:
Using special characters directly in the editor
It might be a bit cumbersome to use those accent commands. There's a package
that extends LaTeX basic capabilities. It allows you to enter at least some
commonly used accented and other special characters directly.
Time for action – using accents
directly
We will modify the previous example daring to enter accented letters directly in
the editor.
1. Create a new document:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\begin{document}
Não compreendo. Há aqui alguém que fale inglês?
Comment çava? Où se trouve l'aéroport?
\end{document}
2. Typeset and compare to the previous output:
What just happened?
We loaded the inputenc package. The option utf8 tells the package to use
Unicode input encoding, which provides many more symbols than just the ASCII
code. Now we just need to find the symbol on the keyboard and to type it.
TeXworks supports Unicode/UTF-8. Depending on operating system and editor,
you might need to use another option when loading inputenc. A rule of thumb:
utf8 works on most Linux and Unix systems, like Mac OS X, and latin1 works
with most Windows editors.
Note
Today, many Windows editors move to UTF-8. This is seemingly becoming the
cross-platform standard.
Turning off full justification
Though commonly your text will look fine if full justification is used, there may
be occasions when it's not the optimum. For instance, full justification could be
displeasing if the text lines are short. In such a case, it could be sufficient to
justify only to the left side. We shall see how to put this into practice, further how
to right-justify, and how to get centered lines.
Time for action – justifying a
paragraph to the left
Remember the first parbox example which was fully justified but had those big
gaps between the words. We shall give up justification to the right side to avoid
such gaps.
1. Create a new document containing these lines:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\parbox{3cm}{\raggedright
TUG is an acronym. It means \TeX\ Users Group.}
\end{document}
2. Typeset and look at the output:
What just happened?
We inserted the declaration \raggedright . From this point onwards, the text
will be ragged-right. In other words, the text will be moved to the left margin -
"flushed-left". There won't be hyphenation.
Because we used this declaration inside a box, it's only valid there, like inside
environments. After the box, the text will be fully justified again.
If we want the whole document to be ragged-right, we just need to use
\raggedright in our preamble.
Creating ragged-left text
There might be occasions when we would like to achieve the opposite effect:
flushing the text to the right margin. We can do it similarly by inserting the
declaration \raggedleft. Remember, you're able to control where lines are
broken by inserting \\.
Time for action – centering a title
We shall create a nice looking title for our document. It should contain the title,
the author, and the date. All those lines have to be centered.
1. Write a document containing this code:
\documentclass{article}
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
{\centering
\huge\bfseries Centered text \\
\Large\normalfont written by me \\
\normalsize\today
}
\end{document}
2. Typeset to see the output:
What just happened?
Because only the title should be centered, we opened a group to limit the
centering. Through the declaration \centering , we made the remaining text of
this group horizontally aligned to the center. We inserted a paragraph break: it's
always a good idea to do it before ending the group when paragraph-affecting
commands were used. By the brace after \today , we ended the group. If you
complement some following text, it will be typeset normally, not centered.
\centering is commonly used when pictures or tables are inserted, further on
title pages and sometimes for headings.
Using environments for justification
As there's a corresponding environment for every declaration, as we learned, we
could have written \begin{centering} … \end{centering} in our previous
example. It could be done similarly for ragged-right and ragged-left text. There's a
couple of predefined environments acting similarly but starting a new paragraph
at the same time.
Time for action – centering verses
Let's reuse the fragment of the poem "Annabel Lee". This time we shall center all
verses:
1. Create a document containing these lines:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{url}
\begin{document}
\noindent This is the beginning of a poem
by Edgar Allan Poe:
\begin{center}
\emph{Annabel Lee}
\end{center}
\begin{center}
It was many and many a year ago,\\
In a kingdom by the sea,\\
That a maiden there lived whom you may know\\
By the name of Annabel Lee
\end{center}
The complete poem can be read on
\url{http://www.online-literature.com/poe/576/}.
\end{document}
2. Typeset and see the output:
What just happened?
We began with \noindent avoiding the paragraph indentation. \begin{center}
started the center environment. It begins a new paragraph, leaving some space to
the preceding text. \end{center} ended this environment. We used the
environment twice. In the second one, we inserted \\ to end the verses.
After the center environment ended, some space followed and the next
paragraph began at the left margin.
The corresponding environment for ragged-right text is called flushleft , and for
ragged-left text it's flushright .
Displaying quotes
Imagine your text contains a quotation of another author. It might be hard to read if
it's just embedded in your words. A common way to improve the readability is
displaying: setting the text off by indenting on both margins.
Time for action – quoting a scientist
We will quote thoughts of famous physicists.
1. Create a new document containing these lines:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Niels Bohr said: ``An expert is a person who has made
all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.''
Albert Einstein said:
\begin{quote}
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything
new.
\end{quote}
Errors are inevitable. So, let's be brave trying something
new.
\end{document}
2. Typeset to see the result:
What just happened?
Firstly we quoted inline. `produced a left quotation mark; the character is also
called a backtick . 'gave a right quotation mark. We just typed two such symbols
to get double quotes.
Then we used the quote environment to display a quotation. We did not begin a
new paragraph for it, because the quotation is already set a bit off. That's the
reason we don't use a blank line before and after the environment.
Quoting longer text
When writing short quotations, the quote environment looks very good. However,
when you would like to quote a text containing several paragraphs, you might
wish to have the same paragraph indentation like in your surrounding text. The
quotation environment will do it for you.
Time for action – quoting TeX's
benefits
We will quote some of the benefits of TeX and LaTeX found on a web page on
CTAN.
1. Start a new document. This time, it will be a bit longer:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{url}
\begin{document}
The authors of the CTAN team listed ten good reasons
for using \TeX. Among them are:
\begin{quotation}
\TeX\ has the best output. What you end with,
the symbols on the page, is as useable, and beautiful,
as a non-professional can produce.
\TeX\ knows typesetting. As those plain text samples
show, \TeX's has more sophisticated typographical algorithms
such as those for making paragraphs and for hyphenating.
\TeX\ is fast. On today's machines \TeX\ is very fast.
It is easy on memory and disk space, too.
\TeX\ is stable. It is in wide use, with a long history.
It has been tested by millions of users, on demanding
input.
It will never eat your document. Never.
\end{quotation}
The original text can be found on
\url{ http://www.ctan.org/what_is_tex.html}.
\end{document}
2. Typeset and look at the output:
What just happened?
This time, we used the quotation environment to display some paragraphs. As in
normal text, blank lines separate the paragraphs. They are left-indented at their
beginning just like in all our body text.
But what if we don't like that paragraph indentation? Let's check out an
alternative.
Time for action – spacing between
paragraphs instead of indentation
We like to avoid the paragraph indentation. Instead, we shall separate the
paragraphs by some vertical space.
1. Create copy of the previous example and reuse most of it this way:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{parskip}
\usepackage{url}
\begin{document}
The authors of the CTAN team listed ten good reasons
for using \TeX. Among them are:
\TeX\ has the best output. What you end with,
the symbols on the page, is as useable, and beautiful,
as a non-professional can produce\ldots
The original text can be found on
\url{ http://www.ctan.org/what_is_tex.html}.
\end{document}
2. See the effect:
What just happened?
The highlighted line shows that we've loaded the parskip package. Its only
purpose is to remove the paragraph indentation completely. At the same time, this
package introduces a skip between paragraphs. But this package doesn't affect the
definition of the quotation environment—you still could use the quote
environment.
In order to distinguish paragraphs, there are two common ways. One is to indent
the beginning of each paragraph; this is the default LaTeX style. The other way is
to insert vertical space between paragraphs while omitting the indentation, which
is suitable for narrow columns where indenting would cost too much width.
Pop quiz – lines and paragraphs
1. Which of the following designates the end of a paragraph?
a. \newline
b. \\
c. A blank line
2. How do the words in a \hyphenation command be separated?
a. By commas
b. By semicolons
c. By spaces
3. Which command switches to left-aligned text?
a. \raggedleft
b. \raggedright
c. \flushright
Summary
In this chapter, we developed the basics: editing, arranging, and formatting of text.
Specifically, we covered:
Modifying shape and style of text and its font
Breaking lines and improving hyphenation
Controlling justification of text
We got to know the basic LaTeX concepts:
Commands and declarations, mandatory and optional arguments
Definition of new commands
Using environments
Using packages, how they can be loaded and options to packages
Keep in mind that even though we've used formatting commands directly in the
text when exploring them, you should use them inside command definitions in the
preamble to allow easy changes for the future. During your learning and writing
process, you probably will get to know further useful commands and packages
that could improve your previously written commands.
We've learned general practices:
As often as possible, create your own macros to achieve a logical structure.
You will be rewarded with consistent formatting and changes could easily
be applied to the whole document.
Deal with line or page breaking issues at the earliest when you go for your
final version.
Now that we've learned about the detailed formatting of text, we're ready to enter
the next chapter that deals with formatting and layout of whole pages and
documents.
Chapter 3. Designing Pages
After the previous chapter, formatting text should be easy for us. So, let's turn
to whole pages!
In this chapter, we will learn how to:
Adjust the margins
Change the line spacing
Section the document
Create a table of contents
Design headers and footers
Control page breaking
Set footnotes and modify their appearance
In learning this, we shall gain a deeper insight into classes and packages.
Defining the overall layout
We shall write an example document spanning over several pages. This will be
our test object for modifying margins, line spacing, headers, footers, and more.
Time for action – writing a book with
chapters
We will start to write a book. At first, we shall choose a class, further we will
use some filler text to work out the page layout.
1. Create a new document with the following code:
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{book}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Exploring the page layout}
In this chapter we will study the layout of pages.
\section{Some filler text}
\blindtext
\section{A lot more filler text}
More dummy text will follow.
\subsection{Plenty of filler text}
\blindtext[10]
\end{document}
2. Save the document and Typeset it. Look at the first page:
What just happened?
We have chosen the document class book. As the name implies, this class is
suitable for book-like documents. Books are commonly two-sided and consist of
chapters which usually start at right-hand pages. They may have a front matter
with one or more title pages and a back matter with bibliography, index, and so
on. The book class supports all of this.
We loaded the babel package. This is useful especially for typesetting in other
languages than English regarding hyphenation, language-specific characters, and
more.
Even for English language, there are several options: USenglish, american,
english, UKenglish, british, canadian, australian, and newzealand.
Obviously, some mean the same, such as UKenglish and british. However,
there are differences in hyphenation rules between USenglish (american,
english) and UKenglish(british).
For now, we just need babel to load blindtext: this package has been developed
to produce filler text. It requires babel to detect the language of the document.
We stated the language English to babel, which means American English.
The command \chapter produced a large heading. This command will always
begin on a new page.
We've already seen the \section command. It's our second sectioning level and
generates a smaller heading than \chapter. It's automatically numbered per
chapter. The command \blindtext followed, printing some dummy text just to
fill the space with some text.
At last, we refined the sectioning with a \subsection command followed by
more dummy text to fill up the page.
Note
There's another popular package for generating dummy text. It's called lipsum and
it produces the famous LoremIpsum text which has been the typesetter's dummy
text for hundreds of years.
Reviewing LaTeX's default page layout
For the example in the current chapter, we used A4 paper and a font size of 12 pt.
We let LaTeX define the margins. Let's look at them:
The right margin is the outer margin of the book, because the chapter starts
on a right-hand page. It might seem to be a bit wide—but good text isn't just
intended to fill as much space as possible: it should be well-readable for our
eyes. Therefore the lines shouldn't be too long.
The left margin is the inner margin on such a right-hand page. A user asked
why the inner margin is smaller than the outer, even further some space will
get lost because of the binding. The explanation is simple, if we imagine the
book lies opened right before us: the inner margins would look joined. It's a
good idea to aim at equal margins—left, middle, and right. In this sense, we
could choose the inner margin to be half of the size of the outer margin—plus
some offset for the binding.
The bottom margin contains the page number.
The top margin looks very tall. It's caused by the chapter heading, there's
always more space left above. By looking at the second page, you will see
that normal pages have a smaller top margin.
If you ever doubt LaTeX's design, look at some books in your shelves and
compare, whether it's regarding margins, ligatures, numbering, or anything else.
Defining the margins yourself
A publisher or a supervisor may request you to follow his specifications. Besides
font size, interline spacing, and other style issues, this might also apply to the
margins. In this case, you would need to override LaTeX's recommendations
specifying the margins precisely. There's a package fulfilling these demands.
Time for action – specifying margins
We shall load the geometry package and state the exact width and height of all
margins.
1. Extend the preamble of the previous example with this command:
\usepackage[a4paper, inner=1.5cm, outer=3cm, top=2cm,
bottom=3cm, bindingoffset=1cm]{geometry}
2. Typeset and examine the margins:
What just happened?
We loaded another package with the name geometry. This package takes care of
our layout regarding the paper size, margins, and more dimensions. We chose A4
paper size, an outer margin of 3 cm, and an inner margin of just 1.5 cm,
remembering that the two inner margins will be perceived as one space when the
two-sided book is opened. We stated the top and the bottom margin. At last, we
specified a value of 1 cm for the binding correction. We need the inner margins to
be wider because we expect to lose this space later because of the binding like
gluing or stapling.
Using the geometry package
In the early days of LaTeX, it was common to manipulate the layout dimensions
directly. This approach had some disadvantages. We could easily make mistakes
in calculating the lengths, for instance left margin + right margin + text width
might not fit to the paper width. The geometry package comes to the rescue. It
provides a comfortable interface for specifying layout parameters. Further, it
provides auto-completion. It calculates missing values to match the paper size. It
even adds missing lengths using a heuristic approach to achieve a good layout.
Let's look at it in detail.
The geometry package understands arguments of the form "key=value", separated
by commas. If you load geometry without arguments, those arguments could
alternatively be used by calling \geometry{argument list}. We shall look at
some of them.
Choosing the paper size
Geometry provides several options to set the paper size and orientation:
paper=name states the paper name, for example, paper=a4paper. It may be
abbreviated like we did in our example. The package supports a lot of paper
sizes, such as letterpaper, executivepaper, legalpaper, a0paper, …
,a6paper, b0paper, … , b6paper, and more.
paperwidth, paperheight allow you to choose the paper dimensions
freely, like paperwidth=7in, paperheight=10in.
papersize={width,height} sets width and height of the paper like
papersize={7in,10in}. This is an example of a double-valued argument.
landscape changes the paper orientation to landscape mode.
portrait switches to portrait mode. This is the default.
Tip
If you already specified the paper name to the document class, geometry will
inherit it. That's valid in general: all document class options will be automatically
given to the packages that recognize them.
Specifying the text area
The text area may be adjusted by these options:
textwidth sets the width of the text area, like textwidth=140mm.
textheight states the height of the text area, like textheight=180mm.
lines gives another way to specify the text height by the number of lines,
like lines=25.
includehead causes the header of the page to be included into the body
area; set false by default.
includefoot causes the footer of the page to be included into the body area;
set false by default.
Setting the margins
The size of the visible margins can be specified by these options:
left, right set the width of the left and the right margin, like left=2cm.
Use it for one-sided documents.
inner, outer set the width of the inner and the outer margin, like
inner=2cm. Use it for two-sided documents.
top, bottom set the height of the top and the bottom margin, like top=25mm.
twoside switches to two-sided mode. This means that left and right margins
would be swapped on left-hand pages, also called verso pages.
bindingoffset reserves space on the left margin (one-side), respectively
the inner margin (two-sided) for the binding.
That's just a selection of commonly used options—there are many more. You
could choose and set some options intuitively—for instance,
\usepackage[margin=3cm]{geometry} will result in a 3 cm margin on each
edge of the paper and the paper size comes from the document class option.
The auto-completion works like this:
paperwidth = left + width + right, where width=textwidth by default
paperheight = top + height + bottom, where height=textheight by
default
If you decide to include marginal notes within the text body when calculating,
width could get wider than textwidth. If two dimensions of the right side of
each formula are given, the missing dimension would be calculated. That's why it
may be enough to specify left and right, top and bottom, respectively. Even if
just one margin is specified, the other dimensions would be determined using
default margin ratios:
top:bottom = 2:3
left:right = 1:1 for one-sided documents
inner:outer = 2:3 for two-sided documents
Sounds complicated? That's just intended to help you to achieve practical
dimensions even if some values were missing.
Note
In 2010, version 5 of geometry introduced the commands
\newgeometry{argument list} and \restoregeometry, allowing users to
change margin dimensions in the middle of a document. Their auto-completion
may also differ a bit from previous versions.
The geometry package provides an extensive manual. Don't be worried by the
amount of documentation: it's an offer to guide you through the variety of features.
Obtaining package documentation
There are hundreds of LaTeX packages available. No book could ever explain all
of their features on its own. But most of those packages offer good documentation
that you can read for free. If you work your way through this book and supplement
it with the documentation of the mentioned packages, you're on the right track to
become a LaTeX power user.
Time for action – finding the
geometry package manual
We would like to examine the documentation of the geometry package. At first,
we shall look for it locally on our computer. Afterwards, we will see how to find
the documentation online:
1. Click the Start button and choose All Programs | Accessories | Command
prompt
2. Type the following:
texdoc geometry
3. A PDF viewer should start and show the package manual. The same
command works at the command prompt on Linux/Unix computers.
4. Hit the Start button again; this time, choose All Programs | TeX Live 2010 |
TeXdoc GUI. Click on Search texdoctk's database, enter the keyword
geometry, and press Enter:
5. Have a look at the search result. Open it by double-clicking or hit the View
button. A viewer should open the documentation.
6. Open an Internet browser and visit the site http://ctan.org/pkg/geometry.
Scroll down to Documentation on CTAN and hit the link User's manual.
Again, your PDF viewer or a browser plug-in will show the documentation.
What just happened?
We've tried three ways of obtaining the documentation. At first, we used texdoc .
This is a tool to find and to view LaTeX documentation. It can be used at the
command prompt; just type texdoc followed by a keyword. For this, it's required
to be in the operating system's search path. The TeX distribution installer takes
care of it. The argument to texdoc doesn't have to be the package name, as
texdoc understands aliases. Further, we used a GUI for texdoc providing a
search feature supplemented by a category classification. Perhaps browse for a
little while through the categories.
Tip
If texdoc doesn't help you, there's another opportunity: visit CTAN. You just
need to know the package name. Simply visit http://ctan.org/pkg/packagename to
get to the package homepage, there you may find documentation.
In case you don't know the package name or you just have a vague idea what
you're looking for, visit the TeX Catalogue Online on
http://texcatalogue.sarovar.org/bytopic.html. It lists hundreds of packages sorted
by topic.
Note: The online documentation might match a different package version than the
one on your computer.
Have a go hero – constructing the page layout with
typearea
Now that you know how to open package documentation, you could figure out if
you want to benefit from the typearea package. While the geometry package
allows you to control all margins yourself, typearea provides a different
approach. It supports you in creating a page layout based on proven typography
standards. typearea is explained within the KOMA-Script manual, so the
keywords for texdoc and CTAN would be koma-script or typearea. Reading
Chapter 2 of the manual on Page Layout could give you an insight into typography,
even if you decide not to use typearea.
Changing the line spacing
Without some vertical space between the lines, the readability of a text could
suffer. Adding such space would help lead the eye along the line.
Time for action – increasing line
spacing
Though LaTeX already takes care of good readability by choosing a meaningful
interline spacing, publishers might require different spacing. We shall modify our
example by adding half of a line height to the line spacing.
1. Extend the preamble of our example with this command:
\usepackage[onehalfspacing]{setspace}
2. Typeset to see the change:
What just happened?
We loaded the setspace package. Its only purpose is to adjust the line spacing.
We provided the option onehalfspacing . This increases the spacing by half of
a line height for the whole document.
setspace understands three options:
singlespacing is the default. No additional space will be inserted. The
text will be typeset with LaTeX's default interline spacing, which is about 20
percent of the line height.
onehalfspacing means one-and-a-half spacing like in our example.
doublespacing can be used for even more spacing: the distance between
the baselines of successive text lines would be twice as high as a single line.
Commonly, we choose the spacing for the complete document. In that case, such
an option would be sufficient. For each of the options, there's a corresponding
environment. They are called singlespace , onehalfspace , and doublespace
. Those environments may be used to adjust the spacing within the document. They
shouldn't be nested. For the need of a different stretching factor, the spacing
environment is provided. It may be used like the following:
\begin{spacing}{2.4}
This text is stretched by a factor of 2.4.
\end{spacing}
Note
In typesetter's jargon, the distance between the baselines of consecutive text lines
is called leading.
Have a go hero – examining a package source file
In some cases the documentation of a package is not easily accessible. This
applies to setspace: the explanation of the options, commands, and environments
is contained in the package source file itself. How can we obtain it? We could
visit CTAN, as we described before, or locate the file on our computer. A
package filename usually ends with .sty, standing for style file . TeX Live
provides a tool for locating such source files. Try it: open the command prompt,
that is, hit the Start button and click All Programs | Accessories | Command
prompt. Then type the following:
kpsewhich setspace.sty
And press Enter. The program will print the location of the file, as follows:
c:/texlive/2010/texmf-dist/tex/latex/setspace/setspace.sty
Open the file using TeXworks or any text editor. There are a lot of comment lines
explaining the package features.
Note
The kpsewhich tool belongs to the kpathsea library. kpathsea's fundamental
purpose is filename lookup.
Using class options to configure the
document style
We already know that a document class is the basis of our document. It provides
commands and environments extending the LaTeX standard features. Though the
class provides a default style, it's still customizable with options.
Time for action – creating a two-
column landscape document
We shall change the orientation of our example to landscape. We would also like
to typeset our text in two columns:
1. Add the options landscape and twocolumn to the \documentclass
statement of our example, as follows:
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt,landscape,twocolumn]{book}
2. Typeset and see how the layout has changed:
What just happened?
By using the landscape option, we switched the orientation. By stating the
twocolumn option, we caused the body text to be divided into two columns.
Note
There's a command \twocolumn[opening text] starting a two-column page
with optional opening text over the whole width. \onecolumn begins a one-
column page.
If you'd like to balance the columns on the last page or if you wish to have more
than two columns, use the multicols package.
The LaTeX base classes are article, book, report, slides, and letter . As the
name suggests, the last one can be used to write letters, though there are further
suitable classes like scrlttr2. slides can be used to create presentations, but
today there are more powerful and feature rich classes like beamer and
powerdot .
Let's sum up the options of the base classes:
a4paper, a5paper, b5paper, letterpaper, legalpaper, or
executivepaper: The output will be formatted according to this paper size,
that is, A4: 210 mm x 297 mm. letterpaper (8.5 in x 11 in) is the default.
Loading the geometry package allows more sizes.
10pt, 11pt, or 12pt: The size of normal text in the document; the default is
ten points (10pt). The size of headings, footnotes, indexes, and so on, will
be adjusted accordingly.
landscape: Switches to landscape format; width and height of the output
size will be interchanged.
onecolumn or twocolumn: Decides whether the pages will be one-column
(default) or two-column. It's not supported by the letter class.
oneside or twoside: Formatting for printing on one side or both sides of a
page. oneside is the default, except for the book class. twoside is not
usable with the slides class and the letter class.
openright or openany: The first decides that chapters have to begin on a
right-hand page (the default for the book class), openany allows chapters to
start on any page (default for the report class). These options are only
supported by the book and the report class because the other classes don't
provide chapters.
titlepage or notitlepage: The first causes a separate title page when
\maketitle is used and is the default, except for the article class. The
default of article is notitlepage, which means that normal text may
follow the title on the same page.
final or draft: If draft is set, then LaTeX will mark overfull lines with a
black box, which is helpful in reviewing and improving the output. Some
packages support these option as well, behaving differently then, such as
omitting embedding of graphics and listings when draft has been chosen.
final is the default.
openbib: When this option is set, a bibliography would be formatted in open
style instead of compressed style.
fleqn: Causes displayed formulas to be left-aligned.
leqno: For numbered displayed formulas, the number would be put to the
left side. The right side is the default.
Note
Many other classes support these options as well and even more. For the need of
an uncommon base font size, the classes extarticle, extbook, extreport, and
extletter provide base font sizes from 8 pts to 20 pts. The so called KOMA-
Script classes allow arbitrary base font sizes. They understand such a large
amount of options that they're additionally supporting a "key=value" interface like
we've seen with the geometry package.
Have a go hero – trying KOMA-Script classes
Have you been so brave to check out the typearea package documentation? Then
you've already seen the KOMA-Script manual accessible by texdoc koma-
script. Open it again; this time, read it with the idea of choosing KOMA classes
for your documents. They may be used like the base classes: for each base class,
there's a corresponding KOMA class. They differ in some meaningful presets; for
instance, headings use a sans-serif font by default. However, the presets can
easily be changed. Those classes extend the base classes very much, providing a
huge amount of commands. Web forums frequently show user questions being
hard to solve using base classes, but being easily achievable by a single KOMA
class command.
Creating a table of contents
A book commonly begins with a table of contents, so let's create one.
Time for action – adding a table of
contents
We shall create a table of contents based on our numbered headings.
1. Let's remove the options landscape and twocolumn. We also don't load the
setspace package. Add the command \tableofcontents right after
\begin{document}. Our code shall now be:
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{book}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage[a4paper, inner=1.5cm, outer=3cm, top=2cm,
bottom=3cm, bindingoffset=1cm]{geometry}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\chapter{Exploring the page layout}
In this chapter we will study the layout of pages.
\section{Some filler text}
\blindtext
\section{A lot more filler text}
More dummy text will follow.
\subsection{Plenty of filler text}
\blindtext[10]
\end{document}
2. Typeset twice. Afterwards, the first page of your output will contain this
table:
What just happened?
The command \tableofcontents tells LaTeX to produce a file with the
extension .toc. This file will be used to generate a table of contents. We had to
typeset twice: in the first run, the .toc file was written and in the second run,
LaTeX read it and processed it.
The entries are created by the sectioning commands. We used \chapter,
\section, and \subsection, and we've got an entry for each.
Sectioning and the contents
A heading might be very long; it could span over two or more lines. In that case,
we might wish to shorten its corresponding table of contents entry. Let's see how.
Time for action – shortening the table
of content entries
We will use the optional argument of the sectioning commands to produce shorter
entries, different to the actual headings:
1. Take our example and modify the sectioning commands as shown in the
highlighted lines:
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{book}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage[a4paper, inner=1.5cm, outer=3cm, top=2cm,
bottom=3cm, bindingoffset=1cm]{geometry}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\chapter[Page layout]{Exploring the page layout}
In this chapter we will study the layout of pages.
\section[Filler text]{Some filler text}
\blindtext
\section[More]{A lot more filler text}
More blindtext will follow.
\subsection[Plenty]{Plenty of filler text}
\blindtext[10]
\end{document}
2. Typeset twice and look at the modified table of contents:
What just happened?
Besides the mandatory argument producing the heading, each sectioning command
understands an optional argument. If this is given, it will be used instead of the
mandatory heading for the table of contents entry.
Again, we had to typeset twice to notice a change. This is not unusual. You will
encounter more situations when several LaTeX runs would be necessary, like
creating an index or a bibliography.
In Chapter 7, Listing Content and References, we shall take a further look and
learn how to customize the table of contents. Let's look again at the sectioning
commands of book, report, and article. There are seven levels in those base
classes:
\part: For dividing the document in major units. The numbering of other
sectional units is independent of \part. A part heading will use a whole
page in book and report documents.
\chapter: A large heading that will start at a new page, available in the
book and report classes.
\section, \subsection, \subsubsection: Bold headings available in all
classes, the following text comes below.
\paragraph, \subparagraph: Available in all classes, produces a run-in
heading.
Except \part, all sectioning commands reset the counter of the section that's one
level below in the hierarchy. For instance, \chapter resets the section counter.
This way, the sections will be numbered per chapter.
To sum up, though these commands are easy to use, they do a lot, such as:
Cause a page break (\part and \chapter with book and report classes)
Generate a number and a presentation for it, some depending on the higher-
level counters (like 2.1)
Reset the counter of the next-level sectional unit (except \part)
Produce a table of contents entry storing it in the .toc file
Format the heading, usually bold-faced and the larger the higher in the
hierarchy
If needed, save the heading for use in a page header
All sectioning commands provide a starred form, as follows:
\section*{title}
If you use this form, the numbering will be suppressed and there won't be an entry
in the table of contents or in a header. Look at the heading Contents in our
example; this has actually been typeset by \chapter* inside the
\tableofcontents macro.
As page headers have been mentioned, let's explore them now.
Designing headers and footers
Already during testing of the first version of our example, you might have noticed
that except for the page where the chapter started, all pages already showed the
page number, chapter title, and section title in their header:
Though these standard headers are already quite useful, we shall see how to
customize them to meet our individual requirements.
Time for action – customizing headers
with the fancyhdr package
The default shape of the page headings is slanted. Furthermore, they are written in
capital letters. We shall use bold typeface instead and we will use capital letters
only for the chapter title. We will load the fancyhdr package and use its
commands to achieve that:
1. Load the first version of our example. Insert the highlighted lines:
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{book}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\fancyhf{}
\fancyhead[LE]{\leftmark}
\fancyhead[RO]{\nouppercase{\rightmark}}
\fancyfoot[LE,RO]{\thepage}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Exploring the page layout}
In this chapter we will study the layout of pages.
\section{Some filler text}
\blindtext
\section{A lot more filler text}
More dummy text will follow.
\subsection{Plenty of filler text}
\blindtext[10]
\end{document}
2. Typeset—the footers will contain the page number on their outer side and
the headers should look like the following:
What just happened?
We loaded the fancyhdr package. Our first action was calling \fancyhf{} ; this
command clears the headers and footers. Further, we used the following:
\leftmark: Used by the book class to store the chapter title together with
the chapter number. Capital letters are used as default.
\rightmark: Used by the book class to store the section title together with
its number. Capital letters are used as well.
We used the command \fancyhead with the optional argument LE to put the
chapter title into the header. LE stands for left-even and means that this chapter
title will be put on the left side of the header on even-numbered pages.
Analogous, we called the command \fancyhead with RO to put the section title
into the header. RO stands for right-odd and means that this section heading shall
be displayed on right side of the header on odd-numbered pages.
Afterwards, we used \fancyfoot to display the page number in the footer. This
time, we used LE and RO that showed the page number on even as well as on odd
pages, always on the outer side. The command \thepage prints the page number.
All those commands are used to modify a page style provided by fancyhdr; this
style is called fancy . We had to tell LaTeX to use this style and we did it through
\pagestyle{fancy}.
Note
Emphasizing by writing all letters capitalized, like fancyhdr does by default, is
called all caps . It is widely regarded as a questionable style. If it's used at all,
then it's recommended to slightly increase the spacing between the capital letters.
For adjusting this so called letterspacing , you can use the microtype package
or the soul package.
Understanding page styles
LaTeX and its base classes provide four page styles:
empty: Neither a header nor a footer is shown.
plain: No header. The page number will be printed and centered in the
footer.
headings: The header contains titles of chapters, sections, and/or
subsections, depending on the class and also the page number. The footer is
empty.
myheadings: The header contains a user-defined text and the page number;
the footer is empty.
fancyhdr adds one page style:
fancy: Both the header and footer may be customized by the user.
Two commands may be used to choose the page style:
\pagestyle{name}: Switches to the page style name from this point
onwards.
\thispagestyle{name}: Chooses the page style name only or the current
page; the following pages will have the style that's been used before.
You have seen that where a chapter starts, the page style is different to the style of
other pages. Such pages will have plain style. If you thought all pages should use
the same style, look into some books: it's very common that chapter beginnings
differ in style. They usually have a blank header. \thispagestyle could be used
to override that.
Customizing header and footer
Let's divide the header and footer into six pieces: left, center, and right (l, c, r)
both for the header and footer. The commands to modify those areas are as
follows:
For the header: \lhead, \chead, \rhead
For the footer: \lfoot, \cfoot, \rfoot
Each of these commands requires a mandatory argument, like \chead{User's
guide} or \cfoot{\thepage}. This argument will be put into the corresponding
area of the page.
Alternatively, you could use these versatile commands:
For the header: \fancyhead[code]{text}
For the footer: \fancyfoot[code]{text}
Here, code may consist of one or more letters:
Symbol
Meaning
L
left
C
center
R
right
E
even page
O
odd page
H
header
F
footer
It doesn't matter if we choose uppercase or lowercase letters. We already used
such combinations in our example.
Using decorative lines in header or footer
We can introduce or delete lines between header and body text and body text and
footer, respectively, with these two commands:
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{width}
\renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{width}
Where width may be a value like 1pt, 0.5mm, and so on. Just set it to 0pt if you
don't like such a line. The default is 0.4pt for the header line and 0pt for the
footer line.
\renewcommand works exactly like \newcommand, except that the command must
already exist. It will get the new meaning. Incidentally, we've got to know a new
concept: a lot of LaTeX commands may be redefined in this way. We shall take
advantage of it from now on.
Tip
There are starred versions-\newcommand, and \renewcommand, respectively.
They are called short commands. Their arguments must not contain paragraph
breaks. This limitation eases troubleshooting, as TeX would be able to pick up an
error earlier. That's why many people use them whenever possible.
Changing LaTeX's header marks
As we already know, LaTeX classes and packages store sectioning numbers and
headings in the macros \leftmark and \rightmark automatically. It will be
done when we call \chapter, \section, or \subsection. So, we could just use
\leftmark and \rightmark in the arguments of the fancyhdr commands.
We will sometimes want to change those entries manually, even if we rely on this
automatism. For instance, the starred sectioning commands like \chapter* and
\section* won't produce a header entry, like indicated earlier. In such a case,
two commands will help us:
\markright{right head} sets the right heading
\markboth{left head}{right head} sets both left and right heading
The default style headings is easy-to-use and gives good results. myheadings
can be used together with \markright and \markboth. However, the most
flexible way is given by fancy, especially in combination with \markright and
\markboth.
Note
There's a very good alternative to fancyhdr, which is a package called
scrpage2. It belongs to KOMA-Script, but works with other classes as well. It
provides a similar functionality and offers even more features.
Breaking pages
As you've seen in our example, LaTeX took care of the page breaking. There
might be occasions where we'd like to insert a page break ourselves. LaTeX
offers several commands to do it; with vertical balance or without.
Time for action – inserting page
breaks
We will go back to the first version of our example and we shall manually insert a
page break right before the subsection 1.2.1.
1. Insert the highlighted line into our example:
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{book}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Exploring the page layout}
In this chapter we will study the layout of pages.
\section{Some filler text}
\blindtext
\section{A lot more filler text}
More dummy text will follow.
\pagebreak
\subsection{Plenty of filler text}
\blindtext[10]
\end{document}
2. Typeset and have a look:
3. Replace \pagebreak by \newpage.
4. Typeset and compare:
What just happened?
At first, we inserted the command \pagebreak. Like its name suggests, it causes
a page break. Furthermore, the text has been stretched to fill the page down to the
bottom.
Afterwards, because of the obviously unpleasant whitespace between the
paragraphs and the headings, we replaced \pagebreak with \newpage. This
command breaks the page as well, but it doesn't stretch the text: the remaining
space of the page will stay empty.
So, \pagebreak behaves like \linebreak and \newpage works like \newline,
for pages instead of lines. There's even a command \nopagebreak that's
analogous to \nolinebreak and forbids page breaking.
\pagebreak won't break a line. Furthermore, \nopagebreak doesn't refer to the
middle of a line: both commands apply at the end of the current line. Of course,
they immediately have effect when used between paragraphs.
If you use the two-column format, both \pagebreak and \newpage would begin
on a new column instead of a new page.
Note
There are two further variants: \clearpage works like \newpage, except that it
will start on a new page, even in two-column mode. \cleardoublepage does the
same, but causes the following text to start on a right-hand page, inserting a blank
page if necessary. The latter is useful for two-sided documents.
More importantly, both commands cause all figures and tables that LaTeX has in
its memory to be printed out immediately.
Sometimes you may notice large gaps between headings and paragraphs. Those
could be the result of a bad page break like in our example. In that case, you could
assist LaTeX by such a page break command or you switch off vertical
justification by the command \raggedbottom. Its counterpart \flushbottom will
switch it on, which is the default in the book class.
What we learned about line breaking is valid for page breaking as well: don't
worry about it while your work is still in progress. Only when you're done with
your document and you're preparing the final version, will it be time to tweak the
page breaks.
Have a go hero – exploring page breaking options
Remember the optional arguments for \linebreak and \nolinebreak.
\pagebreak and \nopagebreak are able to take an optional argument as well, an
integer between 0 and 4. While 0 recommends, 4 demands. Again, try the
previous example. This time use an optional argument for \pagebreak. Test with
0, 1, 2, 3, 4. Only \pagebreak[4] will cause the page break because the
necessary stretching is so much that LaTeX doesn't like to follow either a weak or
a strong request.
Enlarging a page
LaTeX's rules are not set in stone; they also apply to page balancing. There may
be occasions where we want to put a little more text onto a page, even if the text
would be squeezed a bit or the text height increases. There's a command that will
help us out: \enlargethispage.
Time for action – sparing an almost
empty page
We shall modify our example a bit. This time, we will try to avoid a nearly empty
page by squeezing their text to the preceding page.
1. Remove the command \newpage from our example and switch to 11pt base
font. This time, use less filler text in the subsection:
\documentclass[a4paper,11pt]{book}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage[a4paper, inner=1.5cm, outer=3cm, top=2cm,
bottom=3cm, bindingoffset=1cm]{geometry}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Exploring the page layout}
In this chapter we will study the layout of pages.
\section{Some filler text}
\blindtext
\section{A lot more filler text}
More dummy text will follow.
\subsection{Plenty of filler text}
\blindtext[3]
\end{document}
2. Typeset, and the result will consist of two pages:
3. Insert this command right after the \subsection line:
\enlargethispage{\baselineskip}
4. Typeset. Now our document fits in only one page:
What just happened?
We used the command \enlargethispage to squeeze more text onto a page. This
command takes the additionally requested height as its argument. The command
\baselineskip returns the height of a text line that we used as the argument. So,
LaTeX could put one extra line onto the page, and even the remaining line fitted in
as well because LaTeX compressed some whitespace.
We could use factors: write \enlargethispage{2\baselineskip} to get two
more lines on a page. It doesn't even need to be an integer value. Like always,
when you state a length, you could use other units such as 10pt, 0.5in, 1cm, or
5mm, and even negative values.
Only the current page will be affected by this command.
Note
There's a starred version: \enlargethispage* would additionally shrink all
vertical spaces on the page to their minimum.
Using footnotes
As briefly mentioned in Chapter 2, Formatting Words, Lines, and Paragraphs ,
LaTeX provides a command to typeset footnotes. Let's see it in action.
Time for action – using footnotes in
text and in headings
Let's go back to the very first example of this chapter. We shall insert one footnote
in the body text and one in a section heading:
1. Modify the example inserting a footnote, as shown in the highlighted line:
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{book}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Exploring the page layout}
In this chapter we will study the layout of pages.
\section{Some filler text}
\blindtext
\section{A lot more filler text}
More dummy text\footnote{serving as a placeholder} will
follow.
\subsection{Plenty of filler text}
\blindtext[10]
\end{document}
2. Typeset to see how the footnote looks in print:
3. Insert a footnote in the second section header. This time, put \protect right
before:
\section{A lot more filler text\protect\footnote{to fill the
page}}
4. Typeset to check that it works:
What just happened?
The command \footnote{text} placed a superscripted number at the current
position. Further, it prints its argument text into the bottom of the page, marked
by the same number. As we've seen, such notes are separated from the main text
by a horizontal line.
The other \footnote command has been preceded by the command \protect. If
we omitted that, an error would be raised—try it. Such an error may occur when
we use \footnote inside an argument, where it's being further processed.
\protect simply prevents this processing error. As a rule of thumb, if a
command causes an error when it's used inside an argument, like in headings, try
to fix it by putting \protect right before that command. Cases where \protect
would hurt instead of helping are rare.
Generally, a heading might not be a good place for footnotes. If you simply use
\footnote in headings, be aware that they would appear in the table of contents
and perhaps also in page headers. If you want to avoid that, use the optional
parameter of the sectioning commands without \footnote, that is,
\section[title without footnote]{title with footnote}. The same
applies to \chapter, and so on, and even further to \caption.
The complete definition of \footnote is:
\footnote[number]{text} produces a footnote marked by this optional
number, an integer. If we don't give the optional number, an internal counter
would be stepped and used. This would be done automatically; we don't
need to worry.
Nevertheless, if we encounter difficulties in placing footnotes, there are two
commands that help us:
\footnotemark[number] produces a superscripted number in the text as a
footnote mark. If the optional argument wasn't given, it's also stepping and
using the internal footnote counter. No footnote will be generated.
\footnotetext[number]{text} generates a footnote without putting a
footnote mark into the text without stepping the internal footnote counter.
Both the commands may be used together in circumstances when \footnote
would fail.
Set a footnote command right after the related text. Don't leave a space in-
between. Otherwise, you would get a gap between the text and the following
footnote mark.
Modifying the dividing line
The line that separates footnotes from the text is produced by the command
\footnoterule. If we wish to omit that line or if we want to modify it, we must
redefine it. We learned about \renewcommand—so, let's use it.
Time for action – redefining the
footnote line
We will use \renewcommand to override the default \footnoterule command:
1. Take the previous example and add the following lines to the preamble:
\renewcommand{\footnoterule}
{\noindent\smash{\rule[3pt]{\textwidth}{0.4pt}}}
2. Typeset and see how the line has changed:
What just happened?
Remember the definition of \newcommand—here it's analogous. The existing
command \footnoterule will be replaced by a new definition that we wrote in
the second line. The command \rule[raising]{width}{height} draws a line,
here 0.4 pt thick, and as wide as the text, raised a bit by 3 pt. Through the
command \smash, we let our line pretend to have a height and a depth of zero, so
it's occupying no vertical space at all. This way, the page balancing will not be
affected. You already know \noindent, which avoids the paragraph indentation.
If you want to omit that line completely, you just need to write:
\renewcommand{\footnoterule}{}
Now the command is defined to do nothing.
Using packages to expand footnote styles
There are different habits for setting footnotes. Some styles require footnotes
numbered per page, they might have to be placed in the document as so called
endnotes, and symbols instead of numbers may be used. More demands exist and
therefore several packages have been developed to comply with them. Here's a
selection:
endnotes: Places footnotes at the end of the document
manyfoot: Allows nested footnotes
bigfoot: Replaces and extends manyfoot, improves page break handling
with footnotes
savefnmark: Useful when you need to use footnotes several times
footmisc: All-round package; introduces numbering per page, is able to save
space when many short footnotes are used, offers symbols instead of
numbers as footnote marks, provides hanging indentation and other styles
Have a look at the respective package documentation to learn more—now you
know how to obtain it.
Pop quiz
1. According to the text, which of the following points should be the goal when
designing the page layout?
a. Fill the page as much as possible
b. Achieve an artistic design
c. Improve readability
d. Distinguish the work from other publications
2. Which options are preset by the book class?
a. openright and twoside
b. openany and twoside
c. openright and oneside
d. openany and oneside
3. Which page style is used as default on the first page of a chapter?
a. empty
b. plain
c. headings
d. myheadings
e. fancy
4. One of these page breaking commands is able to stretch the text to the bottom
to fill the page. Which one?
a. \newpage
b. \clearpage
c. \cleardoublepage
d. \pagebreak
5. We would like to put a footnote into a chapter heading. Choose the best way!
a. \chapter{title\footnote{text}}
b. \chapter*{title\footnote{text}}
c. \chapter{title\protect\footnote{text}}
d. \chapter[title]{title\footnote{text}}
Summary
In this chapter, we have worked out how to design the overall layout of a
document.
Specifically, we learned about:
Adjusting the page dimensions and margins
Using landscape orientation and two-column layout
Modifying the spacing between lines
Breaking pages and paying attention to the vertical justification
Designing headers and footers with titles and page numbers
Using footnotes
Further, we covered some general topics:
Obtaining documentation of packages in several ways
Changing document properties by choosing class options
Redefining existing commands
Now it's time to deal with further text structures. In the next chapter, we shall
learn how to create lists for presenting text in an easy-to-read way.
Chapter 4. Creating Lists
Arranging text in the form of a list can be very reader-friendly. You can present
several ideas by a clear structure which is easy to survey. Commonly, three
types of lists are used:
1. Bulleted lists
2. Numbered lists
3. Definition lists
In this chapter, we shall learn how to create such lists.
Building a bulleted list
We shall start with the simplest kind of list. It contains just the items without
numbers. Each item is marked by a bullet.
Time for action – listing LaTeX
packages
We shall create a list of packages that we got to know in the previous chapter:
1. Begin a new document and enter the following code:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\section*{Useful packages}
LaTeX provides several packages for designing the layout:
\begin{itemize}
\item geometry
\item typearea
\item fancyhdr
\item scrpage2
\item setspace
\end{itemize}
\end{document}
2. Typeset and have a look at the output:
What just happened?
It was not necessary to load any package. We began with a heading followed by
some text. For the actual list, we used an environment called itemize. As we
know about environments, \begin{itemize} starts it and \end{itemize} ends
it. The command \item tells LaTeX that a new item to the list follows. Each item
may contain text of any length and even paragraph breaks. Well, that's pretty easy,
isn't it?
Nesting lists
When a list gets longer, we could make it clearer by dividing it. We just create
lists in a list. It's advisable to use different bullets to keep the list levels apart
easily. LaTeX does it for us automatically.
Time for action – listing packages by
topic
We shall refine the package list by introducing categories:
1. Refine the aforementioned highlighted itemize environment of our example
in the following way:
\begin{itemize}
\item Page layout
\begin{itemize}
\item geometry
\item typearea
\end{itemize}
\item Headers and footers
\begin{itemize}
\item fancyhdr
\item scrpage2
\end{itemize}
\item Line spacing
\begin{itemize}
\item setspace
\end{itemize}
\end{itemize}
2. Typeset to see the new list:
What just happened?
We simply inserted another list inside the list. Up to four levels are possible,
otherwise LaTeX would stop and print out the error message ! LaTeX Error:
Too deeply nested. As we saw, the first level is marked by a bullet, and the
second by an en dash. A third level item would start with an asterisk symbol *.
The fourth and last level would be marked by a centered dot.
Deeply nested lists can rarely be seen; such complicated structures might be hard
to read. In such cases, it could be a good idea to revise the text structure or at
least split the list.
Creating a numbered list
Bulleted lists are useful if the order of the items doesn't matter. However, if the
order is important, we could organize the items by giving them numbers and
creating a sorted list. That would allow a reader to follow our thoughts easily.
Time for action – writing a step-by-
step tutorial
Let's prepare a tiny "how-to" about designing the page layout:
1. Start with a new document and enter the following code:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}
\item State the paper size by an option to the document
class
\item Determine the margin dimensions using one of these
packages:
\begin{itemize}
\item geometry
\item typearea
\end{itemize}
\item Customize header and footer by one of these
packages:
\begin{itemize}
\item fancyhdr
\item scrpage2
\end{itemize}
\item Adjust the line spacing for the whole document
\begin{itemize}
\item by using the setspace package
\item or by the command \linespread{factor}
\end{itemize}
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}
2. Typeset to generate the «how-to»:
What just happened?
We used an enumerate environment. Except for the name, we use it just like the
itemize environment; each list item is introduced by the command \item. Again,
we nested two lists, but this time the lists are of a different kind. As we saw,
that's no problem. Even though the unnumbered list is embedded within a
numbered list, it's marked by bullets, because it's the first unnumbered level.
Mixed nesting could go further than four levels, but four is the maximum for each
kind and six in general.
The default numbering scheme for the enumerate environment is as follows:
\item understands an optional argument; if you write \item[text], then text
will be printed instead of a number or a bullet. This way, you could use any
numbering and any symbol for the bullet.
Customizing lists
The default appearance of lists is meaningful regarding spacing, indentation, and
symbols. Nevertheless, it may be required to use another scheme for the
enumeration, for the bullets, or to modify the line spacing or their indentation.
There are packages helping us both to save space and to customize the symbols;
let's start with the spacing.
Saving space with compact lists
A frequently arising question is how to reduce the space. LaTeX's lists are often
regarded as being too spacious. We shall see how to implement that.
Time for action – shrinking our
tutorial
We shall remove the white space around the list items and before and after the
whole list as well:
1. In the previous example, load the package paralist and replace enumerate
with compactenum and itemize with compactitem:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{paralist}
\begin{document}
\begin{compactenum}
\item State the paper size by an option to the document
class
\item Determine the margin dimensions using one of these
packages:
\begin{compactitem}
\item geometry
\item typearea
\end{compactitem}
\item Customize header and footer by one of these
packages:
\begin{compactitem}
\item fancyhdr
\item scrpage2
\end{compactitem}
\item Adjust the line spacing for the whole document
\begin{compactitem}
\item by using the setspace package
\item or by the command \linespread{factor}
\end{compactitem}
\end{compactenum}
\end{document}
2. Typeset and compare the spacing:
3. Now extend the highlighted list item for setspace as follows:
\item by using the setspace package and one of its options:
\begin{inparaenum}
\item singlespacing
\item onehalfspacing
\item double spacing
\end{inparaenum}
4. Typeset and look at the change in the line spacing subject:
What just happened?
The used package paralist provides several new list environments designed to
be typeset within paragraphs or in a very compact look. We loaded this package
and replaced the standard environments with their compact counterparts. In step
3, we used a new environment, where the items are enumerated but stay within the
same paragraph.
For each standard environment, paralist adds three corresponding
environments:
Numbered lists:
compactenum: Compact version of the enumerate environment without any
vertical space before or after the list or its items
inparaenum: An enumerated list typeset within a paragraph
asparaenum: Every list item is formatted like a separate common LaTeX
paragraph, but numbered
Bulleted lists:
compactitem: Compact version of the itemize environment like
compactenum
inparaitem: An itemized list typeset within a paragraph, rarely seen in
print
asparaitem: Like asparaenum, but with symbols instead of numbers
Choosing bullets and numbering format
To follow language specific habits or certain requirements, we might wish to
enumerate by Roman numbers or alphabetically; parentheses or dots might be
required. Some may prefer dashes instead of bullets. The package enumitem
provides sophisticated features to implement such requirements.
Time for action – modifying lists
using enumitem
Let's change the numbering scheme. We shall number alphabetically using circled
letters. Furthermore, we will replace bullets by dashes:
1. We shall discard paralist and load the package enumitem instead. We
will turn away from the compact environments returning to the standard list
notation:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\setlist{nolistsep}
\setitemize[1]{label=---}
\setenumerate[1]{label=\textcircled{\scriptsize\Alph*},
font=\sffamily}
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}
\item State the paper size by an option to the document
class
\item Determine the margin dimensions using one of these
packages:
\begin{itemize}
\item geometry
\item typearea
\end{itemize}
\item Customize header and footer by one of these
packages:
\begin{itemize}
\item fancyhdr
\item scrpage2
\end{itemize}
\item Adjust the line spacing for the whole document
\begin{itemize}
\item by using the setspace package
\item or by the command \linespread{factor}|
\end{itemize}
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}
2. Typeset and see the output:
3. Right above the highlighted line, insert the following lines:
\end{enumerate}
\subsubsection*{Tweaking the line spacing:}
\begin{enumerate}[resume*]
4. Typeset to see the change:
What just happened?
We used the enumitem command to specify list properties. Let's take a closer
look:
\setlist{nolistsep}: \setlistsets properties valid for all types of lists.
Here we specified nolistsep to achieve very compact lists analogous to
the compact paralist environment.
\setitemize[1]{label=–--}: \setitemize modifies properties of
bulleted lists. Here we chose an em dash as the label to get a leading wide
dash.
\setenumerate[1]
{label=\textcircled{\scriptsize\Alph*},font=\sffamily}:
\setenumerate sets properties valid for numbered lists. We used it to set a
label and a font for the label. The command \Alph* stands for enumeration
in capital letters.
All of those three commands allow arguments of the form key=value. Some
useful parameters are as follows:
Parameter
Meaning
Values
Example
font
Modifies the label font
Any font command
font=\bfseries
label
Sets the label for the current level
May contain
\arabic*,
\alph*, \Alph*, \roman*,
\Roman*
label=\emph\alph*)
label*
Like label but appended to the current label
Like label
label*=\arabic)
align
Alignment of the label
left or right
align=right
start
Number of the first item
Integer
start=10
resume,
resume*
Let's the counter continue from the previous
lists value
resume
noitemsep
No extra space between items and
paragraphs
noitemsep
nolistsep
No extra vertical spacing at all
nolistsep
These options may be set globally like \setenumerate[level]{key=value
list}. If the optional argument level is missing, this global command will apply
to all levels.
Those options may be used locally like we did with resume*. Other examples
are:
\begin{itemize}[noitemsep] for a compact bulleted list
\begin{enumerate}[label=\Roman*.,start=3] numbered by III., IV., ...
\begin{enumerate}[label=\alph*)],nolistsep] for a very compact
list numbered a), b), c), ...
The labeling commands would achieve a numbering as follows:
\arabic*
1, 2, 3, 4, …
\alph*
a, b, c, d, …
\Alph*
A, B, C, D, …
\roman*
i, ii, iii, iv, …
\Roman*
I, II, III, IV, …
The * has been added to distinguish those commands from LaTeX commands with
the same name. Parentheses and punctuation may be used as wished. Later in the
book, you will learn how to choose between thousands of symbols for labels and
bullets.
There's even a short form: if you load enumitem with the option shortlabels,
you may use a compact syntax like \begin{enumerate}[(i)],
\begin{enumerate}[(1)] where 1, a, A, i, I stand for \arabic*, \alph*,
\Alph*, \roman*, \Roman* respectively. This allows customization quickly and
easily. However, consider using global commands to keep formatting consistent.
Suspending and continuing lists
In step 3 of our example, we interrupted the list. We continued writing normal text
until we restarted the list by \begin{enumerate}[resume*]. The resume option
tells enumitem to continue the list with the next number. The starred variant
resume* does it with the same formatting like before. If you would like to
complete the document, note that a \subsubsection command should be
preceded by a \subsection command. This should follow a \section
command. Just using a lower-level heading without a parent heading could result
in numbering like 0.0.1.
Producing a definition list
We shall proceed to the third kind of list, namely, definition lists, also called
description lists. Every list item consists of a term followed by its description.
Time for action – explaining
capabilities of packages
Now that we know some packages for creating lists, we shall write a short
overview to show their capabilities. Let's choose some additional packages listed
on http://texcatalogue.sarovar.org:
1. We will use a description environment. Create a document with the
following code:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{description}
\item[paralist] provides compact lists and list versions
that can
be used within paragraphs, helps to customize labels and
layout
\item[enumitem] gives control over labels and lengths
in all kind of lists
\item[mdwlist] is useful to customize description lists,
it
even allows multi-line labels. It features compact lists
and
the capability to suspend and resume.
\item[desclist] offers more flexibility in definition list
\item[multenum] produces vertical enumeration in multiple
columns
\end{description}
\end{document}
2. Typeset to get the definition list:
What just happened?
We used the description environment like the other lists, except that we used the
optional argument of \item. In the description environment, \item is defined
such that the optional parameter will be typeset in the bold typeface.
The package paralist supports the description environment as well; there are
the compactdesc, inparadesc, and asparadesc versions working analogous to
the other lists.
The same is valid for enumitem: there's the global command
\setdescription{format} working like \setitemize and \setenumerate.
Furthermore, it also extends the description environment to accept optional
formatting arguments of the form key=value, supporting the short form as well.
Have a go hero – adjusting the dimensions of lists
LaTeX's lists have a meaningful layout. However, there might be occasions when
you would like to modify this layout, for instance, to change the margins or the
item indentation. All layout dimensions are determined by LaTeX macros, so
called lengths .
There's a package which is really great for visualizing layouts, which presents
these length macros. It's called layouts and it has been written by Peter Wilson.
Let's use it to examine LaTeX's list dimensions. We will use this small document:
\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{layouts}
\begin{document}
\listdiagram
\end{document}
By simply typesetting it, we will get the following diagram:
Isn't it fantastic? The layouts package can do even more, which you can read
about in its documentation. For now, we stay on topic regarding lists.
Though there are LaTeX commands for customizing those lengths, for example,
\setlength{\labelwidth}{2cm}, applying them to individual lists and certain
nesting depths is hard. If you need to modify the list layout, the enumitem package
comes handy again. Its commands like \setlist and its key=value interface
may be used also for adjusting the values of the lengths you could see in the
previous diagram.
For example, if we would like to remove the space between list items in the
description environment and to reduce the left margin, we could load
enumitem and write the following:
\setdescription{itemsep=0cm,parsep=0cm,leftmargin=0.5cm}
Note, we don't use the backslash for keys. Similarly, \setitemize,
\setenumerate, and \setlist can be used for fine-tuning. Try assigning values
by yourself, and test the effect on our examples. If you would like to learn more,
have a look at the enumitem documentation.
Pop quiz
1. A list environment may be nested to up to how many levels?
a. Two
b. Three
c. Four
d. Any number, just depending on the memory
2. All but one of these packages understand options in the form key=value.
Which does not?
a. geometry
b. paralist
c. enumitem
3. In which environment should \item be used with an optional argument?
a. itemize
b. enumerate
c. description
d. inparaenum
Summary
In this chapter, we got to know a new way to structure our text—lists.
Specifically, we learned to create:
Bulleted lists using the itemize environment
Numbered lists using the enumerate environment
Definition lists using the description environment
Furthermore, we worked with compact versions of such lists provided by the
packages paralist and enumitem. Those packages allowed us to customize our
lists at will.
You may regard those lists as an additional possibility to structure your text. Use
it to clarify your ideas. Though you may design the layout of lists as you wish, it's
highly recommended to use the same bullets and numbering scheme respectively
for the same nesting level.
Chapter 5. Creating Tables and
Inserting Pictures
Scientific documents and others do not just contain plain text; they also
present information and data in tables and use diagrams and drawings to
visualize them. We shall become familiar with that.
In this chapter, we will learn how to perform the following:
Lining up text and data in columns
Typesetting complex tables
Including pictures in our documents
Adding captions to pictures and tables
Controlling the placement of figures and tables
Let's tackle these tasks!
Writing in columns
Remember the time of the typewriter and early word processing software? When
we needed to line up some text in columns, we could use tab stops. LaTeX
provides a similar way to easily align text in columns, namely, the tabbing
environment.
Time for action – lining up
information using the tabbing
environment
We would like to present a quick overview regarding LaTeX. We shall present
one point on each line, aligned at words and double colons:
1. Begin a new document and open a tabbing environment:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabbing}
2. Write the text, set tab stops by \=, and end the line by \\:
\emph{Info:} \= Software \= : \= \LaTeX \\
3. Add further lines, move to the next tab stop by \>, and again end lines by \\:
\> Author \> : \> Leslie Lamport \\
\> Website \> : \> www.latex-project.org
4. Close the tabbing environment and end the document:
\end{tabbing}
\end{document}
5. Typeset to get the output:
What just happened?
The tabbing environment that we used begins a new line. We used three simple
tags for markup:
\= sets a tab stop. We could put several tab stops on a line. If we use \=
later, the next awaited tab stop would be reset to this position.
\\ ends a row.
\> goes to the next tab stop. This could also mean to go backwards.
This way, we can quickly produce columns containing left-aligned text. If the
rows of the tabbing environment would reach the end of a page, it could continue
on the next page. What if a column is too long, running over the tab stop? Let's see
how to solve that.
Time for action – lining up font
commands
In Chapter 2, Formatting Words, Lines, and Paragraphs, we've got to know a lot
of font commands and declarations. We saw a table containing those commands
and example output. Now we shall create such a table ourselves:
1. Begin a new document, like the one in step 1 of our previous example, but
define a command for setting the font of our header:
\documentclass{article}
\newcommand{\head}[1]{\textbf{#1}}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabbing}
2. Write the first row set tab stops by \= and use \> to move to the tab stops.
Use the command \verb|…| to typeset the LaTeX commands:
\begin{tabbing}
Family \= \verb|\textrm{...}| \= \head{Declaration} \= \kill
\> \head{Command} \> \head{Declaration} \>
\head{Example}\\
Family \> \verb|\textrm{...}| \> \verb|\rmfamily|
\> \rmfamily Example text\\
\> \verb|\textsf{...}| \> \verb|\sffamily|
\> \sffamily Example text\\
\> \verb|\texttt{...}| \> \verb|\ttfamily|
\> \ttfamily Example text
\end{tabbing}
3. Typeset and examine:
4. As we can see, the tab stops are too narrow. We shall correct it. Create a
new head row containing the tab stops; this time, we will mark the line by
\kill to hide that line. Use filler text to specify the width between the tab
stops. Complete it with further font commands:
\begin{tabbing}
Family \= \verb|\textrm{...}| \= \head{Declaration} \= \kill
\> \head{Command} \> \head{Declaration} \>
\head{Example}\\
Family \> \verb|\textrm{...}| \> \verb|\rmfamily|
\> \rmfamily Example text\\
\> \verb|\textsf{...}| \> \verb|\sffamily|
\> \sffamily Example text\\
\> \verb|\texttt{...}| \> \verb|\ttfamily|
\> \ttfamily Example text
\end{tabbing}
5. Typeset to get the result:
What just happened?
After we noticed that our tab stops have been set too narrow, we constructed a
new first row containing the tab stops. It consists of words representing the
widest entries of each column. To hide this auxiliary row, we used the command
\kill right at the end of the line; \kill at the end of a line causes this line to
have no output.
Note
Like in this example, the command \verb|code| typesets code "as it is", without
interpreting commands within. Instead of |, any character may be chosen as the
delimiter. \verb cannot be used in arguments of commands including \section
and \footnote, and not in table heads.
For longer, verbatim text, use the environment with the same name: verbatim.
There are further useful commands:
\+ at the end of a line causes each subsequent line to start at the first tab. Use
it twice \+\+ to start at the second tab and so on.
\- cancels a preceding \+; also using multiply has cumulative effect.
\< at the beginning of a line cancels the effect of one previous \+ command
for that line.
The mentioned commands already allow a good use of the tabbing environment.
Even more commands can be found in the reference manual:
http://texblog.net/help/latex/tabbing.html.
Note
Inside tabbing environments, declarations are local to the current item. A
following \=, \>, \\, or \kill command would stop the effect.
Tabbing environments cannot be nested.
Typesetting tables
We might need more complicated structures and formatting, like centering in
columns, dividing lines, or even nested structures. LaTeX provides the tabular
environment for typesetting simple and complex tables which can be nested.
Time for action – building a table of
font family commands
We shall create a table like in the previous example, but this time, we would like
to make all entries in a column horizontally centered to each other. We will also
add some horizontal lines to mark the border and the header of the table:
1. Create a new document. Define a command for setting the font for the head
row:
\documentclass{article}
\newcommand{\head}[1]{\textnormal{\textbf{#1}}}
\begin{document}
2. Begin a tabular environment. As a mandatory argument, provide ccc
standing for three centered columns:
\begin{tabular}{ccc}
3. Write the table head row, write & to separate column entries, and \\ to end
rows. Use \hline to insert horizontal lines:
\hline
\head{Command} & \head{Declaration} & \head{Output}\\
\hline
4. Continue with the table body and end the environment and the document. For
typesetting LaTeX commands, write \verb|\command|:
\verb|\textrm| & \verb|\rmfamily| & \rmfamily Example
text\\
\verb|\textsf| & \verb|\sffamily| & \sffamily Example
text\\
\verb|\texttt| & \verb|\ttfamily| & \ttfamily Example
text\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{document}
5. Typeset to see the table:
What just happened?
In the mandatory argument, we wrote a list of characters. Each character stands
for a formatting option. As we used three characters, we've got three columns. c
stands for centered alignment. Therefore, the entries of all columns have been
centered.
Column entries are separated by &, while rows are terminated by \\. Don't end
the last line by \\ unless you further wish to write a line below. It's also a good
idea to align the ampersands in our source code to keep it readable.
Inside the entries, you may use ordinary text as well as LaTeX commands. As in
the tabbing environment, declarations are local to the entry, like if each entry was
surrounded by curly braces.
Furthermore, tabular has an optional alignment argument just like minipage. So,
the complete definition is:
\begin{tabular}[position]{column specifiers}
row 1 col 1 entry & row 1 col 2 entry ... & row 1 col n entry\\
...
\end{tabular}
In the optional argument, t means alignment at the top row and b means alignment
at the bottom row. The default is vertically centered alignment. This may come in
handy if you would like to place two tables next to each other or within further
text.
Drawing lines in tables
Within tabular, three types of lines may be used:
\hline draws a horizontal line over the whole width of the table
\cline{m-n} draws a horizontal line starting at the beginning of column m
and ending at the end of column n
\vline draws a vertical line over the full height and depth of the current
row
Understanding formatting arguments
Of course, further formatting is possible. Have a look at this example table:
\begin{tabular}{|l|c|r|p{1.7cm}|}
\hline
left & centered & right & a fully justified paragraph cell\\
\hline
l & c & r & p\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
This code would produce the following table:
The options understood by the tabular environment are as follows:
l for left alignment.
c for centered alignment.
r for right alignment.
p{width} for a "paragraph" cell of a certain width. . If you place several p
cells next to each other, they will be aligned at their top line. It's equivalent
to using \parbox[t]{width} within a cell.
@{code} inserts code instead of empty space before or after a column. This
might also be some text or it could be left empty to avoid this space.
| stands for a vertical line.
*{n}{options} is equivalent to n copies of options, where n is a positive
integer and options may consist of one or more column specifiers including
* as well.
Tip
It is very advisable to avoid vertical lines in tables. Lines should subtly support
your information but not make reading difficult.
After loading the array package by \usepackage{array} you may use some
options, such as:
m{width} is similar to \parbox{width}: the base line is at the middle
b{width} is like \parbox[b]{width}: the base line is at the bottom
!{code} can be used like | but inserts code instead of a vertical line. In
contrast to @{…}, the space between columns will not be suppressed.
>{code} can be used before an l, c, r, p, m, or b option and inserts code
right at the beginning of each entry of that column
<{code} can be used after an l, c, r, p, m, or b option and inserts code at the
end of the entry of that column
This example shows the effect of @{} and the alignment arguments p, m, and b:
\begin{tabular}{@{}lp{1.2cm}m{1.2cm}b{1.2cm}@{}}
\hline
baseline & aligned at the top & aligned at the middle
& aligned at the bottom\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
The output table is as follows:
Increasing the row height
You may have noticed that horizontal lines nearly touch the letters in the cells,
especially capital letters. The array package introduces a length called
\extrarowheight . If it has a positive value, this will be added to the height of
every row of the table.
The next example, following the very first example of this chapter, shows how to
extend the row height and shows the effect of the remaining array options:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{array}
\setlength{\extrarowheight}{4pt}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{@{}>{\itshape}ll!{:}l<{.}@{}}
\hline
Info: & Software & \LaTeX\\
& Author & Leslie Lamport\\
& Website & www.latex-project.org\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{document}
The output is as follows:
Here, >{\itshape} has been used to change the font of a row to italic. >{} is
often used to insert an alignment declaration, but there's a pitfall: such
declarations might change the internal meaning of \\, which is a shortcut for
\tabularnewline within tables. But the array package offers a command to
repair it; in such cases, just add \arraybackslash, for example:
\begin{tabular}{>{\centering\arraybackslash}p{5cm}}
Otherwise, the content of paragraph cells stated by p, m, or b will be fully
justified.
After a specific row, you can add vertical space by the optional argument of \\,
such as \\[10pt].
You may even stretch a whole table: the macro \arraystretch contains a
stretching factor with a default value of 1. Just redefine it. For example,
\renewcommand{\arraystretch}{1.5} will increase the height of the rows by
50 percent. You could use it inside a group or an environment to keep the effect
local.
Beautifying tables
Still our tables don't look as perfect as they look in good books. Especially, the
lines and their distances to the text might need improvement. The booktabs
package comes to the rescue; after loading it, you can enhance the quality of your
tables by new line commands replacing \hline and \cline.
Time for action – adding nicer
horizontal lines with the booktabs
package
We shall use the new commands introduced by booktabs:
1. In the previous example, load the package booktabs:
\usepackage{booktabs}
2. Use \toprule, \midrule, and \bottomrule instead of \hline. Specify a
thickness as an optional argument:
\begin{tabular}{ccc}
\toprule[1.5pt]
\head{Command} & \head{Declaration} & \head{Output}\\
\midrule
\verb|\textrm| & \verb|\rmfamily| & \rmfamily Example
text\\
\verb|\textsf| & \verb|\sffamily| & \sffamily Example
text\\
\verb|\texttt| & \verb|\ttfamily| & \ttfamily Example
text\\
\bottomrule[1.5pt]
\end{tabular}
3. Typeset to see the difference:
What just happened?
British typesetters call a line a rule. The booktabs developer chose this
terminology for the new commands. We used three of them. These are their
definitions:
\toprule[thickness] may be used to draw a horizontal line at the top of
the table. If desired, a thickness may be specified, like 1pt or 0.5mm.
\midrule[thickness] draws a horizontal dividing line between rows of a
table.
\bottomrule[thickness] draws a horizontal line to finish off a table.
\cmidrule[thickness](trim){m–n} draws a horizontal line from column
m to column n. (trim) is optional like thickness, it could be (l) or (r) to
trim the line at its left or right end. Write (lr) to trim at both ends. Even
adding {width}, like in (l{10pt}), is possible and specifies the trim
width.
The package does not define vertical lines. They are not advisable anyway. The
same applies to double rules. Neither vertical nor double rules are recommended.
They are even widely considered to be bad typographic style.
Consider using \toprule and the other line commands without optional
arguments—let's figure out how.
Have a go hero – adjusting lengths
We briefly introduced the command \setlength . Instead of specifying a line
thickness by an optional argument to \toprule, \midrule, \cmidrule, or
\bottomrule, always omit it. Instead, specify it once for your whole document
by \setlength in the preamble.
These are the lengths that may be adjusted:
\heavyrulewidth for the thickness of the top and bottom lines
\lightrulewidth for the thickness of the middle lines by \midrule
\cmidrulewidth for the thickness of \cmidrule
\cmidrulekern for the trimming in \cmidrule
\abovetopsep is the space above the top rule; the default is 0pt
\belowbottomsep is the space below the bottom rule; the default is 0pt
\aboverulesep specifies the space above \midrule, \cmidrule, and
\bottomrule
\belowrulesep stands for the space below \midrule, \cmidrule, and
\toprule
Try to change the thickness of the lines. The lengths already have reasoned values,
but you may change them. So, the adjustment in your preamble would improve all
tables in your document.
Spanning entries over multiple columns
Columns concerning the same subject might be grouped by a common header. In
such a case, two cells in the header should be merged. The command
\multicolumn does it for us.
Time for action – merging cells
Regarding our example table, commands and declarations are both input,
whereas, the remaining column contains output. We shall emphasize that in our
header:
1. In our example, insert another header row. Use \multicolumn to merge
cells. Alter the column formatting argument and the middle rule. Changes are
highlighted:
\begin{tabular}{@{}*3l@{}}
\toprule[1.5pt]
\multicolumn{2}{c}{\head{Input}} &
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\head{Output}}\\
\head{Command} & \head{Declaration} & \\
\cmidrule(r){1-2}\cmidrule(l){3-3}
\verb|\textrm| & \verb|\rmfamily| & \rmfamily Example
text\\
\verb|\textsf| & \verb|\sffamily| & \sffamily Example
text\\
\verb|\texttt| & \verb|\ttfamily| & \ttfamily Example
text\\
\bottomrule[1.5pt]
\end{tabular}
2. Typeset and see the output:
What just happened?
We used the command \multicolumn twice; once to merge two cells and
surprisingly another time just for one cell. Let's first look at its definition:
\multicolumn{number of columns}{formatting options}{entry text}
The number of columns to be spanned may be a positive integer or just 1. The
formatting options will be applied instead of the options specified in the tabular
definition for this cell. We took advantage of this when we used
\multicolumn{1}{c}{…}, overriding the l option of the column by a c option to
get just this cell centered.
The other change we made concerns \cmidrule. We used it instead of \midrule
together with the trimming argument to get a gap between the input and the output
column.
Inserting code column-wise
There are many more font commands that we would like to add to the table.
Writing \verb|…| in each cell is tiresome. We shall exploit the >{…} feature of
the array package to define the formatting of the entries once for the column.
Time for action – using the array
package
We shall modify the table definition to set our input columns in the typewriter
font. At the same time, we will insert a column on the left, standing for our
command type:
1. Extend the preamble of our example by defining a command \normal. It
shall use \multicolumn to produce an l cell, no matter what the column
formatting is:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{array}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\newcommand{\head}[1]{\textnormal{\textbf{#1}}}
\newcommand{\normal}[1]{\multicolumn{1}{l}{#1}}
\begin{document}
2. A s \verb cannot be used in table headers, we shall use \ttfamily.
Preceding it with \textbackslash is enough for our purposes. Use >{…} to
insert it twice. Then add <{Example text} to the last column to save typing
work:
\begin{tabular}{@{}l*2{>{\textbackslash\ttfamily}l}l%
<{Example text}@{}}
\toprule[1.5pt]
& \multicolumn{2}{c}{\head{Input}} &
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\head{Output}}\\
3. We'll use the \normal command to avoid the typewriter formatting in the
header:
& \normal{\head{Command}} & \normal{\head{Declaration}}
& \normal{}\\
\cmidrule(lr){2-3}\cmidrule(l){4-4}
4. Now we may continue listing the font command names:
Family & textrm&rmfamily & \rmfamily\\
& textsf & sffamily & \sffamily\\
& texttt & ttfamily & \ttfamily\\
\bottomrule[1.5pt]
\end{tabular}
\end{document}
5. Typeset and look at the result:
What just happened?
Using >{\textbackslash\ttfamily}l defines a left aligned row, where each
entry is preceded by a backslash and by switching to typewriter font. We wrote
*2{…} to define two columns of this style. Because the example text has been
inserted according to our table definition with <{…}, we just had to put the
declarations into the last column without the text.
Spanning entries over multiple rows
We already know how to span text over several columns. But what if text should
cross over several rows? LaTeX doesn't define a command for it. However, the
package multirow does.
Time for action – merging cells using
the multirow package
Before we complement the font table, we would like to center the command type
"Family" vertically, that is, span this cell over three columns. If we figured this
out, we could use it later on:
1. In our previous example, additionally load multirow:
\usepackage{multirow}
2. Replace the word «Family»:
\multirow{3}{*}{Family} & textrm & rmfamily & \rmfamily &
\\
3. Typeset to see the small change:
What just happened?
We used the command \multirow to span three rows. Its definition is:
\multirow{number of rows}{width}{entry text}
The entry will span that number of rows from the row on which \multirow has
been used. If the number is negative, it will span the rows above.
You can specify a width or just write * for the natural width. If a width has been
specified, the text would be wrapped accordingly.
multirow understands further optional arguments for fine tuning. They are
described in its documentation.
Adding captions to tables
Especially with longer text, we would like to add captions and numbers to our
tables. Numbering the tables allows referring to them, whereas captions are
informative, if the table is not exactly placed where we refer to it. LaTeX has
built-in features to achieve that.
Time for action – adding a caption to
our font table
Now it's time to complete our table. We shall list the remaining font commands.
We'll use the first column to describe the category of the font commands: Family,
Weight, Shape, and so on. Then we will add another column to show the effect of
combining font commands.
To finish, we shall center the table and provide a number and a caption:
1. Put a table environment around our example table, use \centering inside,
and insert a \caption command at the end of the table environment. Add
more font commands and add another column at the right containing more
examples:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{array}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{multirow}
\newcommand{\head}[1]{\textnormal{\textbf{#1}}}
\newcommand{\normal}[1]{\multicolumn{1}{l}{#1}}
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\begin{table}
\centering
\begin{tabular}{@{}l*2{>{\textbackslash\ttfamily}l}%
l<{Example text}l@{}}
\toprule[1.5pt]
& \multicolumn{2}{c}{\head{Input}}
& \multicolumn{2}{c}{\head{Output}}\\
& \normal{\head{Command}} & \normal{\head{Declaration}}
& \normal{\head{Single use}} & \head{Combined}\\
\cmidrule(lr){2-3}\cmidrule(l){4-5}
\multirow{3}{*}{Family} & textrm & rmfamily & \rmfamily &
\\
& textsf & sffamily & \sffamily& \\
& texttt & ttfamily & \ttfamily& \\
\cmidrule(lr){2-3}\cmidrule(lr){4-4}
\multirow{2}{1.1cm}{Weight} & textbf & bfseries &
\bfseries
& \multirow{2}{1.8cm}{\sffamily\bfseries Bold and sans-
serif} \\
& textmd & mdseries & \mdseries & \\
\cmidrule(lr){2-3}\cmidrule(lr){4-4}
\multirow{4}{*}{Shape} & textit & itshape & \itshape & \\
& textsl & slshape & \slshape &
\multirow{2}{1.8cm}{\sffamily\slshape Slanted and sans-
serif}\\
& textsc & scshape & \scshape & \\
& textup & upshape & \upshape & \\
\cmidrule(lr){2-3}\cmidrule(lr){4-4}
Default & textnormal & normalfont & \normalfont & \\
\bottomrule[1.5pt]
\end{tabular}
\caption{\LaTeX\ font selection}
\end{table}
\end{document}
2. Typeset and our table is now ready:
What just happened?
We put the tabular environment in a table environment. It's used in this way
together with the \caption command:
\begin{table}[placement options]
table body
\caption{table title}
\end{table}
The table environment is a so-called floating environment . Unlike normal text,
they might appear somewhere else other than what is defined by their position in
the source code. The optional placement argument determines where the table
might appear. However, LaTeX decides it. We shall discuss this at the end of this
chapter together with the placement of graphics.
\ caption understands an optional argument as well: if you write
\caption[short text]{long text}, then short text will appear in a list of
tables and long text in the document body. That's useful if you need very long
descriptive captions.
Tables are automatically numbered.
Placing captions above
In typesetting, it's very common to place captions above the tables instead of
below. This can be achieved by writing \caption before the table body.
However, LaTeX expects caption to always be below, resulting in a cramped
look to the table. There's too little space between the caption and the following
table. You might wish to add some space, for instance, by entering
\vspace{10pt} directly after a top caption.
Remember booktabs? If you begin tables with \toprule, just specify the length
\abovetopskip, for example:
\setlength{\abovetopsep}{10pt}
By putting this line into your preamble, 10pt space would be added below the
caption and above the top line of the table.
Have a go hero – customizing captions
By default, the captions look like normal body text; there's no visual difference.
Would you like to have a slight change in font size, a different formatting of the
label, some margins or indentation, or any other customization? The caption
package is the answer to most needs. By using a few options, you could enhance
the visual appearance of all of your captions. Try:
\usepackage[font=small,labelfont=bf,margin=1cm]{caption}
This way, your captions will be smaller than normal text, the label with number
will be bold, and it will not be as wide as normal text. The package offers a lot of
features, both for document wide settings and fine-tuning. It's very well
documented. So, have a look at its documentation.
Auto-fitting columns to the table width
l, c, and r columns have the width of their content. For p columns, you specify the
width. This way, it's hard to find out the actual width of the table. Wouldn't it be a
good idea to specify the table width and let LaTeX decide how wide the columns
may be? The tabularx package allows that. Using it looks like:
\usepackage{tabularx}
...
\begin{tabularx}{width}{column specifiers}
...
\end{tabularx}
The new environment tabularx requires an additional argument: the width of the
table. It introduces a new column type X. X columns behave like p columns, but
they use all available space. One X column would take all of the available space.
If you use several X columns, they would share the space equally. So you could
write, for instance:
\begin{tabularx}{0.6\textwidth}{lcX}
This way you would get a table occupying 60 percent of the text width, a left
aligned and a centered column as wide as their content, and a paragraph column
as wide as possible until 60 percent is reached.
Though it's easy to use, the tabularx documentation gives further examples,
informs about the derived types, and gives advice like this: don't let
\multicolumn entries cross any X column.
There are two similar approaches:
LaTeX provides a starred version of the tabular environment:
\begin{tabular*}{width}[position]{column specifiers}
The table is set to width, but by modifying the inter-column space.
tabularx has been developed satisfying the need for a more useful way.
The tabulary package provides another sophisticated tabular environment
taking the total width. It's weighting each column width according to the
natural width of the widest cell in the column.
Generating multi-page tables
All tabular environments we've got to know until now cannot cross page
boundaries. The tabbing environment is an exception due to its different nature.
As tables might contain a lot of data, we need a solution. There are several
packages:
longtable provides an environment with the same name that's like a multi-
page version of tabular. It provides commands to set table captions,
continued captions, and special headers and footers when a page break
occurs. It's probably the easiest way for multi-page tables and therefore the
most popular. The package documentation describes all you need. In
combination with the booktabs package, you will get very good results.
ltxtable provides a combination of longtable and tabularx.
ltablex is another approach to combine the features of longtable and
tabularx.
supertabular offers another multi-page extension of the internally used
tabular environment, providing optional table tails and heads where page
breaks occur.
xtab extends supertabular and reduces some of its weaknesses.
stabular implements a simple way to use page breaks in tabular without
much ado.
Example tables and links to documentation can be found at
http://texblog.net/beginners-guide/tables/.
Coloring tables
We didn't even color text yet, as this usually isn't what we do first with LaTeX.
But of course, this can be done with text as well as with tables. For coloring text,
use the color package or, better, the extension xcolor. For coloring tables, use the
package colortbl . All can be combined by using:
\usepackage[table]{xcolor}
The package allows coloring columns, rows, single entries, and lines in many
ways. The package documentation may tell you more.
Using landscape orientation
Very wide tables could be typeset in landscape orientation. The rotating package
offers an environment called sidewaystable that you could use instead of the
table environment. Both table and caption would be rotated +-90 degrees and
placed on a separate page. The package provides further rotation-related
environments and commands.
Aligning columns at the decimal point
Columns containing numbers are more readable when the entries are aligned at
the decimal marker and perhaps at an exponent. Several packages support this:
siunitx is primarily intended for typesetting values with units in a consistent
way according to scientific conventions. However, it provides a tabular
column type for such decimal alignment of numbers.
dcolumn offers a column type for aligning at a comma, a period, or another
single character.
rccol defines a column type where numbers are "right-centered", that is, they
are centered with respect to other entries but flushed right to each other. This
way corresponding digits are aligned along the column.
In contrast to dcolumn and rccol, the siunitx package is very new and
powerful.
Handling narrow columns
Text in very narrow columns might require special attention because justification
is difficult if there's little space. Here's some advice:
Have a look at the correct hyphenation. If necessary, improve it like we did
in Chapter 2.
TeX doesn't hyphenate the first word of a line, a box, or a table entry. So, a
long word may cross the column boundary. To enable hyphenation, insert an
empty word: write \hspace{0pt} directly at the beginning.
Load microtype to improve justification, it shows the best effect in narrow
columns.
Full justification in p columns and the like may look bad because of big
gaps. Consider using >{\raggedright\arraybackslash} for such
columns.
From the ragged2e package, using the command \RaggedRight can do even
better and doesn't need \arraybackslash.
Pop quiz – tables
1. Which of these environments cannot cross page boundaries?
a. tabular
b. longtable
c. tabbing
2. If you would like to format one entry different from the specification of its
column, which command may be used?
a. >{…}
b. @{…}
c. \multirow
d. \multicolumn
Inserting pictures
Documents may not consist of just text and tables. You might wish to include
pictures, diagrams, or drawings made with other programs. The graphicx package
is dedicated to this.
Time for action – including a picture
We shall create a short document. Between two paragraphs, we would like to
insert a picture. If there's no picture file available, we will use the demo mode of
graphicx:
1. Begin a new document and load babel and blindtext to print some filler
text:
\documentclass[a5paper]{article}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx}
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\section{Including a picture}
\blindtext
2. Open a figure environment and declare centering:
\begin{figure}
\centering
3. Use the command \includegraphics with the filename as the argument:
\includegraphics{test}
4. Declare a caption, close the figure environment, and end the document with
filler text:
\caption{Test figure}
\end{figure}
\blindtext
\end{document}
5. Typeset and have a look at the output:
What just happened?
The most important command is \includegraphics. We specified a filename.
This file would be loaded if it exists. Otherwise an error would occur. LaTeX
supports the following file types:
PNG, JPG, and PDF if you directly compile to PDF (pdfLaTeX)
EPS if you compile to DVI and convert to PS and PDF (traditional LaTeX)
To clarify, PS means PostScript, EPS means Encapsulated PostScript, and DVI
means Device Independent Format. The latter was the first output format to be
supported by TeX. You definitely know the very popular picture formats PNG and
JPG, often used for screenshots or photos.
You don't need to specify a filename extension, it will be automatically added.
Put the file into the same directory as your document; otherwise specify a full or
relative path name:
\includegraphics{appendix/figure1}
Don't use blanks in the filename or path! Blanks and special characters may cause
problems with \includegraphics. If such symbols in filenames are required,
load the package grffile to try to fix it. Also, in filenames, use slashes / instead of
backslashes \, as the latter begin a LaTeX command.
Because we specified the demo option, graphicx doesn't require a file test.png
or any other file; instead it's just printing a black filled rectangle. This is useful
for testing or if you would like to discuss a LaTeX problem in an online forum,
but don't wish to publish your pictures.
Go ahead; copy a picture of your choice into your document directory, give
\includegraphics its filename, and compile. The picture will be embedded
with its original size.
Scaling pictures
You may choose a different size. For this, let's look at the definition of
includegraphics:
\includegraphics[key=value list]{file name}
The graphicx documentation lists all keys and possible values. Here are the
most popular ones:
width: The graphic would be resized to this width. Example:
width=0.9\textwidth.
height: The graphic would be resized to this height. Example:
height=3cm.
scale: The graphic would be scaled by this factor. Example: scale=0.5.
angle: The graphic would be turned by this angle. Example: angle=90.
There are options for clipping, but such post processing can be easily done with
any graphics software.
Instead of turning a figure by 90 degrees, you could use the sidewaysfigure
environment of the rotating package. It's analogous to sidewaystable that has
been mentioned before.
Choosing the optimal file type
If you've got the final picture, well, just use this format and include it. However,
if you are free to choose a file format, you could think about it for a moment.
EPS and PDF are both vector graphics format. They are scalable, also looking
good at high resolution or if you zoom in. So, whenever possible, PDF (or EPS)
should be preferred, for instance, when you export drawings or diagrams out of
other office software. For such graphics, vector formats are common.
PNG and JPG are bitmap formats, also called raster graphics , commonly used for
photos. If you zoom in, you would notice a loss of quality. PNG uses a lossless
compression, whereas JPG pictures may lose quality when they are saved. So, if
you make screenshots, use PNG or at least ensure that there's no loss compression
if you choose JPG.
Note
Besides supporting vector graphics, both EPS and PDF may contain bitmap
graphics. They are also called container formats.
There are a lot of tools to convert between graphic formats. These three are
especially useful and included in both TeX Live and MiKTeX:
dvips converts DVI files to the PostScript format
ps2pdf converts PostScript files to PDF
epstopdf converts EPS files to PDF, a package with the same name does it
on-the-fly
These are command line tools. Some editors like TeXnicCenter use them to
automate the way TEX => DVI => PS => PDF.
epstopdf is especially useful if you have to include Postscript pictures, but wish
to benefit from pdfLaTeX features like font expansion and character protrusion
accessible by microtype.
For further working with graphics, ImageMagick and GIMP are very capable
open source programs.
Including whole pages
How can we include pictures wider or higher than the text area?
\includegraphics could do it, but LaTeX would complain about width or size
and might put it off to the next page. Oversized images and even whole pages can
be included using the pdfpages package. It provides a command, \includepdf,
which is able to include a complete page and even a multi-page PDF document at
once. Despite its name and not even mentioned in its otherwise good
documentation, it's capable of including PNG and JPG files, not just PDF.
pdfpages could also be used to resize several PDF pages and to arrange them on
a single sheet.
Putting images behind the text
Do you need watermarks? Background images? Textboxes positioned at arbitrary
positions on the page, preferably not interfering with the other text? The package
eso-pic does it for you.
Another approach is offered by the textpos package, developed for placing boxes
with text or graphics at absolute positions on a page.
Managing floating environments
When a page break occurs, normal text can be broken to continue on the next page.
However, pictures cannot be divided. Simple tables cannot be split either. That's
why LaTeX provides two floating environments, namely, figure and table.
They are briefly called floats . Their content may float to a place where it's the
optimum for the page layout. Let's figure out how to deal with it.
Time for action – letting a figure float
Both the figure and the table environment take an optional argument affecting
the final placement of the figure or the table. We shall test the effect in our
graphics example:
1. Go back to the previous example. This time, add the options h and t:
\begin{figure}[ht]
\centering
\includegraphics{test}
\caption{Test figure}
\end{figure}
2. Typeset, notice the change in the output.
3. Change the options into !b:
\begin{figure}[!b]
4. Typeset, the figure is now forced to float to the bottom. Compare both
results:
What just happened?
Just by adding some characters standing for placement options, we could force the
figure to appear where we wanted it to.
Understanding float placement options
The optional argument of the figure and table environment tells LaTeX where
it's allowed to place the figure or the table. Four letters stand for four possible
places:
h stands for here. The float may appear where it's been written in the source
code.
t stands for top. Placing at the top of a page is permitted.
b stands for bottom. The float may appear at the bottom of a page.
p stands for page. The float is allowed to appear on a separate page, where
only floats may reside but no normal text.
A fifth option might come in handy:
! tells LaTeX to try harder! Some constraints may be ignored, easing the
placement.
If you don't specify any option, the float could be placed far away. New LaTeX
users might be surprised. Specifying more options would help to place it as near
as possible. The most flexible is using the placement [!htbp], allowing a float
everywhere. You still could consider removing a placement specifier if you don't
like it.
Forcing the output of floats
If you would like to stop LaTeX from putting the floats, there's a way; the
\clearpage command ends the current page and causes all already defined
figures and tables to be printed out. You can use \cleardoublepage that does the
same but in a two-sided layout it ensures that the next non-float page is a right-
hand page. . If necessary, a blank page would be inserted.
Immediately ending the page might not be the best thing to do. It could leave a lot
of empty space on the current page. The afterpage package offers a clever
possibility; this package allows deferring the execution of \clearpage until the
current page has ended:
\usepackage{afterpage}
...
body text
\afterpage{\clearpage}
Limiting floating
It may happen that tables and figures float far away, perhaps even into another
section. The placeins package provides a useful command to restrict the floating.
If you load placeins with \usepackage{placeins} and write \FloatBarrier
somewhere in your document, no table or figure could float past it. This macro
keeps floats in their place.
A very convenient way to prevent floats from crossing section boundaries is
stating the section option:
\usepackage[section]{placeins}
This option causes an implicit \FloatBarrier to be used at the beginning of each
section.
Two further options, namely, above and below, allow you to lower the
restrictions, preventing floats from appearing above the start of the current section
or below the start of the next section.
Figures don't float into the next chapter because \chapter implicitly uses
\clearpage.
Avoiding floating at all
Would you like to place a float exactly where you want it? The obvious answer
is: don't use a floating environment! Even a caption doesn't have the same
importance if the table or figure is placed at the current point. However, if you
really need a caption, you may use the \captionof command without a float.
Both the caption package , KOMA-Script classes, and the tiny capt-of package
provide that command:
\usepackage{capt-of}% or caption
…
\begin{center}
\begin{minipage}{\linewidth}%
\centering%
\includegraphics{test}%
\captionof{figure}{Test figure}%
\end{minipage}
\end{center}
The minipage keeps a picture and caption together. Furthermore, it's centered.
Use \captionof within a group or environment like minipage or center. The
definition is the same as \caption, except there is the additional argument
specifying the float type:
\captionof{figure}[short text]{long text}
\captionof{table}[short text]{long text}
Be aware that the numbering could get wrong if you mix real floats and fixed
figures or tables. As you don't benefit from LaTeX's positioning capabilities, you
have to take care that pages are still properly filled.
The float package provides a convenient and consistent looking approach. It
introduces the placement option H causing the float to appear right there:
\usepackage{float}
…
\begin{figure}[H]
\centering
\includegraphics{test}
\caption{Test figure}
\end{figure}
You may choose between these two options. If you wish to exploit further features
of the float package, load it. Otherwise, consider using the one-liner capt-of.
Perhaps not even that is necessary, assuming that you're already using the
caption package or a KOMA-Script class.
Spanning figures and tables over text columns
There are starred forms of floats, namely, figure* and table*. In a two-column
layout, they put the float into a single column. In one-column mode, there's no
difference to the non-starred form.
Letting text flow around figures
Though it's a bit playful, you might wish to let text flow around a table or a figure.
This can be achieved using the wrapfig package and its environments
wrapfigure and wraptable.
Time for action – embedding a
picture within text
We shall modify our picture embedding an example. We would like the picture to
appear on the left side, accompanied by the body text on the right side:
1. In our example, additionally load the wrapfig package:
\documentclass[a5paper]{article}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx}
\usepackage{wrapfig}
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
2. Begin an unnumbered section, place a wrapfig environment within some
filler text:
\section*{Text flowing around a picture}
\blindtext
\begin{wrapfigure}{l}{4.4cm}
\includegraphics[width=4.4cm]{test}
\caption{Test figure}
\end{wrapfigure}
\blindtext
\end{document}
3. Typeset and look:
What just happened?
The wrapfigure environment understands parameters other than the figure
environment. We used just two of them. If you need more, here's the complete
definition:
\begin{wrapfigure}[number of lines]{placement}[overhang] {width}
The first optional argument states the number of wrapped text lines. If omitted, it
would be automatically calculated from the height. placement can be one of the
characters r, l, i, o for right, left, inner, or outer side or the corresponding
uppercase letters R, L, I, O with the same meaning, but allowing the figure to float.
Only one character for specifying the option is allowed. The other optional
argument, overhang, may specify a width that the figure might stick into the
margin. The final and mandatory argument gives the width of the figure.
The wraptable environment works analogous.
Breaking figures and tables into pieces
For grouping several sub figures or sub tables with captions within a single figure
or table, there are several supporting packages you can choose from:
subfig is a sophisticated package supporting inclusion of small figures and
tables. It takes care of positioning, labeling, and captioning within single
floats.
subcaption is another package for this purpose and belongs to the caption
package.
subfigure is still available, but considered as obsolete since subfig has
appeared.
Pop quiz – pictures and floats
1. This chapter listed all graphic formats supported by LaTeX. Now, identify
from the following file types which is not directly supported by LaTeX!
a. jpg
b. gif
c. png
d. eps
e. pdf
2. If you would like a figure or a table to float but to appear as near as possible
to its source, which of the following float placement options would be
appropriate?
a. h
b. H
c. htbp
d. !htbp
Summary
In this chapter, we have learned to create tables and figures, and how to place
them within our document. Specifically, we dealt with:
Putting text into columns
Typesetting tables with captions
Spanning columns and rows in tables
Using packages to auto-fit columns and to create colored, landscape, and
even multi-page tables
Including pictures with captions
Controlling and tuning placement of figures and tables
LaTeX is able to generate lists of tables and figures like a table of contents. We
shall deal with such lists in Chapter 7, Listing Contents and References.
As our figures and tables are numbered, we can use these numbers to refer to them
within the text. In the next chapter, we shall figure out how to do this, benefitting
from LaTeX's cross-referencing capabilities.
Chapter 6. Cross-Referencing
Our documents contain a lot of numbered things such as pages, sections, list
items, figures, and tables. There's even more we have not covered yet. For
instance, if you would like to write a mathematical text, you may number
equations, theorems, definitions, and many more.
We number things not just to count them, but to refer to them in other places of
our document. If you want to point the reader to the ninth figure in the third
chapter, you might write "See figure 3.9". LaTeX automatically enumerates the
figures for you. If you insert another figure, LaTeX will automatically adjust
the numbering of all figures after it. But what's with the references?
LaTeX is able to take care of all of our cross-references. This is the subject of
this chapter. We shall learn how to:
Set labels that we shall use to refer to
Refer to sections, footnotes, list items, tables, and more
Refer to page numbers and ranges
Make LaTeX refer verbosely to adjacent pages
Automate naming of references
Create references to external documents
Let's figure out how to do all this.
Setting labels and referencing
To be able to refer to a certain point, we have to mark it by a label. The name of
that label will serve us afterwards.
Time for action – referencing items of
a top list
We shall typeset a list of the most used packages for papers on the e-print archive
site http://arXiv.org. Through the command \label, we will mark items that we
can later refer to with the command \ref.
1. Create a new document with this code:
\documentclass{book}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Statistics}
\section{Most used packages on
arXiv.org}\label{sec:packages}
The Top Five packages, used on arXiv.org\footnote{according
to the arXMLiv project\label{fn:project}}:
\begin{enumerate}
\item graphicx
\item amssymb \label{item:amssymb}
\item amsmath \label{item:amsmath}
\item epsfig
\item amsfonts
\end{enumerate}
\chapter{Mathematics}
\emph{amsmath}, on position \ref{item:amsmath} of the top
list
in section~\ref{sec:packages} on
page~\pageref{sec:packages},
is indispensable to high-quality mathematical typesetting in
\LaTeX.\emph{amssymb}, on position \ref{item:amssymb},
provides a huge amount of math symbols.
See also the footnote on page~\pageref{fn:project}.
\end{document}
2. Typeset and have a look at the text on page 3:
3. Do you see the question marks? The references are still missing! Typeset
again and compare:
What just happened?
We created cross-references with just three commands: \label marks the
position, \ref prints the number of the element we refer to, and \pageref prints
the page number of that element. Each command takes the name of the element as
argument. Any name may be chosen by us.
We had to Typeset twice because LaTeX needs one run to produce the references
that can be read in during the next compiler run. If LaTeX cannot resolve a
reference, it prints two question marks instead.
Let's have a closer look.
Assigning a key
The command \label{name} assigns the current position to the key name.
Specifically:
If the \label command appeared in ordinary text, then the current sectional
unit, like the chapter or the section, would be assigned.
If the \label would be placed within a numbered environment, that
environment would be assigned to the key.
So, we cannot mark a section within a table environment. To avoid any problem
because of a possible unsuitable positioning, a good rule of thumb is to place the
\label command right after the position we would like to mark. For instance,
place it directly after the corresponding \chapter or after \section—not
before, of course.
In the figure or table environments, \caption is responsible for the numbering.
That's why \label has to be placed after \caption, not before. Therefore,
typical floating environments look like the following:
\begin{figure}[htp]
\centering
\includegraphics{filename}
\caption{Test figure}\label{fig:name}
\end{figure}
Or as follows:
\begin{table}[hbp]
\centering
\caption{table descripion}\label{tab:name}
\begin{tabular}{cc}
…
\end{tabular}
\end{table}
A key may consist of letters, digits, or punctuation characters. Keys are case-
sensitive.
If you write larger documents, the number of keys could become very high.
Imagine, you have a section dealing with fonts and a font table—how to
distinguish their keys? We could prefix them with the type of environment. It has
become common practice to label figures with fig:name, tables with tab:name,
sections with sec:name, and similar in other cases.
Referring to a key
Once a label has been set and given a name, we may refer to that name. For this,
we use \ref{name}: this command prints the number that belongs to name. It
could already be used before the corresponding \label command appears in your
code.
Even though it's that simple, it's powerful. Each time we Typeset a document,
LaTeX checks the keys and reassigns the numbers, responding to all changes. If
LaTeX noticed that labels have been changed, it would inform you that a second
Typeset run would be required to update the corresponding labels. If in doubt
Typeset twice.
Referring to a page
The command \pageref{name} works analogous to \ref, except that it prints the
corresponding page number.
Would all the references stay correct if we changed the section and page
numbers? Let's put it to the test! Insert a section and a page break at the beginning:
\chapter{Statistics}
\section{Introduction}
\newpage
\section{Most used packages on arXiv.org}\label{sec:packages}
Typeset once. LaTeX will compile it, but it will show a message: LaTeX
Warning: Label(s) may have changed. Rerun to get cross-references right .
That's what we shall do! Typeset a second time, now all the numbers have been
correctly adjusted:
Using a reference together with the page number reference, you may write:
See figure~\ref{fig:name} on page~\pageref{fig:name}.
As you know how to define a command, you could make such referencing easier:
\newcommand{\fullref}[1]{\ref{#1} on page~\pageref{#1}}
…
See figure~\fullref{fig:name}.
This way, you would get a full reference like "See figure 4.2 on page 32".
However, if the reference appears on the same page, like the figure, writing out
the page number looks a bit odd. How can we avoid that? The varioref package
provides a way.
Producing intelligent page references
The varioref package offers a command being able to add "on the preceding
page", "on the following page", or on the page number to a reference, depending
on the context.
Time for action – introducing
variable references
We will use the varioref commands, \vref a nd \vpageref , to achieve
enhanced reference texts:
1. Open our current example. Add the package varioref to your preamble:
\usepackage{varioref}
2. Edit the content of the second chapter:
\emph{amsmath}, on position \ref{item:amsmath} of the top
list
in section~\vref{sec:packages}, is indispensable to high-
quality
mathematical typesetting in \LaTeX. \emph{amssymb}, on
position
\ref{item:amssymb}, provides a huge amount of math symbols.
See also the footnote \vpageref{fn:project}.
3. Typeset twice and look at the result:
What just happened?
The command \vref checked the distance to the referenced section. As it's on the
facing page, that is, on the preceding page in a two-sided layout, it wrote "1.2 on
the facing page". Similar for \vpageref, it refers to "the preceding page".
\vref{name} acts in the following way:
If the reference and \label{name} are on the same page, it behaves exactly
like \ref. The page number will not be printed.
If the reference and the corresponding \label are on two successive pages,
\vref prints the referred number and additionally "on the preceding page"
or "on the following page", or "on the facing page". The latter will be chosen
if the document is two-sided, that is, if \label and the reference fall onto a
double-page spread.
Otherwise it will print both \ref and \pageref.
\vpageref is equivalent to \pageref, but behaves like \vref concerning the
page reference.
Even though varioref defines new commands, you may still use the common
\ref and \pageref.
Fine-tuning page references
If label and reference are very close to each other, they would probably fall on
the same page, but not necessarily. In such cases, we usually know if the label
comes before or after the reference. It allows specifying an optional argument to
\vpageref:
see the figure \vpageref[above]{fig:name}
This will print:
"see the figure above" if the figure is on the same page
"see the figure on the page before" if the figure is on the preceding page
Whereas, with the following:
see the footnote \vpageref[below]{fn:name}
This will print:
"see the footnote below" if the footnote is on the same page
"see the footnote on the following page" if the footnote is on the next page
In fact, \vpageref understands two optional arguments. The second optional
argument would be used if the label and reference would fall on different pages.
So, we could even write:
see the figure \vpageref[above figure][figure]{fig:name}
This would print:
"see the above figure" if the figure is on the same page
"see the figure on the page before" if the figure is on the preceding page
Actually, reversing the word order to "above figure" if necessary.
Sounds complicated? Well, your demands might increase over time, requiring
more sophisticated features, so these features might come in handy some day.
Referring to page ranges
varioref offers two more commands:
\vpagerefrange[opt]{key1}{key2}, where key1 and key2 denote a
range (like a sequence of figures from fig:a to fig:c). If both labels fall
onto the same page, the result is the same as with \vpageref. Otherwise, the
output will be a range like "on pages 32-36". opt would be used if both
labels fall onto the current page.
\vpageref [opt]{key1}{key2} is analogous, but similar to \vref: see
figures \vpageref{fig:a}{fig:c} may result in "see figures 4.2 to 4.4
on pages 36-37".
\vref, \vpageref, and \vpagerefrange have been implemented to remove any
space to their left before they insert space of their own. For example, \vref
inserts a nonbreakable space like we did before with ~. If this is not desired, use
starred forms \vref*, \vpageref*, or \vpagerefrange*.
More information regarding customization may be found in the package manual.
Using automatic reference names
Tired of writing figure~\ref{fig:name} and table~\ref{fig:name} again
and again? Wouldn't it be great if LaTeX knew what type is meant by
\ref{name} writing type and number? What if we desire to abbreviate, say,
fig.~\ref{fig:name} in the whole document? The cleverev package eases the
work: it automatically determines the type of cross-reference and the context in
which it's used.
Basically, you could just use \cref instead of \ref or \Cref if you wish to
capitalize. The corresponding range commands are \crefrange and
\Crefrange.
Time for action – referring cleverly
We shall rewrite our first example using cleveref. To verify that the package
acts cleverly, we consciously omit prefixes in key names to \label and \cref.
1. Modify our first example in this way:
\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{cleveref}
\crefname{enumi}{position}{positions}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Statistics}\label{stats}
\section{Most used packages on arXiv.org}\label{packages}
The Top Five packages, used on arXiv.org\footnote{according
to the arXMLiv project\label{project}}:
\begin{enumerate}
\item graphicx
\item amssymb \label{amssymb}
\item amsmath \label{amsmath}
\item epsfig
\item amsfonts
\end{enumerate}
\begin{table}[tp]
\centering
(Identify obsolete packages on CTAN)
\caption{Obsolete packages}\label{obsolete}
\end{table}
\chapter{Mathematics}
\emph{amsmath}, on \cref{amsmath} of the top list in
\cref{packages} of \cref{stats}, is indispensable to high-
quality
Mathematical typesetting in \LaTeX. \emph{amssymb}, on
\cref{amssymb}, provides a huge amount of math symbols.
\Cref{obsolete} shows obsolete and outdated packages that
should be avoided. See also the \cref{project}.
\end{document}
2. Typeset twice and check the references for having the correct names:
What just happened?
As we can see, we never needed to specify which object we refer to. \cref
always chooses the right name and the correct number for us. That's really
comfortable!
We used the command \crefname to tell cleveref which name it should use for
enumerated items. The definition of \crefname is:
\crefname{type}{singular}{plural}
type may be one of chapter, section, figure, table, enumi, equation,
theorem, or many other types we did not encounter yet. The singular version will
be used for single references and the plural version for multiple. If you need
capitalized versions, use \Crefname. So, a typical use may be:
\crefname{figure}{fig.}{figs.}
\Crefname{figure}{Fig.}{Figs.}
To sum up your benefits:
You save much typing.
You could use arbitrary labels. The package fancyref does a similar job
but relies on prefixes like chap, fig, tab, and so on.
If you decide to change wordings, it could be done easily by doing this once
in the preamble, having the desired effect in the whole document.
However, it's recommended to use a prefix like fig: or sec: to distinguish the
kind of referenced object; your code would become more understandable—it's
common.
Combing cleveref and varioref
As cleveref fully supports varioref, you may use both to get the most out of
them. cleveref redefines the commands of varioref to use \cref internally.
So, you could use the good page referencing features of varioref together with
the clever naming automatism!
Just load varioref before cleveref:
\usepackage{varioref}
\usepackage{cleveref}
Now, you may use \vref, \cref, \ref, or the other commands—whichever
seems appropriate.
Referring to labels in other documents
If you write several related documents that refer to each other, you might want to
use references to labels of another document. The package with the short name xr
(standing for eXternal References) implements it. First load the package:
\usepackage{xr}
If you need to refer to sections or environments in an external document called,
say, doc.tex, insert this command into your preamble:
\externaldocument{doc}
This enables you to additionally refer to anything that has been given a label in
doc.tex. You may do this for several documents. If you need to avoid conflicts
when an external document uses the same \label like the main document, declare
a prefix using the optional argument of \externaldocument:
\externaldocument[D-]{doc}
This way, all references from doc.tex would be prefixed by D- and you could
write \ref{D-name} to refer to name in doc.tex. Instead of D- you may choose
any prefix that transforms your labels such that they become unique.
Have a go hero – turning references into hyperlinks
PDF documents offer bookmarks and hyperlink capabilities. How about
exploiting that ourselves? There's an outstanding package offering hyperlink
support; it's called hyperref . Try it: load hyperref right before cleveref. This
order is important for the references to work. Even without any options or
commands, your document will be hyperlinked as much as possible:
All references become hyperlinks. Click any of those numbers to jump to the
referred table, list item, section, or page.
Each footnote marker is a hyperlink to the footnote text. Click it to jump
down.
If you insert \tableofcontents, you will get a bookmark list for the
document, chapters, and sections listed in a navigation bar of you PDF
reader.
hyperref can do even more for you: linking index entries to text passages, back-
referencing of bibliography entries, and more. You can finely customize the
behavior using options, for instance, choosing color or frames for hyperlinks. So,
you could keep that valuable package in mind. In Chapter 11, Enhancing Your
Documents Further, we shall return to this topic.
Pop quiz
1. For a reference to a table, at which position should the \label be placed?
a. Before \caption
b. After \caption
c. After \end{table}
2. What should we do if we see two unexpected consecutive question marks in
the output?
a. Load the hyperref package.
b. Look out for an undefined command. Check the syntax at that point.
c. Typeset again. If the question marks stay, check the key to the reference at
that point.
Summary
In this chapter, we learned how to reference chapters, sections, footnotes, and
environments by their number or by the number of the corresponding page.
We even got to know some ways of clever and context dependent referencing.
In the next chapter, we shall deal with lists, which consist mainly of references:
table of contents, lists of figures and tables, and bibliographies.
Chapter 7. Listing Content and
References
LaTeX makes it very easy to create lists for many purposes. For example, we've
seen that just the simple command \tableofcontents creates a nice looking
table of contents. Let's just call it the TOC from now on. It simply takes the
entries from the headings and from the numbers of the pages they fall on.
In this chapter, we will perform the following:
Decide which headings at which numbering level go to the TOC
Create and customize a list of figures (LOF) and a list of tables (LOT)
Insert arbitrary text and commands into the TOC and into other lists
Cite books and create a bibliography
Create an index
Modify the headings for all those lists
We shall start with the content.
Customizing the table of contents
Besides just calling \tableofcontents to get a pre-designed list of content,
LaTeX provides basic ways to modify it. Let's use some.
Time for action – refining an
extensive table of contents
We shall build the frame of a document containing some headings. We will
modify the automatically created table of contents to be finer and to contain
additional entries.
In Chapter 3, Designing Pages, we saw the effect of \tableofcontents. The
entries have been collected from the headings. We shall use this down to the
subsubsection level.
Then we shall extend the TOC further. We will manually add entries for some
headings:
1. Create a new document with the following code:
\documentclass{book}
\setcounter{tocdepth}{3}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\part{First Part}
\chapter*{Preface}
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Preface}
\chapter{First main chapter}
\section{A section}
\section{Another section}
\subsection{A smaller section}
\subsubsection[Deeper level]{This section has an even deeper
level}
\chapter{Second main chapter}
\part{Second part}
\chapter{Third main chapter}
\appendix
\cleardoublepage
\addtocontents{toc}{\bigskip}
\addcontentsline{toc}{part}{Appendix}
\chapter{Glossary}
\chapter{Symbols}
\end{document}
2. Typeset. The first page will just show Contents but no entries.
3. Typeset a second time. Now the table of contents will be displayed:
What just happened?
We structured a document using several sectioning commands. In the first run,
LaTeX read all of our sectioning commands and created a file with the extension
.toc. This file contains the commands and the titles for all entries in the table of
contents. During the first run, that file didn't exist yet, thus the TOC remained
empty.
During the second run, the command \tableofcontents read the .toc file and
printed the TOC.
In this example, we raised the depth of the TOC by one level. We added a
chapter-like entry for the preface and inserted a part-like heading showing the
beginning of the appendix, using \addcontentsline . Through \addtocontents
, we inserted some space before the latter heading. Let's look at these commands
in detail.
Adjusting the depth of the TOC
These are the standard sectioning commands and their so called TOC level:
Command
Level
\part
-1 (book and report class)
\chapter
0 (not available in article class)
\section
1
\subsection
2
\subsubsection
3
\paragraph
4
\subparagraph
5
In the book and in the report class, LaTeX creates TOC entries until level 2, in
t h e article class until level 3. In a book, this means, for example,
\subsubsection doesn't generate a TOC entry. There's a variable representing
the level, namely, \tocdepth. It's an integer variable which we call a counter .
To tell LaTeX to include subsubsections in the TOC, we would have to raise this
counter. There are two basic ways to adjust a counter value:
\setcounter{name}{n} specifies an integer value of n for the counter name
\addtocounter{name}{n} adds the integer value of n to value of the
counter name. n may be negative
Thus, the following command would ensure that even \subparagraph gives a
TOC entry:
\setcounter{tocdepth}{5}
Using \addcounter instead you may raise or lower the level without knowing its
number.
Note
In contrast to commands, counter names don't begin with a backslash.
Shortening entries
As you have already learned in Chapter 3, you may choose a text for the TOC
that's different to the heading in the body text. Each sectioning command
understands an optional argument for the TOC entry, which is especially useful if
you wish to use very long headings, but a shorter TOC entry would be sufficient.
In our example, we did this by:
\subsubsection[Deeper level]{This section has an even deeper
level}
The body text shows the long heading while the TOC shows the short one.
Running titles in the headings would use the short entry as well, as the space in
headings is very limited.
Adding entries manually
Starred commands like \chapter* and \section* don't produce a TOC entry. In
our example, we did that manually using this command:
\addcontentsline{file extension}{sectional unit}{text}
This command can be used in several contexts: the file extension may be:
toc for the table of contents file
lof for the list of figures file
lot for the list of tables file
Or, any another extension of such a file type known to LaTeX.
The sectional unit determines the formatting of the entry. Specify chapter to
create an entry that's formatted like normal chapter entries and similar for other
sectional units like part, section, or subsection.
The third argument contains the text for the entry. This text may contain
commands. Do you remember the \protect command? For a macro inside the
entries, it's usually a good idea to write \protect right before it.
You may insert text or commands more directly with:
\addtocontents{file extension}{entry}
In contrary to \addcontentsline, the argument entry is written directly to the
file without any additional formatting. You may choose any formatting you like.
This command may even be used for some customization, for example:
\addtocontents{toc}{\protect\enlargethispage{\baselineskip}}
extends the text height such that one additional line fits to the contents page.
\addtocontents{toc}{\protect\newpage} causes a page break in the
TOC. For instance, if the automatic page break happens after a chapter entry
and before the following section entries, you might wish to force a page
break already before the chapter entry.
\addtocontents{toc}{\protect\thispagestyle{fancy}} changes the
page style of the current TOC page to fancy. As the first page of a chapter is
of plain style by default, the first page of the TOC would be plain as well,
even if you specified \pagestyle{fancy}. This command overrides it.
Place such commands where they should be effective. To affect the first TOC
page, place it at the beginning of your document. To cause a page break before a
certain chapter, place it right before the corresponding \chapter call.
Creating and customizing lists of
figures
As briefly mentioned in the previous chapter, the two commands for creating lists
of figures and tables are \listoffigures and \listoftables . Depending on
the class, they produce a fine list of all captions together with the figure
respectively the table number and the corresponding page numbers. As with the
TOC, all can be done automatically. However, we may use the same techniques,
like with the TOC, to customize the other lists. Let's try that.
Time for action – creating a list of
diagrams
Suppose all of our figures are diagrams. We shall avoid the term figure and we
will typeset a list of diagrams:
1. Open our current example. Add these lines to your preamble:
\renewcommand{\figurename}{Diagram}
\renewcommand{\listfigurename}{List of Diagrams}
2. Right after \tableofcontents, add:
\listoffigures
3. Add a diagram somewhere in Chapter 1:
\begin{figure}
\centering
\fbox{Diagram placeholder}
\caption{Enterprize Organizational Chart}
\end{figure}
4. In the second part, in the third chapter, we'd like to add network design
diagrams. Let's mark that in the LOF and let the diagrams follow:
\addtocontents{lof}{Network Diagrams:}
\begin{figure}
\centering
\fbox{Diagram placeholder}
\caption{Network overview}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}
\centering
\fbox{Diagram placeholder}
\caption{WLAN Design}
\end{figure}
5. Typeset twice to get the document and the list:
What just happened?
We renamed the figures and the list heading by redefining LaTeX macros. At the
end of the chapter, you will get a list of names used by LaTeX classes that you
may redefine.
Like with the TOC, we used the command \addtocontents ; this time to insert a
bold heading into the .lof file where LaTeX collects the captions. It works
similar to the TOC.
Creating a list of tables
You already know all you need to create and customize a list of tables! The file,
where LaTeX collects the captions of the tables, has the extension .lot, and that's
why the first argument of \addtocontents would be lot. Everything works
analogous, like \listoftables, \tablename, and \listtablename.
Using packages for customization
Besides the described simple methods, there are packages providing
sophisticated features for customizing the table of contents and the lists of figures
and tables:
tocloft gives extensive control over the typography of TOC, LOF, and LOT.
You may even define new kinds of such lists.
titletoc offers convenient handling of entries and is the companion to
titlesec, a very good package for customizing sectioning headings.
multitoc offers a layout in two or more columns using the multicol package.
minitoc can create small TOCs for each part, chapter, or section.
tocbibind can automatically add bibliography, index, TOC, LOF, and LOT to
the table of contents. It's even capable of using numbered headings instead of
the default unnumbered ones.
Let's continue with the announced index and the bibliography.
Generating an index
Extensive documents often contain an index. It is a list of words or phrases and
page numbers pointing to where related material can be found in the document. In
contrary to a full-text search feature, the index provides selective pointers to
relevant information.
While it's our turn to identify and to mark the words for the index, LaTeX will
collect this information and is able to typeset the index for us.
Time for action – marking words and
building the index
Suppose our example would contain information about an enterprise and its
structure and further about its network structure and design. We shall mark places
in the text where these concepts occur. Finally, we will order LaTeX to typeset
the index:
1. Go back to our example. In the preamble, load the index package and add the
command to create the index:
\usepackage{index}
\makeindex
2. In the caption of our enterprise diagram, index this point with the keyword
enterprise:
\caption{\index{enterprise}Enterprise Organizational Chart}
3. In the third chapter, which contains our diagrams, index by the keyword
network:
\index{network}
4. Directly before \end{document}, create an entry for the index for the table
of contents. To ensure that it shows the correct page number, end the page
before:
\clearpage
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Index}
5. In the next line, order LaTeX to typeset the index:
\printindex
6. If you're using TeXworks, choose MakeIndex instead of pdfLaTeX in the
drop-down box next to the typeset button. Then click typeset. If you use
another editor, use its MakeIndex feature or type the following at the
command prompt in the document directory:
makeindex documentname
7. Switch back to pdfLaTeX, Typeset, and look at the last page:
What just happened?
We loaded the index package, which improves LaTeX's built-in indexing
capabilities. Alternatively, you could use the makeidx package which is part of
standard LaTeX. The command \makeindex prepared the index. Both commands
must be put into the preamble.
The command \index takes just one argument, namely, the word or the phrase to
be indexed. This will be written to a file with the extension .idx. If you look into
this file, you will find lines like the following:
\indexentry {enterprise}{9}
\indexentry {network}{15}
These stand for the index entries and the corresponding page numbers.
The external program makeindex takes that .idx file and produces an .ind file.
The latter consists of LaTeX code for the index creation. Specifically, it contains
the index list environment together with the items and looks like the following:
\begin{theindex}
\item enterprise, 9
\indexspace
\item network, 15
\end{theindex}
More complex indexes may contain subitems, page ranges, and references to other
items. Let's see how to produce such an index.
Defining index entries and subentries
We already created simple index entries with:
\index{phrase}
Subentries are produced by specifying the main entry followed by the subentry,
separated by an exclamation mark, for example:
\index{network!overview}
Also subentries may have subentries; just use another ! symbol, for example:
\index{enterprise!organization}
\index{enterprise!organization!sales}
\index{enterprise!organization!controlling}
\index{enterprise!organization!operation}
Up to three levels are possible.
Specifying page ranges
If several pages deal with the same concept, you may specify a page range for the
index entry. Suffix the entry with |( where the range starts and add |) where it
ends, as follows:
\index{network|(}
at the beginning of the network chapter and:
\index{network|)}
at the end of this chapter. This results in an entry of the form Network, 15-17.
Using symbols and macros in the index
makeindex sorts the entries alphabetically. If you would like to include symbols
in the index, for example, Greek letters, chemical formulas, or math symbols, you
could face the problem of integrating them into the sorting. For this purpose,
\index understands a sort key. Use this key as prefix for the entry, separated by
an @ symbol, for instance:
\index{Gamma@$\Gamma$}
Using macros for index entries is generally not really recommended. Macros
would be sorted according to the macro name including the backslash, though it
would be expanded when the index is typeset. Imagine, you've got a macro
\group standing for TeX Users Group. If you write the following, then the entry
TeX Users Group would be treated like \group in the sorting and won't appear
among the entries beginning with T:
\index{\group}
However, you could repair such issues by adding a sort key:
\index{TeX@\group}
\index{schon@sch\"{o}n}
What if you wish to use the symbols |, @, and ! within index entries? Quote them
by using a preceding ":
\index{exclamation ("!)!loud}
And don't worry, " itself may be used within verbatim text as follows:
\index{quote (\verb|""|)}
Referring to other index entries
Different words may stand for the same concept. For such cases, it's possible to
add a cross-reference to the main phrase without a page number. Adding the code
|see{entry list} achieves that, for example:
\index{network|see{WLAN}}
\index{WLAN}
As such references don't print a page number, their position in the text doesn't
matter. You could collect them in one place of your document.
Fine-tuning page numbers
If an index entry refers to several pages, you might want to emphasize one page
number to indicate it as the primary reference. You could define a command for
emphasizing as follows:
\newcommand{\main}[1]{\emph{#1}}
And for the index entry, add a pipe symbol and the command name:
\index{WLAN|main}
Thus, the corresponding page number would be emphasized. Simply writing
\index{WLAN|emph} or \index{WLAN|texbf} is possible as well. However,
defining your own macro is more consistent—remember the concept of separating
form and content.
Designing the index layout
If we extend our example document with the aforementioned example commands,
\printindex gives us this layout, containing subentries, ranges, references, and
emphasized entries:
LaTeX provides some index styles called latex (the default), gind, din, and iso.
To use another style, specify it using the –s option of the makeindex program, for
example:
makeindex –s iso documentname
If you typeset after this call, the index layout would be changed to:
You could even define your own styles. To learn more about indexing and
makeindex, use texdoc at the command prompt:
texdoc index
texdoc makeindex
Tip
Though it seems natural to generate the index while writing the document, this
might lead to inconsistencies in the index. It's recommendable first to finish
writing and afterwards to work out what should appear in the index.
Creating a bibliography
Especially in scientific documents, a list of references or bibliography is very
common. We shall work out how to typeset a bibliography and how to refer to its
entries.
Time for action – citing texts and
listing the references
Using LaTeX's standard features, we shall create a small list of references
containing a book and an article by Donald E. Knuth, the creator of TeX. In our
body text, we will refer to both:
1. Create a new document as follows:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\section*{Recommended texts}
To study \TeX\ in depth, see \cite{DK86}. For writing math
texts, see \cite{DK89}.
\begin{thebibliography}{8}
\bibitem{DK86} D.E. Knuth, \emph{The {\TeX}book}, 1986
\bibitem{DK89} D.E. Knuth, \emph{Typesetting Concrete
Mathematics}, 1989
\end{thebibliography}
\end{document}
2. Typeset and view the output:
What just happened?
We used an environment called thebibliography to typeset the list of references,
which is similar to a description list as we've seen in Chapter 4, Creating Lists.
Each item of this list has got a key. For citing in the body text, we referred to that
key using the \cite command.
Let's look at these commands in detail.
Using the standard bibliography environment
LaTeX's standard environment for bibliographies has the following form:
\begin{thebibliography}{widest label}
\bibitem[label]{key} author, title, year etc.
\bibitem…
…
\end{thebibliography}
Each item is specified using the command \bibitem. This command requires a
mandatory argument determining the key. We may simply refer to this key by
\cite{key} or \cite{key1,key2}. \cite accepts an optional argument stating
a page range, for example, \cite[p.\,18--20]{key}. You may choose a label
by the optional argument of \bibitem. If no label has been given, LaTeX will
number the items consecutively in square brackets, as we've seen.
Using labels, the environment could look as follows:
\begin{thebibliography}{Knuth89}
\bibitem[Knuth86]{DK86} D.E. Knuth, \emph{The {\TeX}book}, 1986
\bibitem[Knuth89]{DK89} D.E. Knuth, \emph{Typesetting Concrete
Mathematics}, 1989
\end{thebibliography}
And the output would then be as follows:
As you can see, the output of \cite has been automatically adjusted to the new
labels.
Tip
The cite package offers compressed and sorted lists of numerical citations, like
[2,4-6], and further formatting options for in-text citations.
The mandatory item of the environment should contain the widest label for the
alignment of the items. So, for instance, if you have more than 9 but fewer than a
100 items, you may write two digits into the argument.
Using bibliography databases with BibTeX
Manually creating the bibliography is laborious. Especially, if you use references
in several documents, it would be beneficial to use a database and let a program
create the bibliography for you. This sounds more complicated than it really is.
We will try this.
Time for action – creating and using a
BibTeX database
We shall create a separate database file containing the references of our previous
example. We will modify our example to use that database. To make this database
usable, we have to call the external program BibTeX :
1. Create a new document. Begin with writing the entry for the TeXbook:
@book{DK86,
author = "D.E. Knuth",
title = "The {\TeX}book",
publisher = "Addison Wesley",
year = 1986
}
2. For the next entry, that is, the article, we will specify even more fields:
@article{DK89,
author = "D.E. Knuth",
title = "Typesetting Concrete Mathematics",
journal = "TUGboat",
volume = 10,
number = 1,
pages = "31--36",
month = apr,
year = 1989
}
3. Save the file and give it the name tex.bib. Open our example tex document
and modify it as follows:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\section*{Recommended texts}
To study \TeX\ in depth, see \cite{DK86}. For writing math
texts, see \cite{DK89}.
\bibliographystyle{alpha}
\bibliography{tex}
\end{document}
4. Typeset one time with pdfLaTeX.
5. If you're using TeXworks, choose BibTeX instead of pdfLaTeX, present in
the drop-down box next to the Typeset button, and then click on Typeset. If
you write with another editor, use its BibTeX option or type at the command
prompt in the document directory as follows:
bibtex documentname
6. Typeset twice with pdfLaTeX. Here's the result:
What just happened?
We created a text file containing all bibliography entries. In the next section, we
shall look at its format in depth. In our document, we chose a style called alpha ,
which sorts entries according to the author's name and uses a shortcut consisting
of author and year as label. Then we told LaTeX to load the bibliography file
called tex. The extension .bib has been automatically added.
Afterwards, we called the external program BibTeX. This program knows from
the example .tex file that tex.bib has to be translated. Thus out of this .bib
file, it creates a .bbl file, which contains a LaTeX thebibliography
environment and the final entries.
Finally, we had to Typeset twice, to ensure that all cross-references are correct.
Though we need some more steps to generate the bibliography, there are benefits:
we don't need to fine-tune each entry. We can easily switch between styles. We
can then reuse the .bib file.
So, let's look at the .bib file format. It supports various entry types like book and
article. Furthermore, these entries contain fields like author, title, and year.
Let's first look at the supported fields, and afterwards we shall talk about the
different kinds of entries.
Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
Here's a list of the standard fields. Some fields are common, some are rarely used
—we just list them in alphabetical order, following the BibTeX documentation:
address
Usually the address of the publisher. At least for small publishers, this information might be
useful.
annote
An annotation, not used by the standard bibliography styles. Other styles or macros might
use this.
author
The name(s) of the author(s).
booktitle
The title of a book, if you cite a part of that. For a book, use the title field instead.
chapter
A chapter number.
crossref
The key of the database entry being cross referenced.
edition
The edition (First, Second, and alike) of a book. Commonly it's capitalized.
editor
The name(s) of the editor(s).
howpublished
The way of publishing, especially if it's unusual. Capitalize the first word.
institution
Could be a sponsoring institution.
journal
A journal name; you may use common abbreviations.
key
Used for alphabetizing, cross-referencing, and labeling if the author information is missing.
Don't confuse it with the key used in the \cite command which corresponds to the
beginning of the entry.
month
The month in which the work was published or written if it's not yet published. Usually a
three letter abbreviation is used.
note
Any additional useful information. Capitalize the first word.
number
The number of a journal or another kind of work in a series.
organization
Might be a sponsoring organization.
pages
A page number or range of page numbers, like 12-18 or 22+.
publisher
The name of the publisher.
school
Could be the name of the school where the document was written.
series
The name of a series of books or its number of a multi-volume set.
title
The title of the work.
type
The type of the publication.
volume
The volume of a journal or multi-volume book.
year
The year of the publication or the year when it was written if it hasn't been published yet.
Commonly four numerals are used, such as 2010.
You may use any fields possibly supported by other styles and ignored by
standard styles.
Note
Referring to Internet resources
Today we often refer to online sources. To put Internet addresses into BibTeX
fields, use the \url command of the url or hyperref package, for example,
howpublished = {\url{http://texblog.net}}. Some styles offer a url field.
Understanding BibTeX entry types
Firstly, you decide which type of entry you want to add and then you fill in the
fields. Different types may support different fields. Some fields are required,
some are optional and may be omitted, and some are simply ignored.
Usually the name of the entry tells you its meaning. These are the standard entry
types and their required and optional fields, according to the BibTeX reference:
Type
Required fields
Optional fields
article
author, title, journal,
year
volume, number, pages, month, note
book
author or editor, title,
publisher, year
volume or number, series, address, edition, month, note
booklet
title
author, howpublished, address, month, year, note
conference
author, title, booktitle,
year
editor, volume or number, series, pages, address, month,
organization, publisher, note
manual
title
author, organization, address, edition, month, year, note
mastersthesis
author, title, school, year
type, address, month, note
misc
none
author, title, howpublished, month, year, note
phdthesis
author, title, school, year
type, address, month, note
proceedings
title, year
editor, volume or number, series, address, month,
organization, publisher, note
techreport
author, title,
institution, year
type, number, address, month, note
unpublished
author, title, note
month, year
Have a look at the BibTeX reference for more details:
texdoc bibtex
If no other entry fits, choose misc. It doesn't matter if you use capitals or small
letters; @ARTICLE is understood the same as @article. As the example showed,
entries have the following form:
@entrytype{keyword,
fieldname = {field text},
fieldname = {field text},
…
}
Use braces around the field text. Straight quotes instead like in "field text"
are supported as well. For numbers, you may omit the braces.
Tip
Some styles change the capitalization, which might lead to undesired lowercase
letters. To protect letters or words from becoming lowercase, put additional
braces around them. Preferably around a word instead of just the letter to keep
ligatures and kerning improvement, that is, {WAL} looks better than {W}AL as TeX
moves an A closer to a preceding W. Separating braces hampers TeX's micro-
typographic improvements.
Choosing the bibliography style
Standard styles are as follows:
plain
Arabic numbers for the labels, sorted according to the names of the authors. The number is written in
square brackets, which also appear with \cite.
unsrt
No sorting. All entries appear like they were cited in the text, otherwise it looks like plain.
alpha
Sorting is according to the names of the authors, the labels are shortcuts made of the authors name
and the year of publication. Also here, square brackets are used.
abbrv
Like plain, but first names and other field entries are abbreviated.
The style should be chosen after \begin{document} and before \bibliography.
You may write \bibliographystyle right before \bibliography to keep it
together.
There are more styles available in TeX distributions and on the Internet. For
instance, the natbib package provides styles and the capability to cite in a nice
author-year scheme. This package further adds some fields, like ISBN, ISSN, and
URL.
Tip
The package biblatex provides a complete reimplementation of the bibliographic
features offered by BibTeX and LaTeX. Without learning the BibTeX language,
you could create new styles just by using your LaTeX knowledge.
Listing references without citing
BibTeX takes only those references from the database that are cited in the text,
and prints them out. However, you may specify keys for references, which should
appear nevertheless the following for a single reference. Just write the following
for a single reference:
\nocite{key}
Or write the following to list the complete database
\nocite{*}
Changing the headings
Like in our diagram example, if you don't like the heading Contents, you could
easily change it. The text of the heading is stored in the text macro
\contentsname. So, just redefine it as follows:
\renewcommand{\contentsname}{Table of Contents}
Here's a list of all those headings:
List
Heading command
Default heading
Table of contents
\contentsname
Contents
List of figures
\listfigurename
List of figures
List of tables
\listtablename
List of tables
Bibliography
\bibname in book and report
\refname in article
Bibliography in book and report
References in article
Index
\indexname
Index
Furthermore, as promised, here's a list of further macros for names used by
LaTeX:
Name
Command
Default value
figure
\figurename
Figure
table
\tablename
Table
part
\partname
Part
chapter
\chaptername
Chapter
abstract
\abstractname
Abstract
appendix
\appendixname
Appendix
Not really surprising! Using name macros is especially useful when another
language will be used. For instance, the babel package takes a language option
and redefines all those name macros according to those languages.
However, they are also useful to choose abbreviations like Fig. or Appendices
instead of Appendix.
Have a go hero – using natbib
Load the already mentioned natbib package and try its new styles plainnat,
abbrvnat, and unsrtnat, for instance:
\usepackage{natbib}
\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
Our example would change as follows:
natbib reimplemented the \cite command and offers variations to it, with the
main purpose of supporting author-year citations. It works with most other
available styles. natbib introduces the citation command \citet for textual
citations and the command \citep for parenthetical citations. There are starred
variants printing the full author list, and optional arguments allow adding text
before and after.
Check out the documentation if you would like to benefit from this fine package.
Pop quiz
1. Which of these commands should be used for adding unnumbered headings to
the table of contents?
a. \addtocontents
b. \addcontentsline
c. \contentsname
2. Which of the following indexing commands has to come before
\begin{document}?
a. \index
b. \printindex
c. \makeindex
3. Which command generates the bibliography?
a. \bibliography
b. \bibliographystyle
c. \bibitem
Summary
In this chapter, we dealt with many kinds of lists. Specifically, we learned about:
Generating and customizing the table of contents and lists of figures and
tables
Producing an index pointing to relevant information for keywords and
phrases
Creating bibliographies, both manually and using a bibliography database
These lists are intended to guide the reader to the information he's/she's looking
for; they aren't just for listing and summarizing. That's why the headings of the list
of figures and the list of tables usually don't appear in the TOC, as they commonly
directly follow the TOC. Sometimes there's even the strange requirement to list
the table of contents within itself. If you are not sure with a design or a
requirement, have a look at a good book in your special field, to see how
exemplary tables of contents, lists, and indexes might look.
In the next chapter, we shall look at scientific writing in depth.
Chapter 8. Typing Math Formulas
Chapter 1, Getting started with LaTeX, claimed that LaTeX offers excellent
quality for mathematical typesetting. Now it's time to prove this.
To make the most of LaTeX's capabilities, we shall learn how to perform the
following:
Writing basic formulas
Embedding formulas within text and text within formulas
Centering and numbering equations
Aligning multi-line equations
Typesetting math symbols such as roots, operators, Greek letters, and arrows
Building fractions
Stacking expressions
Building matrices
That's a great undertaking—let's tackle it!
Writing basic formulas
LaTeX knows three general modes:
The paragraph mode: The text is typeset as a sequence of words in lines,
paragraphs, and pages. That's what we used until now.
The left-to-right mode: The text is also considered to be a sequence of
words, but LaTeX typesets it from left to right without breaking the line. For
instance, the argument of \mbox will be typeset in this mode; that's why
\mbox prevents hyphenation.
The math mode: Letters are treated as math symbols. That's why they're
typeset in italic shape, which is common for variables. A lot of symbols can
be used, most of them exclusively in this mode. Such symbols are roots, sum
signs, relation signs, math accents, arrows, and various delimiters like
brackets and braces. Space characters between letters and symbols are
ignored. Instead, the spacing depends on the type of symbols—distances to
relation signs are different from distances to opening or closing delimiters.
This mode is required for all math expressions.
Now we shall enter the math mode for the first time.
Time for action – discussing
quadratic equations and roots
Our first small math text shall deal with the solutions of quadratic equations. We
need to typeset formulas with constants, variables, superscripts for the square,
and subscripts for the solutions. The solution itself needs a root symbol. Finally,
we will use cross-references to formulas.
1. Start a new document. For now, we don't need any package:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\section*{Quadratic equations}
2. State the quadratic equation with its conditions. Use an equation
environment for it. Surround small pieces of math within text by \( … \):
The quadratic equation
\begin{equation}
\label{quad}
ax^2 + bx + c = 0,
\end{equation}
where \( a, b \) and \( c \) are constants and \( a \neq 0
\),
has two solutions for the variable \( x \):
3. Use another equation for the solutions. The command for the square root is
\sqrt. The command for a fraction is \frac:
\begin{equation}
\label{root}
x_{1,2} = \frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2a}.
\end{equation}
4. Let's introduce the discriminant and discuss the case zero. To get an
unnumbered displayed equation, we surround the formula with \[ … \]:
If the \emph{discrimimant} \( \Delta \) with
\[
\Delta = b^2 - 4ac
\]
is zero, then the equation (\ref{quad}) has a double
solution: (\ref{root}) becomes
\[
x = - \frac{b}{2a}.
\]
\end{document}
5. Typeset twice and look at the result:
What just happened?
Just as we said in Chapter 1, writing formulas also looks a lot like programming.
However, this chapter will help you master it, and the results are worth the effort.
The formulas have been built with commands: there are commands with
arguments, like for roots and fractions, and simple commands for symbols, like
for the Greek letter. Most symbols have to be within a math environment and don't
simply work within normal text.
The equation environment created a displayed formula; that formula has been
horizontally centered, some vertical space has been added before and after,
further these formulas are consecutively numbered.
However, \[ … \] and \( … \) are also, in truth, environments. Let's sort this
out.
Embedding math expressions within text
LaTeX provides the math environment in-text formulas:
\begin{math}
expression
\end{math}
Since it's very laborious to write this environment for each small expression or
symbol, LaTeX offers an alias that's doing the same:
\(
expression
\)
You may write it without line breaks, such as \(expression\).
A third way is by using a shortcut, coming from TeX:
$expression$
A disadvantage of the latter is that the commands for beginning and ending the
math environment are the same, which may easily lead to errors. However, it's
much easier to type, which may be the reason why it's still popular among LaTeX
users.
Tip
\( … \) might cause problems in moving arguments like in headings. To prevent
any such problems, just load the package fixltx2e , which fixes this as well as
other issues.
Displaying formulas
For displayed formulas, which have to be centered, LaTeX offers the
displaymath environment:
\begin{displaymath}
expression
\end{displaymath}
The effect of this environment is that the paragraph will be ended, some vertical
space follows, then the centered formula plus the following vertical space. As
this math environment takes care of the spacing, don't leave empty lines before
and after it! This would cause additional vertical space because of the
superfluous paragraph breaks.
Also for this environment there's a shortcut. We already used it:
\[
expression
\]
In this case, putting the shortcuts \[ and \] on separate lines commonly improves
the readability as the formula is also kind of displayed in the source code.
There's also a TeX low level command:
$$
expression
$$
However, it's strongly recommended to use \[ … \], because this LaTeX
environment handles vertical spacing better.
For the rest of this chapter, all pieces of code use math mode. Either we explicitly
use a math environment or we imagine that we are already in math mode, for short
pieces of code.
Numbering equations
Equations and formulas in general may be numbered. However, this applies only
to displayed formulas. The equation environment is responsible for this:
\begin{equation}
\label{key}
expression
\end{equation}
It looks similar to displaymath but numbered this time. The number will be
displayed in parentheses on the right side of the equation.
Adding subscripts and superscripts
As exponents and indexes are frequently used, there are very short commands for
typesetting them, for example, _ gives an index or subscript, ^ produces an
exponent or superscript. Use braces to mark the concerned expression. So, the
common forms are as follows:
{expression}_{subscript}
And:
{expression}^{superscript}
This may be nested. If you use subscripts and superscripts to the same expression,
the order of ^ and _ is not important. In the case of single letters, numerals, or
symbols, you can omit the braces. Let's look at an example:
\[ x_1^2 + x_2^2 = 1, \quad 2^{2^x} = 64 \]
Extracting roots
Our example contained a square root: \sqrt{value}. As there are roots of higher
order, this command accepts an optional argument for the order. The complete
definition is:
\sqrt[order]{value}
The size of the root symbol will be automatically adjusted to the height and the
width of the value expression. Roots may be nested. Both can be seen in this
example:
\sqrt[64]{x} = \sqrt{\sqrt{\sqrt{\sqrt{\sqrt{\sqrt{x}}}}}}
Writing fractions
Within text formulas, you may just write / to denote fractions, such as \(
(a+b)/2 \). For larger fractions, there's the \frac command:
\frac{numerator}{denumerator}
This command may also be used for in-text formulas. However, the line spacing
could increase.
\[ \frac{n(n+1)}{2}, \quad \frac{\frac{\sqrt{x}+1}{2}-x}{y^2} \]
Greek letters
Mathematicians like to use Greek letters, for instance, to denote constants. To get
a lowercase Greek letter, just write the name with a backslash for the command.
Here are the lowercase Greek letters with their corresponding LaTeX commands:
For some letters, variants are available:
As the omicron just looks like an o, there's no command for it. It's similar for most
uppercase Greek letters, which are equal to Roman letters. The remaining
uppercase Greek letters are produced as follows:
For upright Greek letters, you may use the upgreek package.
Script letters
For the twenty-six uppercase letters A, B, C, … , Z, there's a calligraphic shape,
produced by \mathcal:
\[ \mathcal{A}, \mathcal{B}, \mathcal{C}, \ldots, \mathcal{Z} \]
Note
There are packages offering different calligraphic fonts, such as zapfino and xits.
Producing an ellipsis
You already know \ldots for a low ellipsis. It also works in math mode. We use
the low ellipsis mainly between letters and commas. Between operation and
relation symbols, a centered ellipsis is commonly used. Furthermore, a matrix
may require a vertical ellipsis. Here's how all of them may be produced:
Comparing in-line formulas to displayed formulas
Writing formulas in-line saves space and allows fluent explanations. This is
recommendable for short math expressions within text.
Formulas in the displayed style are outstanding; they are centered and require
more space. Furthermore, they can be numbered and you may refer to them using
the \label and \ref techniques that you learned in Chapter 5, Creating Tables
and Inserting Pictures.
Choose the style that is optimal for the readability of your text.
Changing the font, style, and size
In Chapter 2, Formatting Words, Lines, and Paragraphs , we learned how to
modify the font of common text. There are further commands changing the font
style in math mode:
Though letters in math mode are italic, they are considered to be separate
symbols, which results in a different spacing than that of an italic word. For
instance, in math mode, fi may be the product of the variables f and i, but not the
ligature fi. Compare:
\textit{Definition}, \(Definition\)
Also, \mathit treats the argument as text in italic math font. So, for text within
formulas, use a text or math font command, or even better: use \text{…} of
amsmath—we will return to this very soon.
If you wish to switch to bold typeface for a complete math expression, you can
use the declaration \boldmath before the expression, that is, already outside math
mode. The declaration \unboldmath switches back to the normal typeface. The
latter has to be used outside math mode as well.
To make parts of a formula bold, you can switch to the left-to-right mode by
\mbox and by using \boldmath in its argument.
Four math styles are available, determining the way of typesetting and the font
size:
Style
Command
Meaning
display
\displaystyle
Default for letters and symbols in displayed formulas
text
\textstyle
Default for letters and symbols within in-text formulas
script
\scriptstyle
Smaller font size, used for subscripts and for superscripts
scriptscript
\scriptscriptstyle
Even smaller font size, for nested script style
T h e textstyle differs from the displaystyle in mainly two ways; in
textstyle, variable sized symbols are smaller and subscripts and superscripts
are usually placed beside the expression instead of below and above,
respectively. Otherwise the font size is the same.
LaTeX switches the style automatically; if you write a simple exponent, it will be
typeset in script style, that is, with a smaller font size.
You may force a desired style using one of the commands in the aforementioned
table. This allows you, for instance, to:
Type formulas within the text exactly like they would appear in a displayed
formula: bigger fraction, bigger sum signs, further subscripts are set below,
and superscripts are set above. Note, all of this increases the line spacing.
Write exponents or indexes with bigger symbols.
Customizing displayed formulas
There are two options that modify the way the formulas are displayed:
fleqn
"left equation
numbers"
This causes all displayed formulas to be aligned at the left margin.
leqno
"left equation
numbers"
All numbered formulas would get the numbers on the left side instead of the
right.
Often, formulas are not displayed just standalone. We may encounter situations
where:
A formula is too long to fit on one line
Several formulas are listed row-by-row
An equation shall be transformed step-by-step
A chain of inequalities spans over more than one line
Several formulas shall be aligned at relation symbols
We may also encounter similar situations, where we have to write multi-line
formulas, often with some kind of alignment. The amsmath package offers
specialized environments for nearly every such need.
Time for action – typesetting multi-
line formulas
We shall use the amsmath package to experiment with a very long formula and
with a system of equations:
1. Start a new document on an A6 paper and load the amsmath package.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[a6paper]{geometry}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\begin{document}
2. Use the multline environment to span a long equation over three lines. End
the lines with \\:
\begin{multline}
\sum = a + b + c + d + e \\
+ f + g + h + i + j + \\
+ k + l + m + n
\end{multline}
\end{document}
3. Typeset and look at the formula:
4. Now we handle a system of equations. Use the gather environment to add
these equations. Again, end lines with \\:
\begin{gather}
x + y + z = 0 \\
y - z = 1
\end{gather}
5. Typeset and look at the equations:
6. Commonly, equation systems are aligned at the equal sign. Let's do this. Use
the & symbol to mark the point that we wish to align:
\begin{align}
x + y + z &= 0 \\
y - z&= 1
\end{align}
7. Typeset; now the equations are aligned as desired:
What just happened?
Because we loaded the amsmath package, we have access to several multi-line
math environments.
Each line in such an environment is ended by \\, except the last one. The alignment
depends on the environment, as we've seen:
multline: The first line is left-aligned, the last line right-aligned, and all
other lines in between are centered
gather: All lines are centered
align: The lines are aligned at marked relation signs
Let's have a closer look.
Aligning multi-line equations
Here's a list of the amsmath multi-line environments:
Name
Meaning
multline
First line is left-aligned, last line is right-aligned, all others are centered.
gather
Each line is centered.
align
Use & to mark a symbol where the formulas shall be aligned. Use another & to end a
column, if you need several aligned columns.
flalign
Similar to align with more than one column, but the columns are flushed to the left
and the right margin, respectively.
alignat
Alignment at several places, each has to be marked by &.
split
Similar to align, but within another math environment, thus unnumbered.
aligned, gathered,
alignedat
Used for an aligned block within a math environment. This can be displayed math or
in-line math.
Numbering rows in multi-line formulas
In multi-line math environments, each line would be numbered like a normal
equation. If you wish to suppress the numbering of a line, write \notag before the
end of the line.
Use the starred variant like align*, or gather*, if you would like to avoid
numbering completely.
Inserting text into formulas
To insert some text into a formula, standard LaTeX provides the \mbox command.
amsmath offers further commands:
\text{words} inserts text within a math formula. The size is adjusted
according to the current math style, that is, \text produces smaller text
within subscripts or superscripts.
\intertext{text} suspends the formula, the text follows in a separate
paragraph, then the multi-line formula is resumed, keeping the alignment. Use
it for longer text.
These commands are the best choice, when you would like to use text within math
environments.
Fine-tuning formulas
If we go beyond writing variables and basic math operators, we may need many
symbols for special purposes: certain relation signs, unary and binary operators,
function-like operators, sum and integral symbols and variants of the latter,
arrows, and many more. LaTeX and additional packages offer thousands of
symbols for many purposes. We shall have a look at some of them. But firstly,
let's figure out how to write functions.
Using operators
Trigonometric functions, logarithm functions, and other analytic and algebraic
functions are commonly written with upright Roman letters. Simply typing log
would otherwise look like a product of the three variables, namely, l, o, and g. To
ease the input, there are commands for many common functions or so called
operators. Here's an alphabetical list of the predefined ones:
\arccos, \arcsin, \arctan, \arg, \cos, \cosh, \cot, \coth, \scs, \deg,
\det, \dim, \exp, \gcd, \hom, \inf, \ker, \lg, \lim, \liminf, \limsup, \ln,
\log, \max, \min, \Pr, \sec, \sin, \sinh, \sup, \tan, \tanh
The modulo function may be written in two ways, either by using \bmod for a
binary relation or by using \pmod{argument} for a modulo expression in
parentheses.
Some operators support subscripts which are set as follows:
\[ \lim_{n=1, 2, \ldots} a_n, \qquad \max_{x<X} x \]
Superscripts would be set above then.
Exploring the wealth of math symbols
Now, let's look at some math symbols and the commands for producing them. We
shall cover many standard LaTeX symbols, some additional symbols are
provided by the latexsym package. Even more symbols are accessible using, for
instance, the amssymb package.
Binary operation symbols
Besides plus and minus, there are a few more operations:
Binary relation symbols
Values of expressions might be equal, but there are more possible relations, for
example, they may be congruent, parallel, or they might stand in any other
relation:
Inequality relation symbols
If expressions are not equal, the inequality might be expressed in different ways:
Subset and superset symbols
For comparing sets and expressing relations between them, there are many
symbols:
Variable sized operators
For sums, products, and set operations, for example, we can use operator symbols
which are variable in size: bigger in display style and smaller in text style.
Arrows
Arrows are used for implications, maps, or descriptive expressions:
Harpoons
There are special arrows called harpoons:
Symbols derived from letters
Some letter-like symbols are used in math:
Variable sized delimiters
Also, delimiters such as parentheses, brackets, and braces can vary in size. If you
write \left or \right before such a delimiter, its size will be automatically
matched to the size of the inner expression. These size macros have to be used in
pairs. To match a pair, if you don't wish to match a delimiter, use \left. or
\right. to get an invisible delimiter.
Miscellaneous symbols
Here are more LaTeX symbols that do not match the mentioned categories:
"The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List" lists about 5000 symbols sorted in
categories. If you need to search for a symbol, have a look at this document. As
usual, with TeX Live, you could open this document by using the following at the
command prompt:
texdoc symbols
You can find it on CTAN as well.
Writing units
If you use units in text, they should not look like variables: 'm' for meters should
not look exactly like a variable m. Similarly, analogous 's' may stand for seconds,
but not for a variable. A typographical convention is to use an upright font shape
for units. Furthermore, it's common to use a thin space between the value and the
dimension. So, for 10 meters, you may write 10\,\mathrm{m}. However, this is
very time-consuming. That's why several packages have been developed
supporting correct and nice typesetting of units, for example, units, fancyunits ,
and siunits.
The most modern and comprehensive units package is siunitx , providing features
of all the other packages and even more. It requires reading some documentation
before use, but it's worth the effort.
Building math structures
Variables and constants are simple. But there are more complex objects, like
binomial coefficients, vectors, and matrices. We shall figure out how to typeset
such structures. Let's begin with simple arrays.
Creating arrays
For arranging math expressions within a surrounding expression, there's the array
environment. We use it exactly like a tabular environment. However, it requires
math mode and all of its entries are made using the math mode as well.
For example, by using variable sized parentheses around the array:
\[
A = \left(
\begin{array}{cc}
a_{11} & a_{12} \\
a_{21} & a_{22}
\end{array}
\right)
\]
Writing binomial coefficients:
Binomial coefficients and matrices may be typeset using an array together with
delimiters. However, the amsmath package provides shorter commands, for
instance, \binom for binomial coefficients:
\binom{n}{k} = \frac{n!}{k!(n-k)!}
Typesetting matrices
As you might expect now of amsmath, there are many special matrix
environments. A standard matrix can be typeset by the pmatrix environment:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\begin{document}
\[
A = \begin{pmatrix}
a_{11} & a_{12} \\
a_{21} & a_{22}
\end{pmatrix}
\]
\end{document}
You may notice that the parentheses are closer to the matrix entries than in the
array example.
These are amsmath's matrix environments:
Name
Delimiters of the matrix
matrix
without delimiters
pmatrix
parentheses ( )
bmatrix
square brackets [ ]
Bmatrix
braces { }
vmatrix
| |
Vmatrix
|| ||
smallmatrix
without delimiters, add them if needed, more compact
The compact smallmatrix environment is useful for matrices within running text.
Stacking expressions
Formulas may become complex: we might need to put one symbol above another
one or above whole expressions, or we wish to put lines, braces, or dots above
symbols. There are several ways.
Underlining and overlining
\overline puts a line above its argument, which may be nested:
s = \overline{AB}
The counterpart is \underline.
It doesn't have to be a line; braces are popular too. The commands are
\underbrace and \overbrace . You may use subscripts and superscripts:
N = \underbrace{1 + 1 + \cdots + 1}_n
Setting accents
We've already seen accents in text mode. For the math mode, we need different
commands. They may be applied to any letter. Here's the list of math accents
using the lowercase letter 'a' as an example:
The extensible ones are also called wide accents ; they try to fit the width of their
argument.
Putting a symbol above another
Besides the array environment, there are amsmath commands to directly stack
expressions:
\underset{expression below}{expression} puts an expression below
another, using the subscript size below.
\overset{expression above}{expression} puts an expression above
another, using the subscript size above.
Writing theorems and definitions
LaTeX provides environment for theorems, definitions, and alike. Returning to
our first example in this chapter, we could define a theorem environment by:
\newtheorem{thm}{Theorem}
Then, we declare a definition environment, using an optional argument stating an
existing environment with which we would like to share the numbering:
\newtheorem{dfn}[thm]{Definition}
And in this simple way, we may use these environments:
\begin{dfn}
A quadratic equation is an equation of the form
\begin{equation}
\label{quad}
ax^2 + bx + c = 0,
\end{equation}
where \( a, b \) and \( c \) are constants and \( a \neq 0 \).
\end{dfn}
\begin{thm}
A quadratic equation (\ref{quad}) has two solutions for the
variable \( x \):
\begin{equation}
\label{root}
x_{1,2} = \frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2a}.
\end{equation}
\end{thm}
In the output, such environments are numbered and labeled "Theorem" and
"Definition", respectively. In Chapter 10, Developing Large Documents, when
we are going to develop large documents, we will use this to create a complete
document containing definitions, theorems, and lemmas.
There are two remarkable packages offering much more flexibility:
amsthm provides several styles, allows fine customization, and includes a
proof environment.
ntheorem does similar work, but handles end marks in a better way.
If you would like to use such environments, have a look at their documentation,
and compare the features to decide which package is the best for you.
Have a go hero – checking out the mathtools package
The mathtools package extends amsmath. If you need a certain feature and cannot
find it, neither in standard LaTeX nor in amsmath, always look first at
mathtools. Here are some of its features with examples:
Tools for fine-tuning math typesetting, for example, compact styles:
Aligning limits of operators:
Adjusting the width of operators:
Better control over tags; modifying their appearance and showing only tags
for equations that have been actually referenced
Extensible symbols; more arrows and being able to automatically adjust
their width, also extensible brackets and braces to be set under or over
expressions
New math environments for more flexible matrices, cases, improved multi-
line formulas, and arrows between aligned formulas
Less spacing for shorter inter text
Declaration of paired delimiters
Additional symbols such as a vertically centered colon, combinations of
relation symbols with colons, shortcuts for auto-sized parentheses
Techniques such as spreading lines in multi-line formulas, setting left sub-
and superscripts, typesetting math within italic text, and producing multi-line
fractions
Try to typeset these examples first without mathtools. You will notice some
difficulties. Have a look into the documentation of this valuable package and find
out which commands can be applied to achieve the aforementioned styles and
alignments.
Pop quiz
1. Which environment produces a displayed formula?
a. \begin{math} … \end{math}
b. \[ … \]
c. \( … \)
2. Which of these environments has to be used within math mode?
a. align
b. aligned
c. alignat
3. The following commands may be used to insert text within math formulas.
According to this chapter, which command would generally be the most
appropriate?
a. \mbox
b. \mathrm
c. \textrm
d. \text
Summary
Now that we've got the necessary tools to write scientific texts, we are able to
write complex math formulas, fine-tune math expressions, align and number
equations, and access thousands of math symbols.
In the next chapter, we will not only deal further with math fonts, but also with
fonts in general.
Chapter 9. Using Fonts
The appearance of your text is significantly determined by the base font. You
may choose a font that's especially clear and readable for a long piece of
writing, or a fancy font for a greeting card. Your job application letter might
use a very clear and serious font, whereas a mathematical article requires
fonts with a lot of symbols and a text font that fits well with them.
Until now, we have been covering the logical properties of fonts. Though we
always used the LaTeX standard font, we switched, for instance, from roman to
sans-serif, or to typewriter, learned how to make text bold, italic, or slanted,
but we never left the standard set of fonts.
In this chapter, we shall learn how to:
Choose other sets of fonts for the whole document
Load font packages for specific shapes
During this, we will also:
See how to install additional fonts
Look at various fonts and learn how to use them
Speak about encoding of input text and of fonts in the output
Let's start discussing the encodings.
Preparing the encoding
Do you remember the ASCII code? All operating systems are able to understand
it. However, when it comes to special characters like German umlauts or
diacritics in general, currency symbols, and non-latin language characters, some
systems work differently. We shall see how to deal with that.
Also, the output needs some kind of encoding. We shall figure out how to perfect
that.
Time for action – directly using
special characters
In a TeX document, we would like to use the German name of a street. It contains
diacritics, so called umlauts. Let's check out how to make it work right.
1. Start a new document. Within a small parbox, write the text:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\parbox{3cm}{Meeting point: K\"onigsstra\ss e (King's
Street)}
\end{document}
2. Typeset and have a first look:
3. Try babel instead! It provides shortcuts for German umlauts, if you state the
ngerman option. Use "u for ü, a for ä, and s for ß":
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
…
\parbox{3cm}{Meeting point: K"onigsstra"se (King'sStreet)}
4. The output would be the same. Still the hyphenation remains as a problem:
TeX cannot use hyphenation rules if macros are inside the words.
5. A s babel is required for good hyphenation, we keep that. But we use
Unicode encoding and another called T1 font encoding:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\begin{document}
\parbox{3cm}{Meeting point: Königsstraße (King's Street)}
\end{document}
6. Typeset. Now we've got the correct hyphenation:
What just happened?
Firstly, using accent macros, or babel shortcut macros to construct diacritics,
makes the TeX code less readable and hard to type. Furthermore, it creates a
problem with hyphenation: for macros, hyphenation rules cannot be applied.
That's why the justification has been so bad.
Two packages solve those problems:
inputenc takes care of the input and translates special characters into TeX
macros. It understands an option to mark the encoding. This depends on the
editor and the operating system. As a rule of thumb: on Linux and Mac OS X,
us e utf8; on Windows, use latin1, except with TeXworks. Also, on
Windows, TeXworks understands utf8, which is an implementation of
Unicode.
fontenc is responsible for the output encoding: TeX macros are translated
into special characters. For instance, ö is no longer constructed of o and
dots, but it's the glyph ö of the current font. Thus, hyphenation rules can be
applied, the search feature of a PDF reader works with those characters,
even copy and paste works fine. With standard encoding, copying and
pasting ö would result in dots and an o.
Note
Unicode is an industry standard for text encoding, which hugely extends the ASCII
code. Unicode supports more than 100,000 characters of many languages. It's
become more and more supported by modern operating systems and editors.
To be able to benefit from those packages, you should know the encoding and you
should use a font supporting the T1 encoding, also known as Cork encoding .
Take it just as a name—we don't need to care further about encoding for now.
To see what happens with and without fontenc, use:
\showhyphens{Königsstraße}
Use it together with babel and inputenc and examine the log file. With standard
font encoding, called OT1, you would read:
\OT1/cmr/m/n/10 K^^?onigsstra^^Ye
However, with T1 encoding, the log file would show:
\T1/cmr/m/n/10 Kö-nigs-straße
Installing additional fonts
TeX distributions usually install a lot of fonts. A package manager allows the
installation of further fonts, like mpm with MiKTeX or tlmgr with TeX Live.
TeX Live includes only freely licensed fonts. Non-free fonts may be installed
using a separate program. It's called getnonfreefonts. If it's not already installed
with your version of TeX Live, you can download it from
http://www.tug.org/fonts/getnonfreefonts/.
getnonfreefonts –l
This command lists all additionally available non-free fonts. If you wish to install
a font, give its name as the argument or just type the following to install all
available fonts:
getnonfreefonts –a
Type the following to get a brief documentation:
getnonfreefonts
getnonfreefonts would install the fonts in your TeX home directory. To make
the fonts available for the complete local system, use getnonfreefonts-sys
instead.
Note
Progams ending with -sys work system wide. Further examples are: updmap-
sys, which updates font map files, and fmtutil-sys for (re)creation of so-called
format files. Such programs require administrator privileges, so run it as via sudo
or as root on Linux or Mac OS X, on Windows use an administrator account if
you ever need it. Normally the TeX distribution calls them automatically during
installation and updates if required.
If you use T1 font encoding, which is strongly recommended, you might notice a
decreased font quality. Don't worry this could happen if you don't have good T1
supporting standard fonts installed, thus bitmap fonts were used as replacement. It
can be easily repaired by installing the cm-super package, which contains the
European Computer Modern fonts, which are enhanced versions of the default
Computer Modern fonts, with T1 support, in high quality. Alternatively, use one
of the following fonts.
Choosing the main font
We shall explore some TeX fonts. To test fonts, we may use a pangram . This
word has a Greek origin: "pan gramma" meaning "every letter". It stands for a
sentence that uses every letter of the alphabet. Thus, a pangram is very convenient
for displaying fonts.
Time for action – comparing
Computer Modern to Latin Modern
We shall print out a very famous pangram phrase, once using the standard font
Computer Modern and once using the Latin Modern font. Because Latin Modern is
very similar to the standard font, but supports diacritics much better, while
providing very high quality, it is widely considered that it will become the
successor to the standard font. We will just compare serif and sans-serif
typefaces:
1. Start a new document. Create a macro for the pangram plus numerals and use
it:
\documentclass{article}
\newcommand{\pangram}[1][\rmfamily]{{#1 The quick brown fox
jumps
over the lazy dog. 1234567890}\par}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\begin{document}
\large
\pangram
\pangram[\sffamily]
\pangram[\ttfamily]
\pangram[\itshape]
\pangram[\slshape]
\end{document}
2. Typeset and look at the font shapes:
3. Add this line to the preamble:
\usepackage{lmodern}
4. Typeset again and compare:
What just happened?
You might notice that the fonts are indeed looking the same. So, why use
lmodern? Let's see.
Loading font packages
There are packages which provide fonts for all standards, shapes and weights,
and more. Just load one to change all at once.
Latin Modern – a replacement for the standard font
Latin Modern has been designed to look like Computer Modern, but the encoding
and manual fine-tuning has been improved. Latin Modern contains a huge amount
of diacritic characters, whereas with Computer Modern such characters are built
from letters and accents.
If you use lmodern, you don't need to install the big cm-super package anymore.
Kp-fonts – a full set of fonts
This font collection from the Johannes Kepler project provides Roman, sans-
serif, and monospaced fonts as well as mathematics symbol fonts in different
shapes and weights. Even bold extended and combinations like slanted Roman
small caps are present.
Just load the package to use those fonts:
\usepackage{kpfonts}
The previous example will change to:
Kp-fonts offers light versions with the same font metrics. They might look nice in
print, but they aren't recommended for reading on screen.
To switch to the light font set, load the package with the option light:
\usepackage[light]{kpfonts}
The look will be different:
Now let's look at specialized font packages.
Serif fonts
The standard serif font is called Computer Modern Roman . Latin Modern
provides a very similar font, and you already know the Kp-fonts serif font.
Further packages are specialized in serif fonts.
Times Roman
The package mathptmx defines a Times Roman text font. Additionally, it
provides math support using suitable symbols of the standard Computer Modern
symbol font together with Times Roman letters and more glyphs of further fonts. It
supersedes the times package.
\usepackage{mathptmx}
As you can see, Times is a very narrow font that's suitable for multi-column text
like in newspapers, but not recommended for single-column text. Wide lines
would be less readable.
Tip
The txfonts package is a good alternative, especially if you use Greek characters.
Charter
Charter is similar to Computer Modern, but a bit bolder:
\usepackage{charter}
Tip
For suitable math support, it's recommended to load the mathdesign package with
the charter option: \usepackage[charter]{mathdesign}.
Palatino
The package mathpazo provides the Pazo math fonts, which are suitable for the
Palatino text font. It may be loaded by:
\usepackage{mathpazo}
Two options are recommended for mathpazo:
sc
"small caps"
Loads Palatino with "real" small caps instead of producing fake small caps by scaling
capital letters.
osf
"old style
figures"
Load Palatino with old style figures which would be used in text mode, not in math
mode
Call texdoc psnfss2e to learn more. This opens the document Using common
PostScript fonts with LaTeX by Walter Schmidt. Among others, it describes how
to use mathpazo and mathptmx.
For Palatino, a slightly higher line spacing is recommended. So, a typical way to
load Palatino together with Pazo is:
\usepackage[sc]{mathpazo}
\linespread{1.05}
Bookman
This is an old style serif font, provided by the bookman package:
\usepackage{bookman}
New Century Schoolbook
The newcent package provides this easy-to-read serif typeface:
\usepackage{newcent}
Tip
For a suitable math font, you might load the fourier math fonts:
\usepackage{fouriernc}.
Concrete Roman
The Concrete font doesn't look well on screen, but offers a high quality in print.
Just load the concrete package:
\usepackage{concrete}
Tip
Also for Concrete Roman, there's a matching math font package:
\usepackage{concmath}.
Sans-serif fonts
We already talked about sans-serif fonts: they might be appropriate for headings,
but many believe that running text with traditional serifs is much more readable.
Tip
If required, the main body font could be made sans-serif by
\renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}.
Helvetica
The classical sans-serif font Helvetica is simple and clean. You probably know a
descendant: Arial.
\usepackage{helvet}
Use the option scaled if the font looks too big, especially when used together
with a serif font. For instance, if you also use times or mathptmx, you might
write:
\usepackage[scaled=0.92]{helvet}
Bera Sans
Another nice sans-serif font is offered by berasans. It has been derived from
Frutiger.
\usepackage{berasans}
Computer Modern Bright
CM Bright has been derived from Computer Modern Sans Serif. The package
cmbright provides this font together with a lighter typewriter font and a sans-serif
math font.
\usepackage{cmbright}
Kurier
Kurier is a bit different; look at the letter g:
\usepackage{kurier}
Typewriter fonts
Typewriter, a.k.a. monospaced, fonts are widely used for source codes. We've
seen it already.
Courier
Courier is a very wide running typewriter font, provided by the package with the
same name.
\usepackage{courier}
Inconsolata
Inconsolata is a very nice monospaced font designed for source code listings. It's
very readable and not as wide as Courier.
\usepackage{inconsolata}
Bera Mono
Bera Mono is another font of the Bera family, consisting of Bera Serif, Bera Sans,
and Bera Mono. Originally, they had been developed under the name Bitstream
Vera.
\usepackage{beramono}
Exploring the world of LaTeX fonts
Probably the best place to browse LaTeX fonts is The LaTeX Font Catalogue .
Visit http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/:
Just choose a category, click on a font to see some examples, usage, and sources.
Pop quiz
1. Which package allows us to type ä, ü, ü, ß, and other such characters
directly in the editor?
a. babel
b. inputenc
c. fontenc
2. All but one of the following packages improves full justification. Which one
does not?
a. babel
b. microtype
c. inputenc
d. fontenc
Summary
Now we are able to use different body text fonts. Our documents doesn't need to
look like standard LaTeX writings anymore.
We learned about:
Specifying the encoding for source and output
Installing and choosing font sets and specific fonts
You probably know Truetype fonts: though they generally offer lower quality,
there's a lot, and they may be used with XeTeX, XeLaTeX, LuaTeX, and
LuaLaTeX. These compilers even support the OpenType font standard. All these
compilers are supported by TeX Live and TeXworks as well which are enhanced
versions of TeX, LaTeX respectively.
Now let's go back to LaTeX; we shall learn how to develop and manage bigger
documents in the next chapter.
Chapter 10. Developing Large
Documents
The first chapter of this book claimed that LaTeX handles large documents
easily. When you create extensive documents, you will notice that LaTeX keeps
on doing its job reliably. For the computer, it doesn't matter how the source
code is formatted. But for you, as the developer, it's important to keep your
source document manageable. After all, it may consist of hundreds of pages
with thousands of lines, possibly containing a lot of external pictures.
In this chapter, we shall learn how to:
Split a document into several files
Input and reuse pieces of code
Swap out document-wide settings
Compile just a part of a document
Create a main document built upon sub-files
A bigger document requires a more complex structure, so we shall figure out how
to:
Design a title page
Use Roman page numbers in the front matter
Add a back matter without sectioning numbers
We will work it out while developing a book, using separate files for the
preamble and for each chapter.
Bigger documents require more work, so we shall find out how to:
Work more effective using templates
Acquire and evaluate templates
That's a big step forward on the way to writing a thesis, a book, or an extensive
report. Let's go on with it.
Splitting the input
Divide and conquer—this could be our motto now. We shall figure out how to
break down a document into several sub-documents. Thus, while we are writing,
we will be able to manage a huge project consisting of many chapters in separate
files.
Firstly, we shall separate settings and body text by swapping out the preamble.
Secondly, we shall write chapters in separate files and include them afterwards.
Time for action – swapping out
preamble and chapter contents
We begin to write an extensive document about equations and equation systems.
The result should be in the style of a thesis or a book. We can use the last example
in Chapter 8, TypingMath Formulas, where we dealt with theorems concerning
equations.
1. Create a new document. Inside this, load all the packages and specify the
options, like we did in our preambles before. Use all the beneficial packages
that we already learned about:
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{microtype}
\usepackage{natbib}
\usepackage{tocbibind}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amsthm}
\newtheorem{thm}{Theorem}[chapter]
\newtheorem{lem}[thm]{Lemma}
\theoremstyle{definition}
\newtheorem{dfn}[thm]{Definition}
2. Save this document under the name preamble.tex.
3. Start another new document and copy the contents of the chapter Equations
in the theorem example of Chapter 8 into it:
\chapter{Equations}
\section{Quadratic equations}
\begin{dfn}
A quadratic equation is an equation of the form
\begin{equation}
\label{quad}
ax^2 + bx + c = 0
\end{equation}
where \( a, b \) and \( c \) are constants and \( a \neq 0
\).
\end{dfn}
4. Save this document under the name chapter1.tex.
5. Create another document for the next chapter, write something, and save it as
chapter2.tex:
\chapter{Equation Systems}
\section{Linear Systems}
…
\section{Non-linear Systems}
…
6. Now we shall construct the top-level document. Create another file called
equations.tex. This one starts with the documentclass and lists the
preamble and the chapters for inclusion:
\documentclass{book}
\input{preamble}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\include{chapter1}
\include{chapter2}
\end{document}
7. Typeset the document twice. Remember, this action is necessary to get the
table of contents. For now, check the contents, to see if everything is in its
place:
What just happened?
We constructed a top-level document that we called equations.tex. It's
tempting to just call it main.tex or something similar. However, as this filename
determines the name of the resulting PDF document, we chose a meaningful name.
This is the framework of our project. It's an ordinary LaTeX document, but we
reduced it as much as possible and used two commands to import external .tex
files:
\input reads in another file, just as if it had been typed in.
\include also reads in an external file, but automatically inserts
\clearpage before and after.
The latter offers more to you, so let's have a closer look—we shall treat the
simpler command first.
Including small pieces of code
The simplest command to read in a file is:
\input{filename}
When LaTeX encounters this command, it reads in the file with the name
filename exactly as if its contents have been typed at that point. Accordingly, all
commands in this file would be processed by the LaTeX compiler. You can even
nest \input—this command may be used inside an included file.
If the filename doesn't have an extension, the extension .tex will be added
automatically, thus filename.tex would be inserted. You may also specify a
path, relative or absolute. As a backslash begins a command, use slashes / instead
of backslashes \ in paths, also in Windows.
Tip
Using relative path names makes moving and copying of a project easier.
Use \input if you wish to put your preamble into a separate file. Besides keeping
your root document clean, a separate preamble can easily be copied and adjusted
for use in another document.
However, simply splitting and inputting is not yet considered document
management. For instance, though you could comment out selected \input lines
for partial compilation, the numbering of pages, sections, and so on may be
ruined, and cross-referencing to omitted document parts would fail.
There's a better way—so let's look at the other command.
Including bigger parts of a document
When it comes to including one or more pages, this command proves to be useful:
\include{filename}
The argument is treated the same way as \input. However, there are some
important differences:
1. \include implicitly starts new pages.\include{filename} behaves like:
\clearpage
\include{filename}
\clearpage
2. This makes it useful for page ranges such as chapters or sections. One
consequence is that you may use \include only after \begin{document}.
3. \include cannot be nested. You could still use \input within included
documents, though it might not be a good idea to complicate the structure
further.
4. Most importantly, \include supports a mechanism of choosing which parts
of the document you wish to compile—so we come to another command,
namely, \includeonly.
Let's see how the latter command works.
Compiling parts of a document
Such a partial document, which is intended for \input or \include, cannot be
compiled standalone: you need a root document that specifies the document class.
However, once you swapped out parts of the document using \include, while
compiling your root document, you may specify which parts are actually included
by this command:
\includeonly{file list}
The argument may be a comma-separated list of filenames. If a file, name.tex, is
not specified within this argument, \include{name} would not insert this file but
just behave like \clearpage instead. This allows excluding chunks or whole
chapters from compiling. If you work on a huge document, this speeds up
compilation if you choose to include just your current chapter while keeping the
labels and references of the excluded chapter this way.
You may notice that LaTeX produces an .aux file for each included .tex file.
LaTeX still reads in all those .aux files containing information such as chapter
and page numbers. Of course, the included files need to be Typeset at least once.
This way, cross-referencing the numbering of pages, chapters, sections, and so on
will remain intact even if you temporarily exclude the chapters.
Try it out—add the following:
\includeonly{chapter2}
Add it to your preamble in equation.tex and compile. The result will be just
the second chapter keeping the correct numbering.
You can use \include without \includeonly. Finally, when you finish your
work, just comment the latter command out to typeset your complete document.
Creating front and back matter
In contrast to reports, books often begin with introductory material such as
copyright information, a foreword, acknowledgements, or a dedication. This part,
including the title page and the table of contents, is called the front matter.
At the end, a book might include an afterword and supporting material like a
bibliography, and an index. This part is called the back matter.
The book class and some other classes like scrbook and memoir support this
kind of sectioning directly. Often, desired consequences of this sectioning are
differences in the numbering of pages and chapters. Let's see how it works.
Time for action – adding a dedication
and an appendix
Our book shall begin with a dedication. The front matter shall consist of the table
of contents, lists of tables and figures, and a dedication. All the pages of the front
matter shall be numbered with Roman letters. Finally, we add an appendix
providing supplementary proofs which we like to present outside the main
chapters:
1. Create a file dedication.tex:
\chapter{Dedication}
This book is dedicated to one of the greatest mathematicians
of
all time: Carl Friedrich Gauss. Without him, this book
wouldn't
have been possible.
2. Create a file proofs.tex:
\chapter{Proofs}
...
3. Extend the main file equation.tex by the highlighted lines:
\documentclass{book}
\input{preamble}
\begin{document}
\frontmatter
\include{dedication}
\tableofcontents
\listoftables
\listoffigures
\mainmatter
\include{chapter1}
\include{chapter2}
\backmatter
\include{proofs}
\nocite{*}
\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
\bibliography{tex}
\end{document}
4. As you can see in the last highlighted line, we re-used the file tex.bib from
Chapter 7, Listing Contents and References. Typeset, run BibTeX, and
Typeset again. Check out the numbering within the table of contents:
What just happened?
We saw that the page number of the contents page has been typeset in Roman
numbers. This applies to all front matter pages. Further, all the chapters in front
and back matter are unnumbered even though we did not use the starred command
\chapter*.
The three commands \frontmatter, \mainmatter, and \backmatter are
responsible. They modified both the page and chapter numbering in the following
way:
\frontmatter
Pages are numbered with lowercase Roman numbers.
Chapters generate a table of contents entry but don't get a number.
\mainmatter
Pages are numbered with Arabic numbers.
Chapters are numbered and produce a table of contents entry.
\backmatter
Pages are numbered with Arabic numbers.
Chapters generate a table of contents entry but don't get a number.
Besides that, \frontmatter and \mainmatter call \cleardoublepage.
\backmatter calls \cleardoublepage in openright mode, that is, if chapters
start on right hand pages, otherwise it's using just \clearpage.
Like the book class, the classes scrbook and memoir provide the same command
with very similar behavior.
Designing a title page
A good looking title page can quickly be created using \maketitle as we did in
Chapter 2, Formatting Words, Lines, and Paragraphs . Document classes usually
offer this command to generate a suitable pre-formatted title page. Alternatively,
you could use a titlepage environment to freely design its layout. So, let's
design a nice title page for our book of equations.
Time for action – creating a title page
In Chapter 2, we have already used some formatting commands such as
\centering and font size and shape commands such as \Huge and \bfseries to
format a title. We shall do it similarly within a titlepage environment:
1. Create a file title.tex with the following content:
\begin{titlepage}
\raggedleft
{\Large The Author\\[1in]}
{\large The Big Book of\\}
{\Huge\scshape Equations\\[.2in]}
{\large Packed with hundreds of examples and solutions\\}
\vfill
{\itshape 2011, Publishing company}
\end{titlepage}
2. Our final book shall have A5 format, and so shall the title page. Therefore,
let's add that to the preamble:
\usepackage[a5paper]{geometry}
3. Typeset. Now we've got a title page:
What just happened?
The titlepage environment typesets its contents on a separate page. Though this
title page will be numbered like any other page, the page number won't be printed
on that page.
Within this environment, we used some basic LaTeX font commands to modify the
font size and shape. By grouping with curly braces, we limited those commands.
Line breaks like \\[.2in] just cause some more space before the following line.
\vfill inserts an elastic vertical space which stretches as much as possible such
that the page is filled. This way we put the last line off to the end of the page.
Note, this page has the same page dimensions as the other pages in the document.
That means, in a double-sided book it's a right-hand page. Thus, you may notice
unequal left and right margins, which might look undesirable especially, if your
title is in the center. But the explanation is simple: this title page is intended to be
an inner title, not the cover page. The inner title page is of course a right-hand
page.
A cover page is a different thing. This should be one-side and thus it should have
equal left and right margins. A cover page is often produced as a stand-alone
document, printed out separately. For a electronic document, you may use the
pdfpages package or a tool like pdfjam to merge PDF documents.
Tip
The titling package offers features to create sophisticated title pages. To get some
ideas how title pages may be designed, you could have a look at Some Examples
of Title Pages by Peter Wilson, available from texdoc titlepages and at
http://ctan.org/pkg/titlepages.
Working with templates
When we start to develop a document, we specify the document class, choose
meaningful packages and options, and create a frame for the contents. To repeat
these steps for each document would be too laborious.
If we plan to write several documents of the same type, we may create a
template. This could be a .tex file containing:
Declaration of a suitable document class together with a set of meaningful
options
Routinely-used packages and packages which are most eligible for our
document type
A predefined layout for header, footer, and body of the text
Self-made macros to ease our work
A framework of sectioning commands, where we fill in the headings and the
body text
Or a framework containing \include or \input commands, for which we
create the body text chunks later on.
While we improve our LaTeX knowledge, such templates might grow and
become better and more sophisticated. Many users publish their elaborate
templates on the Internet. Many universities, institutes, journals, and publishers do
the same, offering templates for documents such as thesis, papers, journal articles,
and books, meeting their requirements.
You will find a collection of templates, arranged by document type such as thesis,
reports, letters, and presentations, accompanied by sample output, in a template
gallery at http://texblog.net/latex/templates.
You may download a template and start to fill in your text. Alternatively, you
could start a document with a pre-defined template offered by your editor. Let's
try that.
Time for action – starting with a
template
LaTeX editors often provide templates to start with. TeXworks offers some as
well. So we shall test this feature, let's take one, open it, modify it, and Typeset:
1. In the TeXworks main menu, click on File and then on New from template.
A window will open allowing you to choose a template:
2. In the lower part of the window, you can read the template's source. Here's
an example of KOMA-Script (KOMA-letter.tex):
% !TEX TS-program = pdflatex
% !TEX encoding = UTF-8 Unicode
% An alternative to the standard LaTeX letter class.
\documentclass[fontsize=12pt, paper=a4]{scrlttr2}
% Don't forget to read the KOMA-Script documentation,
scrguien.pdf
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\setkomavar{fromname}{} % your name
\setkomavar{fromaddress}{Address \\ of \\ Sender}
\setkomavar{signature}{} % printed after the \closing
\renewcommand{\raggedsignature}{\raggedright} % make the
signature ragged right
\setkomavar{subject}{} % subject of the letter
\begin{document}
\begin{letter}{Name and \\ Address \\ of \\ Recipient}
\opening{} % eg. Hello
\closing{} %eg. Regards
\end{letter}
\end{document}
3. Click on Open. Fill in the gaps and edit the filler text of the example:
\documentclass[fontsize=12pt, paper=a4]{scrlttr2}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\setkomavar{fromname}{My name} % your name
\setkomavar{fromaddress}{Street, City}
\setkomavar{signature}{Name} % printed after the \closing
\setkomavar{subject}{Invoice 1/2011} % subject of the letter
\setkomavar{place}{Place}
\setkomavar{date}{January 1, 2011 }
\begin{document}
\begin{letter}{Customer Name\\ Street No. X \\ City \\
Zipcode}
\opening{To whom it may concern} % eg. Hello
Text follows \ldots
\bigskip
\closing{With kind regards} %eg. Regards
\end{letter}
\end{document}
4. Typeset. Have a look at our test letter:
What just happened?
That was easy! We just opened the template and modified the filler texts. Reading
the KOMA-Script documentation, we can learn that the command \setkomavar is
used for specifying values for template parameters such as name, address, and
subject. We used that to declare the date and the place as well.
Once we have written our personal data into this template, we may save that for
later use instead of typing our address for each letter.
The KOMA-Script documentation (texdoc scrguien) describes the features of
this letter class well. Using this, you would be able to create your personal
professional-looking letter template for business use.
Imagine putting a job application letter created with the LaTeX layout and fonts
together with microtype next to an application letter produced with some other
word processing software—which one will use to create a better impression!
Have a go hero – evaluating and enhancing templates
While looking for LaTeX templates, code, and tips on the internet, you will find a
lot of information and code. This code might be outdated and this information
might be obsolete.
When you develop your own template, you probably would like to be sure to use
the best packages, options, and solutions available today. How can you be sure?
Both questions can be answered by studying l2tabu . This is the common shortcut
for An essential guide to LaTeX2e usage , a document focusing on obsolete
commands and packages, which also demonstrates the most common and severe
mistakes that LaTeX user's tend to make. As LaTeX has developed over many
years, some packages and techniques are still available and described in online
resources, but it may not be recommendable any more. Read this guide. It will
help you to evaluate templates and code found on the Internet, but also to ensure
that you produce optimal code yourself.
Just type:
texdoc l2tabuen
At the command prompt or visit http://ctan.org/pkg/l2tabu.
Tip
To test a template, you may use the blindtext package and its command
\Blinddocument. This command generates dummy content for a big document,
which would demonstrate the output quality of a template. This package is
required to load babel. If you don't like that, you may use the lipsum package
instead.
Pop quiz
1. Which of these commands can be used both in the preamble and body text?
a. \input
b. \include
c. \includeonly
2. All but one of the following commands may cause a page break. Which is the
one that doesn't?
a. \include
b. \input
c. \mainmatter
d. \begin{titlepage}
Summary
The techniques we learned in this chapter will help us to develop and maintain
bigger projects. Though enthusiastic users prefer LaTeX also to write small
documents, many people learn LaTeX because they plan to write longer texts.
However, splitting documents and the use of templates are useful as well for
small writings such as letters—just think of header, footer, address fields, and so
on.
In this chapter, we dealt with:
Creating and managing large documents consisting of several files
Structuring documents with front matter and back matter
Designing a separate title page
Using, creating, and evaluating templates
Now that we're able to develop and handle large documents, we shall see how to
improve them further.
Chapter 11. Enhancing Your
Documents Further
By now, you're capable of writing structured documents in fine typographical
quality. You are able to meet high expectations for classic publications such as
books, journal articles, or a university thesis.
What about presentations? They are usually more colorful than prints. Perhaps
you would like to publish your documents online? Such electronic documents
or e-books usually require some kind of navigation.
This chapter shall provide us with tools for such enhancements. We shall figure
out how to perform the following:
Adding hyperlinks to the table of contents, lists of figures and tables, and to
any cross-reference
Creating bookmarks for a navigation bar
Designing headings
Using color with LaTeX
Let's implement this by using packages that are dedicated to these subjects.
Using hyperlinks and bookmarks
There's a sophisticated package called hyperref , which does nearly all basic
hyper-linking automatically. That's great! Let's check it out.
Time for action – adding hyperlinks
We shall load the hyperref package and inspect its effect:
1. Open the file preamble.tex, which we used in the previous chapter. At its
end, add this line:
\usepackage{hyperref}
2. Save this document under the same name.
3. Open our book of equations from the previous chapter; we called it
equations.tex.
4. Typeset the document twice without making any changes. Let's see how the
document now appears!
5. The Chapter 1 looks like the following screenshot:
What just happened?
By just loading the hyperref package, our document has significantly changed:
We got a bookmark bar, which allows us to easily navigate through the
document.
Each entry in the table of contents has become a hyperlink to the beginning of
the corresponding chapter respectively. Hyperlinks are marked by red
frames.
All cross-references have become hyperlinks.
This is a great improvement for electronic versions of our documents! The print
version would not be affected—neither the bookmarks nor those red frames
would be printed.
If you don't like the default look of the hyperlinks, it can easily be changed by
editing the options to hyperref. Let's try this.
Time for action – customizing the
hyperlink appearance
We shall pass options to hyperref affecting the way hyperlinks are emphasized:
1. Open the file preamble.tex again. This time, specify the options for
hyperref:
\usepackage[colorlinks=true,linkcolor=red]{hyperref}
2. Save this document, go to the main document equations.tex, and compile
it twice. The table of contents is changed:
What just happened?
Instead of frames, we now got a red color for emphasized links. The color can be
seen in a printed document.
hyperref offers ways to set up the options. The first one we used is:
\usepackage[key=value list]{hyperref}
Alternatively, we could just write \usepackage{hyperref} and set the options
afterwards:
\hypersetup{key=value list}
Our example would do the same with:
\hypersetup{colorlinks=true,linkcolor=red}
These methods may be combined. Here's a selection of especially useful options:
Option
Type
Default
Effect
draft
boolean
false
Turns off all hypertext options
final
boolean
true
Turns all hypertext options on
debug
boolean
false
Prints extra diagnostic messages into the log file
raiselinks
boolean
true
Fits the height of links to the real size of objects such as text or
graphics
breaklinks
boolean
false
Links may be broken across lines (true by default with pdftex)
pageanchor
boolean
true
Gives pages implicit anchors, needed for the index
backref
boolean
false
Adds back links to bibliography items
hyperindex
boolean
true
Links page numbers in the index, the pageanchor option should be
set
hyperfootnotes
boolean
true
Converts footnote markers into hyperlinks
linktocpage
boolean
false
In TOC, LOF and LOT page numbers would be linked instead of the
text
colorlinks
boolean
false
Writes links and anchors in color, depending on the type of link such
as page references, URLs, file references, and citations
linkcolor
color
red
Color for internal links
anchorcolor
color
black
Color for anchor texts
citecolor
color
green
Color for citations of bibliography items
filecolor color cyan Color for links to local files
urlcolor
color
magenta
Color for URLs
frenchlinks
boolean
false
Uses small caps for links instead of color
bookmarks
boolean
true
Writes bookmarks for the Acrobat Reader
bookmarksopen
boolean
false
Shows all bookmarks in an expanded view
bookmarksnumbered
boolean
false
Includes the section number in bookmarks
pdfstartpage
text
1
Specifies which page would be shown when the PDF file is opened
There are many more options for customizing link borders, PDF page size,
anchors, bookmark appearance, and PDF page display style. The hyperref
documentation lists them all. Have a look at it—it's a really valuable document!
Many PDF and hypertext-related questions in web forums just arise because users
did not know that they have already got an extensive manual on their own hard
disk, namely, texdoc hyperref.
hyperref supports more than just pdfLaTeX, which most users choose today. If
you, for instance, use XeTeX, you may give the xetex option to hyperref. If you
typeset to DVI and use dvips to convert to Postscript and to PDF afterwards, use
the dvips option. There are more than a dozen of such driver options; you can
read about those backend drivers in the manual. If no driver is specified, the
hypertex driver would be used, which is, in most times, the appropriate driver.
Some text options allow us to specify the metadata of PDF files, such as the
author name, title, and keywords. This information is shown if you inspect the
document properties with the PDF reader. Even more beneficial, Internet search
engines are able to find and classify your PDF document according to this meta
information. If you publish on the Internet, this improves the chances of the
readers finding your publication!
Time for action – editing PDF
metadata
We shall add PDF metadata to our book of equations. Besides choosing sensible
keywords, we will set the title and the author's name. During development, why
not choose the great mathematician to whom we dedicated our book. So, let's do
it!
1. Open the file preamble.tex and add the following lines:
\hypersetup{pdfauthor={Carl Friedrich Gauss},
pdftitle={The Big Book of Equations},
pdfsubject={Solving Equations and Equation Systems},
pdfkeywords={equations,mathematics}}
2. Save that file. Go to the main document equations.tex and Typeset. Let's
inspect the document properties! So, if you use the Acrobat Reader, click on
the File menu and then Properties:
What just happened?
Well, that was easy. We provided all document properties by using the hyperref
option. We just had to take care to enclose each entry in curly braces.
The most commonly used meta-information options are:
Option
PDF meta-information field
pdftitle
Sets the title
pdfauthor
Sets the author
pdfsubject
Sets the subject
pdfcreator
Sets the creator
pdfproducer
Sets the producer
pdfkeywords
Sets the keywords
Note
A s hyperref redefines many commands of other packages in order to add
hyperlink functionality, it has to be loaded after those packages. A good rule of
thumb is to load the package as the last package in your preamble. A few
packages are exceptions to that rule, namely, algorithm, amsrefs, bookmark,
chappg, cleveref, glossaries, hypernat, linguex, sidecap, and tabularx
are known to be exceptions.
Creating hyperlinks manually
As hyperref already creates links for nearly all kinds of references, it's rarely
necessary to create links by oneself. But of course, it's possible. hyperref
provides user commands for that:
\href{URL}{text} makes text to a hyperlink, which points to the URL
address
\url{URL} prints the URL and links it
\nolinkurl{URL} prints the URL without linking it
\hyperref{label}{text} changes text to a hyperlink, which links to the
place where the label has been set, thus to the same place \ref{label}
would point to
\hypertarget{name}{text} creates a target name for potential hyperlinks
with text as the anchor
\hyperlink{name}{text} makes text to a hyperlink, which points to the
target name
Sometimes you might need just an anchor, for instance, if you use
\addcontentsline , which creates a hyperlinked TOC entry, but there hasn't
been a sectioning command setting the anchor. The TOC entry would point to the
previously set anchor, thus to the wrong place! The command \phantomsection
comes to the rescue; it's just setting an anchor like \hypertarget{}{} would do.
It's mostly used this way for creating a TOC entry for the bibliography while
linking to the correct page as follows:
\cleardoublepage
\phantomsection
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{\bibname}
\bibliography{name}
This tiny command has been the answer to a lot of questions on online forums.
Well, not everybody reads manuals.
Creating bookmarks manually
Your bookmark panel might already be full of chapter and section entries. But
what if you wish to add bookmarks by yourself? That's been foreseen.
\pdfbookmark [level]{text}{name} creates a bookmark with text at the
optionally specified level. The default level is 0. Treat name just as \label; it
should be unique because it stands for the internal anchor.
You can also create bookmarks relative to the current level:
\currentpdfbookmark{text}{name} puts a bookmark at the current level
\belowpdfbookmark{text}{name} creates a bookmark one level deeper
\subpdfbookmark{text}{name} increases the level and creates a
bookmark at that deeper level
Tip
T h e bookmarks package offers more features for customizing bookmarks.
Moreover, it requires just one compiler run in contrary to hyperref; thus its use
is recommended.
Math formulas and special symbols in bookmarks
Due to PDF restrictions, math and special symbols cannot be used in PDF
bookmarks. This might cause a problem, for instance, in sectioning commands
with math symbols in their title or font commands which would be passed to the
bookmark. There's a solution though:
\texorpdfstring{string with TeX code}{text string}
It returns the argument depending on the context to avoid such problems. It can be
used like this:
\section{The equation \texorpdfstring{$y=x^2$}
{y=x\texttwosuperior}}
That may come handy sooner than you might guess.
Tip
If you load hyperref with unicode option, you could use Unicode characters in
bookmarks, such as in \section{\texorpdfstring{$\gamma$}{\textgamma}
radiation}.
Benefitting from other packages
There's a huge amount of LaTeX packages. For nearly every possible task,
somebody has written a package either solving or supporting it. Nearly all
packages are stored on CTAN. But how can we find what we need? Let's have a
look at an online catalogue.
Time for action – visiting the TeX
Catalogue Online
We shall browse for PDF-related packages in the online catalogue to find
something that's useful for us:
1. Open your favorite Internet browser and go to the address
http://texcatalogue.sarovar.org/ :
2. We can see different indexes. The systematic topical index is often the most
useful when you're looking for some subject, So, let's click on Topical. We
get a huge list. In the overview, click on Creating PDF documents. Then it
scrolls down to that category:
3. Well, we found some packages! cooltooltips sounds fancy, so let's click it:
4. Now we may read the brief description and open the documentation to learn
more about that package.
What just happened?
The TeX Catalogue is a really valuable source. Its category view is especially
useful if you are looking for a package but don't know its exact name. It's also an
easy way to locate and download documentation if texdoc doesn't work for you.
So, you found cooltooltips, and now you can enhance your PDF document by
mouse-over effects and pop-ups.
If the package you desire is not yet on your computer, then you need to install it.
Time for action – installing a LaTeX
package
The pretty new biblatex package is often not yet installed. So, let's catch up on
it!
1. Go to the Start menu and look for the TeX Live Manager:
2. Launch the TeX Live Manager with a mouse click:
Note
If you installed TeX Live on Linux or without a Start menu group, you may
start the TeX Live Manager at the command prompt. The name of the
executable file is tlmgr. So, type tlmgr –help to get a summary of the
available options and actions.
3. In the menu, click on tlmgr and then Load default net repository to get the
most recent repository. The status bar at the bottom will inform you about the
success.
4. Choose the package you desire! Perhaps filter the Status to make it easier.
Then click on Install. Done!
What just happened?
Though you could just download packages to your computer, it's very
recommendable to use a package manager instead. That's what we did! With TeX
Live, use the TeX Live Manager a.k.a. tlmgr, and with MiKTeX, use the
MiKTeX package manager a.k.a. mpm. If you use Linux and installed TeX Live
using your operating system's repositories instead of tlmgr, then use your OS
package manager for adding LaTeX packages; this might be Synaptic, aptitude,
apt-get, YaST, rpm, or any other, depending on your kind of Linux distribution—
you will know it for sure if you use Linux.
Package managers are usually easy to handle: choose, install, or update plus some
further useful features. A manual installation could be hard, at least if a package
consists of more than a .sty file—there might be documented source files
needing compilation or various font files requiring some know-how regarding the
TeX filesystem structure. The UK TeX FAQ, listed among the online resources in
the last chapter, offers detailed information about package installation.
Use a package manager, if available, so that you are on the safe side.
Designing headings
In Chapter 2, Formatting Words, Lines, and Paragraphs , we encountered the
problem of customizing headings. There has to be a consistent way to modify the
font of the headings, their spacing, and their numbering for the whole document.
Fortunately, there’s a handy package for that, it’s called titlesec . We shall use it
now.
Time for action – designing chapter
and section headings
We return to our example that we used in this chapter. Our goal is to create
centered headings. The font size should be smaller, further we reduce the space
above and below. Finally, we switch to a sans serif font which is a good choice
for bold headings:
1. Open the file preamble.tex which we already used in this chapter. Insert
this line to load the titlesec package:
\usepackage{titlesec}
2. Add this command to specify layout and font of the chapter headings:
\titleformat{\chapter}[display]
{\normalfont\sffamily\Large\bfseries\centering}
{\chaptertitlename\ \thechapter}{0pt}{\Huge}
3. Now define the section heading by calling \titleformat again:
\titleformat{\section}
{\normalfont\sffamily\large\bfseries\centering}
{\thesection}{1em}{}
4. Add this line to adjust the chapter headings spacing:
\titlespacing*{\chapter}{0pt}{30pt}{20pt}
5. Save preamble.tex and Typeset the main document equation.tex. Let’s
see how the headings have changed:
What just happened?
We loaded the package titlesec, which provides a comprehensive interface for
customizing headings, of parts, chapters, sections, and even smaller sectioning
parts down to subparagraphs.
In step 2 we chose displayed style, which means that numbering and actual title
use separate lines. Firstly, we used \normalfont to switch to the base font, to be
on the safe side. By \sffamily we switched to sans-serif font, chose size and
weight and finally declared that the complete heading shall be centered. In step 3
we did this very similar, we just omitted [display] to get number and title on the
same line.
To understand the remaining arguments, have a look at the \titleformat
definition:
\titleformat{cmd}[shape]{format}{label}{sep}{before}[after]
The meaning of the arguments is as follows:
cmd stands for the sectioning command we redefine, that is, \part,
\chapter, \section, \subsection, \subsubsection, \paragraph, or
\subparagraph
shape specifies the paragraph shape. The effect of the possible values is:
display puts the label into a separate paragraph
hang creates a hanging label like in standard sections and is the default
option
runin produces a run-in title like \paragraph does by default
leftmargin sets the title into the left margin
rightmargin puts the title into the right margin
drop wraps the text around the title, requires care to avoid overlapping
wrap works like drop but adjusts the space for the title to match the
longest text line
frame works like display and additionally frames the title
format may contains commands which will be applied to label and text of
the title.
label prints the label, that is, the number.
sep is a length which specifies the separation between label and title text.
With display option, it’s the vertical separation, with frame option it
means the distance between text and frame, otherwise it’s the horizontal
separation between label and title.
before can contain code which comes before the title body. The last
command of it is allowed to take an argument, which should then be the title
text.
after can contain code which comes after the title body.
That’s a lot of options! Have a look at the titlesec documentation to learn even
more.
We used the titlesec command \chaptertitlename, which is \chaptername
by default, that is, it defaults to Chapter. In an appendix, it changes to
\appendixname.
By the remaining command we customized the spacing of all chapter headings:
\titlespacing*{cmd}{left}{beforesep}{aftersep}[right]
left works differently depending on the shape: with drop, leftmargin and
rightmargin it’s the title width. With wrap, it’s the maximum width. With
runin, it sets the indentation before the title. Otherwise it increases the left
margin. If negative, it decreases, which means overhanging into the margin.
beforesep sets the vertical space before the title.
aftersep sets the separation between title and text. With hang, block, and
display, it’s has a vertical meaning. With runin, drop, wrap, leftmargin,
and rightmargin, it’s a horizontal width. Again, it may be a negative value.
right increases the right margin when hang, block or display shape is
used.
If you use the star, the indentation of the following paragraph would be removed
as you know of sections. With drop, wrap and run-in the starred version has no
meaning.
In our example, we avoided the indentation of the paragraph which follows a
chapter heading, and we specified a space of 30 pt before the heading and 20 pt
after it. That’s less than before, standard classes use 50 pt above chapter
headings.
It’s very recommendable to read the titlesec documentation to get the most out
of it. In its appendix, it shows how the headings in standard classes would be
defined by \titleformat and \titlesec. That’s a great point to start off by
copying these definitions and beginning to modify them.
Using sans-serif headings is very common today. They don’t have such a heavy
and ancient appearance like bold serif headings. However, serif text offers the
best readability for body test. Now it’s up to you to choose—you’ve got the tools!
Coloring your document
We could enhance our texts further by colors. We didn't deal with it yet, because
most people use LaTeX for writing serious books and articles, or letters where
too much color may harm the appearance. But why not try something fancy? For
instance, diagrams and tables in presentations are often colorful.
We just need to load the color package:
\usepackage{color}
From now on, we have to use a command to set the text color:
\color{name} is a declaration that switches to the color name. Just try
\color{blue}.
\textcolor{name}{text} is the corresponding command form, coloring
just text. That's like {\color{name}}, not new for you.
The package offers the command \definecolor . Use this to mix your own
colors. You may read it in the documentation of the color package or of the
graphicx package, if needed.
But much better is to use the xcolor package, which extends the color facilities. It
offers a lot of readily mixed colors; you just need to call it by its name and it has
powerful capabilities regarding color definition. If only for the huge color
samples table, look at the package documentation.
Have a go hero – creating colorful tables
Now you're able to do everything with the color you like. Now think of diagrams
in financial journals or tables of sports tournaments using rounded corners,
shading, and fading. Is LaTeX capable of that? Yes, it is!
The following presentation slide has been created with LaTeX— can you believe
it?
The code for this presentation can be found on http://texblog.net and in the book's
example archive.
Optionally, you can have a look at this differently designed table, before we come
to its source code:
The document is not very long, but it contains some new subjects:
\documentclass[svgnames]{beamer}
\setbeamertemplate{background canvas}[vertical shading]%
[top=blue!1,bottom=blue!30]
\setbeamertemplate{navigation symbols}{}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{matrix}
\newcommand{\up}{\textcolor{YellowGreen}{$\blacktriangle$}}
\newcommand{\down}{\textcolor{Red}{$\blacktriangledown$}}
\newcommand{\const}{\textcolor{darkgray}{\textbf{--}}}
\newcommand{\head}[1]{\textbf{#1}}
\newenvironment{matrixtable}[4]{%
\begin{tikzpicture}[matrix of nodes/.style={
execute at begin cell=\node\bgroup\strut,
execute at end cell=\egroup;}]
\matrix (m) [matrix of nodes,top color=blue!20,
bottom color=blue!80,draw=white,
nodes={draw,top color=blue!10,bottom color=blue!35,
draw,innersep=2pt,minimum height=3.1ex},
columnsep=1ex,row sep=0.6ex,inner sep=2ex,
roundedcorners,column 1/.style={minimum width=#1},
column 2/.style={minimum width=#2},
column 3/.style={minimum width=#3},
column 4/.style={minimum width=#4}]}%
{;\end{tikzpicture}}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}[fragile,bg=lightgray]
\begin{center}
\begin{matrixtable}{1.2cm}{2.4cm}{1.2cm}{0.6cm}{
\head{Rank} & \head{Distribution} & \head{Hits} & \\
1 & Ubuntu & 2114 & \down \\
2 & Fedora & 1451 & \up \\
3 & Mint & 1297 & \const \\
4 &OpenSUSE& 1228 & \up \\
5 &Debian& 910 & \down \\
6 &Mandriva& 907 & \up \\
7 &PCLinuxOS& 764 & \up \\
8 & Puppy & 738 & \up \\
9 & Sabayon & 671 & \up \\
10 & Arch & 625 & \down \\
}
\end{matrixtable}
\end{center}
\end{frame}
\end{document}
Indeed, this looks a bit different than what we've done before. However, as you
are a hero, you may check out the magic behind it! We used the following:
The beamer class—this is a feature-rich presentation class for producing
slides. It offers many predesigned colorful themes. More can be found on the
Internet. There's a user's guide with many examples on more than 200 pages
—and it's probably already on your hard drive! texdoc, you know.
The xcolor package—the beamer class loads it implicitly, so we did not
have to do this. We just gave beamer the svgnames option to pass it along to
xcolor, which provides us with a color naming scheme.
The TikZ package—that's a jewel! TikZ is an enormously capable package
for creating graphics. Our small example just used a tiny feature of it: a
matrix of nodes. The manual is twice as large as the beamer documentation.
However, this benefits you—a free book about producing graphics with
LaTeX. You can learn to create diagrams, charts, plots, trees, and arbitrary
graphics using coordinates, nodes, shapes, layers, transparency, shadings,
transformations, and shadings.
That's heavy stuff. But check it out—you will see that there's more in the LaTeX
world than dry scientific or technical texts!
Pop quiz
1. By which command could you create an anchor, to which a hyperlink can
point?
a. \href
b. \hyperlink
c. \hyperref
d. \hypertarget
e. \hypersetup
2. According to the text, which characters are allowed in bookmarks?
a. only letters
b. only letters and numbers
c. only letters and Unicode characters including numbers
d. letters and math symbols without line breaks
Summary
This chapter started with easy and comfortable hyper-linking and ended with an
outlook to a very powerful graphic package, namely, TikZ.
By reading this chapter, we are now capable of:
Enhancing our document with a hypertext structure
Designing visually different styles for different types of links
Providing a navigation bar for the reader by adding bookmarks
Editing the PDF metadata
Designing font and layout of headings
Adding color to our texts
Now that we've got most of the tools we need for successful writing, what's ahead
is specialized advanced classes and packages. However, this won't be difficult
for you. Since you have mastered the fundamental LaTeX challenges, you're now
able to use any other package together with reading its documentation. The vast
majority of classes and packages are very well documented. And there are no
secrets—everything is open source.
During our work, we may encounter errors and warnings. That's common, also for
advanced LaTeX users. The following chapter will prepare us for
troubleshooting.
Chapter 12. Troubleshooting
During typesetting, it may happen that LaTeX prints out warning messages. It's
even possible that LaTeX doesn't produce the desired output but shows error
messages instead. That's absolutely normal and can be caused, for example, by
small typos in command names or by unbalanced braces. Even professional
LaTeX typesetters have to deal with errors—they just know how to do it
efficiently.
Don't worry too much about the potential errors—let LaTeX check it for you.
Then you just need to do the corrections at the places pointed out by LaTeX.
This chapter prepares us to:
Understand error messages and to fix them
Deal with warnings
Use all the information LaTeX produces during typesetting
Let's first tackle the error handling.
Understanding and fixing errors
If the LaTeX typesetting engine encounters a problem, it will issue an error
message. This is informative and it's intended to help you. So, read the messages
carefully. Besides the line number, where the error occurred, a diagnostic
message is also provided.
Concentrate on the very first error message. If you continue typesetting, further
errors might be just a consequence of the first one that confused the compiler.
Time for action – interpreting and
fixing an error
Let's create a tiny test document. For sure you know those "Hello world!" printing
programs—we shall write one in LaTeX. Though we are used to the uncommon
capitalization used in the words TeX and LaTeX, we will now try if \Latex
works as well.
1. Create a new document containing these lines:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\Latex\ says: Hello world!
\end{document}
2. Typeset. LaTeX will stop and print out the following message:
! Undefined control sequence.
l.3 \Latex
\ says: Hello world!
3. Click on the cancel icon in the upper-left corner of TeXworks to stop
typesetting. Go to line 3, correct \Latex into \LaTeX and Typeset again.
Now LaTeX produces output without an error:
What just happened?
LaTeX commands are case-sensitive. Because we did not respect that, LaTeX
had to deal with a macro called \Latex, which is just unknown. As a command is
also called a control sequence , we got the error Undefined control sequence.
If TeX encounters an error, it stops typesetting and asks for user input. You could
press the Enter key to continue typesetting though or cancel and correct the error
immediately.
Let's analyze the three parts of the error output:
An error message begins with an exclamation mark, which is followed by a
short description of the problem.
Then LaTeX prints out the number of the input line where the error was
raised and the part of the line until the problem occurred.
After a line break, the remaining part of the input line is printed out.
So you are not on your own without a clue! LaTeX tells you exactly:
The kind of error
The exact location of the error
Most editors show you the line number or allow jumping to the line number you
enter. As you are now at the problematic place, you only need to know why
LaTeX complains—if you don't see it yourself immediately. Leslie Lamport's
LaTeX book and documentation lists error messages alphabetically together with
some background information. You may choose that for look-up.
We shall now have a closer look at frequent TeX and LaTeX error messages. In
this book, let's do that by topic.
Using commands and environments
Command names might easily be misspelled or just misused. Let's check out
LaTeX's common complaints.
Undefined control sequence: As in our example, TeX stumbled across an
unknown command name. There are two possible reasons:
The command name might be misspelled. In that case, you just need to
correct it and restart the typesetting.
The command name is correct, but it's defined by a package you didn't
load. Add a \usepackage command to your preamble, which loads that
package.
Environment undefined: That's similar to Undefined control sequence, but
this time you began an environment which is unknown. Again, this may be
caused by misspelling or by a missing package—you know how to correct it.
Command already defined: This happens when you create a command with
a name that's already used, for example, with \newcommand or
\newenvironment. Just choose a different name. If you really would like to
override that command, use \renewcommand or \renewenvironment
instead.
Missing control sequence inserted: A control sequence has been expected
but didn't appear. A common cause is using \newcommand, \renewcommand,
o r \providecommand, but not specifying a command name as its first
argument.
\verb illegal in command argument: The \verb command for producing
verbatim text is a delicate one; it cannot be used within arguments of
commands or environments. The examplep package offers commands for
using verbatim text in such places.
Writing math formulas
The most frequent mistake is forgetting to enter math mode. The first of the
following errors would be raised then:
Missing $ inserted: There are a lot of commands which may only be used in
math mode. Just think of symbols; most of them require math mode. If TeX is
not in math mode, but encounters such a symbol, it stops and prints out that
error. Usually it can be repaired by inserting that missing $, possibly
several. Remember that you cannot use paragraph breaks inside a math
expression. This means that blank lines within a math expression are illegal;
the math mode has to be ended before the blank line.
Command invalid in math mode: Some commands are not applicable within
math formulas. In that case, use the command outside the math mode.
Double subscript, double superscript: Two subsequent subscripts,
superscripts respectively such as in $a_n_1$ cannot be typeset. To correct
that, group by braces, like in $a_{n_1}$ or $a_{n_{1}}$.
Bad math environment delimiter: This can be a consequence of illegally
nesting math mode. You must not start math mode if you are already inside
math mode, for example, don't use \[ within an equation environment.
Similarly, you must not end the math mode before you started it. Ensure that
your math mode delimiters match and that braces are balanced.
Handling the preamble and document body
The preamble is intended for document-wide settings like class, packages,
options, and command definitions. After the preamble has ended, output may be
produced in the document body. If these rules are broken, one of the following
errors would occur:
Missing \begin{document}: It seems to be obvious; you might have forgotten
the command \begin{document}. But the error may occur even if you did
not forget that! In that case, there may be a problem in the preamble.
Specifically, if a character or a command within the preamble produces
output, that error would be raised. Just remember: output is not allowed
before \begin{document}.
Can be used only in preamble: This error message belongs to a command
which is only allowed to be used in the preamble, not after
\begin{document}. Move that command upwards into your preamble, or
remove it. For example, \usepackage can only be used in the preamble.
Option clash for package: An option clash happens if you load a package
twice but with different options. If you did that, it's usually better to reduce it
to one \usepackage call with the desired options. But the cause might be
hidden. Imagine that a class or a package implicitly loads a certain package
together with some options. If you want to load the package too but with
different options, there's a problem!
Tip
You could try to fix an option clash by omitting reloading the package while
specifying the desired options to the document class. Remember, class options are
inherited by packages. Some packages and classes even offer commands to set
options after loading. For example, the hyperref package provides
\hypersetup{options}, and similarly the caption package offers
\captionsetup. KOMA classes support such late options and are described in
their manual.
Working with files
The most common errors regarding files are mistakes in filename or path. Then
the first of the following errors would be raised:
File not found: LaTeX tried to open a file that doesn't exist. Possibly you:
Used \include or \input to include a .tex file but a file with the
specified name doesn't exist
Tried to use a non-existing package or misspelled the package's name.
Packages can be recognized by the file extension .sty.
Used a document class that doesn't exist or just has a different name.
Class files have the extension .cls.
Well, just correct the filename in your input document or rename the file.
\include cannot be nested: We learned in Chapter 10, Developing Large
Documents, that we cannot use \include within files that are being
included by themselves. Instead, use \input within such files.
Creating tables and arrays
Admittedly, tabular and array environments don't have the simplest syntax.
Those & and \\ might easily be misplaced, which causes LaTeX to complain.
Further, we have to be careful with the formatting arguments. Let's start with the
arguments to the environment:
Illegal character in array arg: In the argument to a tabular or an array
environment, you may specify the column formatting. You line up characters
such as l, c, r, p, @, and width arguments such as {1cm}. If you use any
character that doesn't have such a meaning, LaTeX will tell you that. The
same applies to the formatting argument of \multicolumn.
Missing p-arg in array arg: A bit more specific than the previous message,
it tells us that the width argument to the p option is missing. Supplement the p
with a width such as {1cm} or change the p into another option such as l, c,
or r.
Missing @-exp in array arg: That's similar to the error; the expression after
the @ option is missing. You just need to add it, in curly braces, or remove
the @ option.
Now we shall take a look at the potential error messages concerning the table
body.
Misplaced alignment tab character &: As you know, the ampersand
character has the special meaning of separating columns in a row of a tabular
or array environment. If you accidentally use it in normal text, this error will
appear. Type \& if you desire an ampersand symbol in the output.
Extra alignment tab has been changed to \cr: This happens if you use
more separation characters & than the defined columns. For example, the \\
ending a row could have been forgotten.
Working with lists
Lists follow a certain structure and cannot be endlessly nested. At some point,
LaTeX would complain:
Too deeply nested: As mentioned in Chapter 4, Creating Lists, you can nest
four levels of a list. If you mix list types, you could go up to six. But if you
go further than what LaTeX accepts, you would get this error message.
Tip
Think over if you really need a deep nesting. If this is the case, you could
consider using sectioning commands like \paragraph or \subsubsection for
outer levels.
Working with floating figures and tables
In Chapter 5, Creating Tables and Inserting Pictures , we learned about inserting
figures and tables, and how to adjust their placement. If you use a lot of figures or
tables, you might encounter the following error:
Too many unprocessed floats: If you use many floating objects and LaTeX
saves them because it doesn't find an appropriate place, LaTeX's room for
that might get full, so this error appears. There might even be just one non-
fitting float blocking those who follow. It may be solved as follows:
By adding placement options to the figure and table environment
respectively, thus lowering their placement requirements.
By inserting a \clearpage to flush out the floats at a suitable place, or
perhaps even cleverer: \afterpage{clearpage} with the afterpage
package.
General syntax errors
Just like with any markup or programming language, LaTeX's documents have to
follow a syntax. For example, braces and delimiters have to match. If there's a
mistake, LaTeX would point to it:
Missing { inserted, missing } inserted: Though it reads its like caused by
unbalanced braces, it may be because of a confusion of TeX, which could be
caused before the place where the error occurred. Well, check the used
syntax thoroughly.
Extra }, or forgotten $: This time there's a problem with unbalanced
braces, or math mode delimiters don't match correctly. You need to correct
the matching.
There's no line here to end: Using \\ or \newline between paragraphs in
vertical mode, is not meaningful and causes this error. Don't try to get more
vertical space by writing \\. Use \vspace instead or other skip commands
like \bigskip, \medskip, or \smallskip. For instance, a blank line may be
produced by \vspace{\baselineskip}.
Tip
Sometimes, the cause of the error might be a bit hidden to the user: TeX might be
in vertical mode when you don't expect it to be. In such cases, you could force the
\\ to work if you write \leavevmode directly before it. Inserting some
whitespace before, like using ~, works too.
Handling warnings
Warning messages are just for your information. They don't need to point to a
serious problem, but often it's a good idea to read these tips carefully and to act
accordingly. This may improve your document.
Time for action – emphasizing on a
sans-serif font
We shall write our complete document using a sans-serif font. As we did not yet
see how emphasizing without serifs looks, we will try that:
1. Take our "Hello world!" example and modify it this way:
\documentclass{article}
\renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}
\begin{document}
\emph{Hello world!}
\end{document}
2. Typeset. LaTeX will print out a warning:
LaTeX Font Warning: Font shape `OT1/cmss/m/it' in size <10> not
available
(Font) Font shape `OT1/cmss/m/sl' tried instead on input line 4.
3. Check the output:
What just happened?
The macro \familydefault stands for the default font family which shall be
used in the LaTeX document. For this macro, we specified the value \sfdefault,
which means the default sans-serif font. This means simply that sans-serif is now
default, no matter which font has been chosen. As you can imagine, other possible
values are \rmdefault and \ttdefault. By changing \familydefault, we
don't have to write \sffamily again and again.
But then we emphasized our text and got a warning! The message means that
simply there's no Computer Modern Sans Serif font (cmss) in OT1 encoding (just
standard), in medium weight (m) and italic shape (it) in 10pt size. Further,
LaTeX told us how it tried to repair that; instead of italic it chose a slanted shape.
That's not too bad; at least it looks similar and the output is produced.
This is basically what happens when warnings occur: LaTeX informs about a
potential problem or disadvantage, but it tries to choose the best alternative and
continues typesetting. It's not uncommon that a longer document produces dozens
of warnings, most often dealing with horizontal or vertical justification.
Often, it doesn't hurt if you ignore warnings, which don't seem very serious.
Though following them up is a good habit. Who desires to have a perfect
document, fixes all warnings. This way you cannot overlook a potential real
problem.
Let's have a look at very common warning messages, what they mean, and how
we could fix them.
Justifying text
These warnings are the most frequently occurring:
Overfull \hbox: A line is too long and doesn't fit to the text width. This may
result in text extending past the margin. This may be caused by hyphenation
problems, which can be fixed by using \hyphenation, as you already
learned, or by inserting \-. You could break the line manually or polish your
words otherwise.
Underfull \hbox: The opposite to the previous warning; a line is not wide
enough to fit to the text width. This could be caused by \linebreak, if
there's not enough text on the line. Also, \\ or \newline may cause it, such
as \\\\.
Overfull \vbox: The page is too long because TeX could not break it
accordingly. The text might hang out past the bottom margin.
Underfull \vbox: There's not enough text on the page. TeX had to break the
page too early.
In Chapter 2, Formatting Words, Lines, and Paragraphs , we learned how to
improve the justification, reducing such warnings. Remember, already loading the
microtype package may help a bit.
Tip
The declaration \sloppy switches to a pretty relaxed typesetting, thus avoiding
many such warnings. It's counterpart is \fuzzy, switching back to the default
behavior. If you ever use \sloppy, maybe in a kind of emergency, it's better to
keep it local by grouping or use the respective environment
—\begin{sloppypar} … \end{sloppypar}. Additionally, check out
recommendations and alternatives regarding \sloppy in l2tabu, which has been
mentioned in Chapter 10.
Referencing
Many warnings deal with referencing. Common mistakes are missing label or cite
keys or keys that have been used twice. Sometimes LaTeX just tells you that
another typeset run is required.
Label multiply defined: \label or \bibitem has been used with a label
name that's already been used. Make label names unique.
There were multiply-defined labels: Like the previous warning, but after
processing the complete document; a label has been defined by two \label
commands.
Labels may have changed. Rerun to get cross-references right: Just
typeset again to let LaTeX correct the referencing.
Reference ... on page ... undefined: \ref or \pageref has been used
without a corresponding \label definition. Insert a \label command at a
suitable place.
Citation ... on page ... undefined: A \cite command did not have a
corresponding \bibitem command.
There were undefined references or citations: Summarizing after
processing—any \ref or \cite command did not have a corresponding
\label or \bibitem command.
Tip
Whenever you get warnings regarding referencing, it’s a good idea to simply
rerun typesetting. Often, such warnings then disappear, because LaTeX couldn’t
resolve all references in the first run itself.
Choosing fonts
We already encountered the first of the following warnings in our example:
Font shape … in size <…> not available: You chose a font that's not
available. This may be a result of combining font commands that results in a
non-existing font. Also, it could just be of an unavailable size. LaTeX would
choose a different font or size and inform you about that choice in detail.
Some font shapes were not available, defaults substituted: LaTeX prints
this after processing the entire document if any of the chosen fonts had been
unavailable.
Placing figures and tables
We already encountered the first of the following warnings in our example:
Float too large for page: A figure or table is too large to fit the page. It
would be output, but on an oversize page.
h float specifier changed to ht: If you specified an h option to a floating
figure or table which doesn't fit there, it would be placed on top of the next
page and that warning would be issued. The same can occur for !h and !ht.
Customizing the document class
A warning may be issued if you use an illegal class option:
Unused global option(s): You specified an option to \documentclass,
which is unknown to the class and to any loaded package. This could be, for
example, a base font size which is not supported. Just check the option which
LaTeX complains about.
Also packages may print out warnings if they foresee any problem. All these
warnings are intended to help you in designing your document.
Avoiding obsolete classes and
packages
At the end of Chapter 10, we talked about the dangers of outdated information.
LaTeX exists since decades, and so do tutorials, examples, packages, and
templates. Many are totally outdated and some even refer to the old LaTeX
standard 2.09, where even document classes didn't exist. In Chapter 10, we
pointed to the definitive guide l2tabu that comes to the rescue.
Many problems just occur because of the use of obsolete packages. For example,
some that aren't maintained any more may conflict with newer packages. Often,
you just need to find the recommended successor of an obsolete package and use
that.
Here's a short list for helping you in that matter:
Obsolete packages
Recommended successors
a4, a4wide, anysize
geometry, typearea
backrefx
backref
bitfield
bytefield
caption2
caption
dinat
natdin
doublespace
setspace
dropping
lettrine
eps, epsfig
graphicx
eurotex
inputenx
fancyheadings
fancyhdr
floatfig
floatflt
glossary
glossaries
here
float
isolatin, isolatin1
inputenc
mathpple
mathpazo
mathptm
mathptmx
nthm
ntheorem
palatino
mathpazo
picinpar
floatflt, picins, wrapfig
prosper, HA-prosper
powerdot, beamer
ps4pdf
pst-pdf
raggedr
ragged2e
scrlettr
scrlttr2
scrpage
scrpage2
seminar
powerdot, beamer
subfigure
subfig, subcaption
t1enc
fontenc
times
mathptmx
utopia
fourier
vmargin
geometry, typearea
That's not set in stone. Of course, you may still use the so-called obsolete
packages. They may work well even today. But check out their description on
their CTAN package home page; usually there are comments regarding up-to-
dateness and related packages.
An up-to-date version of that list can also be found on http://texblog.net/packages.
There's an ongoing discussion at http://mrunix.de on the creation and maintenance
of such a list.
General troubleshooting
There may be situations where we cannot solve a problem simply by reading and
acting on warnings or error messages. Imagine a mysterious error, an untraceable
error location, irresolvable references, or just unclear messages from classes or
packages.
Locating the cause by the line number which LaTeX printed out or by knowing
what we've done since the previous typesetting run, usually helps. Once a
problematic line or chunk is located, it could be removed or fixed. Otherwise, it
might become difficult.
Here are the general first steps we might go through then:
Compile several times. This may be necessary for correct referencing,
positioning of floating figures, and creation of table of contents,
bibliography, and lists of tables and figures.
Check the order in which you load the packages. Some packages, like
hyperref, don't work well if loaded before or after certain packages. You
may just swap some lines to correct or to test that.
Remove auxiliary files. If anything strange happens, it's sometimes a good
idea to remove all files created by LaTeX during typesetting. These files
have the same name as the main document but have extensions such as .aux,
.toc, .lot, .lof, .bbl, .idx, or .nav, just to name some examples.
If the problem persists, we could try to isolate the cause.
1. Create a copy of your document. If necessary, copy the complete folder.
From now on, work on the copy.
2. Remove a part of the document which probably is not involved in the
problem.
3. Typeset, to ensure that the problem persists. If this is the case, go back to
step 2. If the problem is gone, you isolated the problem within the part you
just removed. In this latter case, restore the deleted part, you may delete
other parts.
4. After some repetitions, you located the problem. If you didn't already, reduce
the number of loaded packages, repeating step 2 and typesetting.
5. You end up with a really tiny but complete example document which
reproduces the error.
Removing or rewriting that identified part of your document could help. What if
you really want to use that part and would like to fix that error? Now that your
problem can be shown with such a very small example code, you could post that
problem to an online LaTeX forum and ask for help.
Have a go hero – examining LaTeX's log files
You are not dependent on just the errors and warnings that your editor shows to
you! LaTeX keeps track of any information, each warning, and every error. All of
these will be collected in a file with the same name like your document but
carrying the extension .log. This is an ordinary text file and may be opened with
any editor, including your LaTeX editor.
For instance, the log file for our second example looks like the following:
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-1.40.10 (Web2C 2009)
(format=pdflatex 2010.6.25) 20JAN 2011 23:16
entering extended mode
%&-line parsing enabled.
**helloworld.tex
(./helloworld.tex
LaTeX2e <2009/09/24>
Babel <v3.8l> and hyphenation patterns for english, ... loaded.
(c:/texlive/2009/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/article.cls
Document Class: article 2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document
class
(c:/texlive/2009/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/size10.clo
File: size10.clo 2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX file (size
option)
)
\c@part=\count79
\c@section=\count80
\c@subsection=\count81
\c@subsubsection=\count82
\c@paragraph=\count83
\c@subparagraph=\count84
\c@figure=\count85
\c@table=\count86
\abovecaptionskip=\skip41
\belowcaptionskip=\skip42
\bibindent=\dimen102
) (./warning.aux)
\openout1 = `warning.aux'.
LaTeX Font Info: Checking defaults for OML/cmm/m/it on input
line 3.
LaTeX Font Info: ... okay on input line 3.
...
LaTeX Font Warning: Font shape `OT1/cmss/m/it' in size <10> not
available
(Font) Font shape `OT1/cmss/m/sl' tried instead on input line 4.
[1
{c:/Users/guest/.texlive2009/texmf-
var/fonts/map/pdftex/updmap/pdftex.map}]
(./helloworld.aux) )
Output written on helloworld.pdf (1 page, 17376 bytes).
Check out the log files of some documents you produced until now. The
information therein makes a very technical impression, but this might help you a
lot in troubleshooting.
Pop quiz – troubleshooting
1. If you get several error messages during one typesetting run, which one is the
most important, according to the text?
a. The first
b. The last
c. All error messages should be dealt with before another typesetting run
2. Which it the extension of the file containing errors, warnings, and
information?
a. aux
b. toc
c. log
d. lof
Summary
This chapter prepared us to solve problems that might occur.
Specifically, we have learned about:
Locating and fixing errors
Understanding warning messages
Analyzing LaTeX's typesetting log
Correcting errors is absolutely necessary. Dealing with warnings is a valuable
bonus.
If you encounter any problem which you aren't able to solve on your own, don't
hesitate to ask for help on a LaTeX Internet forum. You've got the tools within this
chapter, and also:
You know how to create a tiny but complete example which demonstrates the
problem
You are able to report an error message
You know about the log file and could provide its information
For LaTeX friends online, it's often an easy task to use this information in solving
your problem, and definitely a lot of LaTeX enthusiasts have fun in helping other
LaTeX users.
The next chapter will point the way to LaTeX web forums and also to many other
online resources.
Chapter 13. Using Online Resources
There's a vast amount of LaTeX information and material on the Internet, and
it has grown over many years. Today, thanks to the virtues of free and open
source software, a huge TeX community exists, sharing knowledge and
expertise.
On the Internet, you can find:
Software archives offering nearly all LaTeX material available
Web forums, where LaTeX users talk about problems and solutions
Homepages of user groups, TeX distributions, and free editors
Blogs of individual LaTeX users
LaTeX mailing lists you may subscribe to
As you know how to navigate through the World Wide Web, this chapter does not
contain practical examples. Instead, let's take a walk through the Internet.
Web forums, discussion boards, and
Q&A sites
Before we proceed to software archives and homepages, let's go where the online
worldtakes place!
Usenet groups
It all began with the Usenet. Around 1980, a long time before the World Wide
Web was born, this discussion network emerged. It consists of many thousands of
groups, so-called newsgroups, each dedicated to a certain subject. Not to our
surprise, there's a TeX newsgroup!
comp.text.tex
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.text.tex/topics
The easiest way is just to access this URL hosted by Google. Just browse it using
its web interface. Alternatively, you could install a Usenet reader program and
connect to a Usenet web server. At this point, you should familiarize yourself
better with Usenet. A great starting point is its Wikipedia entry at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet. There you would find an introduction, links
to necessary software, and further reading.
comp.text.tex is the classic TeX discussion board. Then and now, there are
distinguished experts reading and posting messages. You can search and browse
an archive reaching back over more than 20 years.
Newsgroups in other languages
If you understand the language, you could check out the German or French Usenet
TeX groups:
http://groups.google.de/group/de.comp.text.tex/topics
http://groups.google.de/group/fr.comp.text.tex/topics
Web forums
During the last few years, web forums emerged. They offer an easier and more
user-friendly access to discussion groups. Initially, LaTeX has been the topic in
sub forums of more general computer forums, among other software. After LaTeX
became more and more popular, websites dedicated to it have been founded.
LaTeX-Community.org
http://www.latex-community.org/
In January 2007, the originator of the LaTeX editor TeXnicCenter—Sven
Wiegand, founded the web forum LaTeX Community. This site has been the first
forum with the single topic LaTeX. It is split into many sub forums, each dealing
with a certain LaTeX topic, such as Math and Science or Fonts and Character
Sets, with a certain LaTeX distribution or a specific LaTeX editor.
Today it's supplemented by a news section and a know-how section containing
articles and essays of the community.
The author of this book supports the fellow community members as a moderator
on that site.
Participating is as easy as in any other web forum. You don't need to register for
reading, as it's freely available. Just for writing, you need to register once,
choosing a login name and a password. Then you may ask questions yourself or
support other users who turned there looking for help.
Questions are very welcome! They are the foundation of the site. You may
increase the chance of receiving helpful answers by:
Choosing a meaningful header
Describing your problem clearly
Quoting the error or warning messages you've got
Including a code example, which allows others to reproduce the problem
The latter is the optimal approach. There's even a website explaining why and
how at http://www.minimalbeispiel.de, in English and German. Once a problem
could be reproduced, it's nearly solved, even if it seems to be difficult at first
sight. Experienced users who are familiar with the source code of the LaTeX
kernel and packages can explain how something works and are able to create
solutions for nearly any problem.
TeX and LaTeX on Stack Exchange
http://tex.stackexchange.com/
There are question and answer sites, which are different to classical web forums.
While in the web forums, people talk and discuss, these Q&A sites have a
simpler structure. There's a question, followed by answers. There's no discussion,
besides comments.
Time for action – asking a question
online
Is there anything you wanted to know about LaTeX? Did you encounter any
serious problem you could not solve? Then post a question on
http://tex.stackexchange.com/:
1. Visit http://tex.stackexchange.com :
2. In the upper-right corner, click on Ask Question:
3. Fill out the Title field and type in your question, and choose some
meaningful keywords for the Tags field. When you are done, click on Post
Your Question. The final question will look like the following:
What just happened?
That wasn't really hard! Besides editing our question we:
Chose a meaningful title to get readers interested in checking out our
question
Specified some keywords, so called tags, which are used to filter the site's
contents
Stack Exchange is a network of free, community-driven Q&A sites. The TeX site,
often briefly called TeX.SE, was founded in 2010 specifically for users of TeX
and LaTeX.
You don't have to register to post questions and answers—you could simply start
off just as we saw! Like in the LaTeX Community web forum, nearly all questions
will be answered, because on this site also, TeX users are happy to share their
expertise with everybody. It's extremely rare that a question would not get a
satisfactory answer. Until now, that happened only with very unclear questions
without details which nobody could answer at all. If you think of the advice
aforementioned regarding formulating good questions, this won't happen to you.
This TeX Q&A site is developed to an easily accessible knowledge base,
because:
Questions are tagged. For each question, one or more tags should be chosen,
describing the subject. For example, if your question is about a problem with
\label and \ref for equations, choose the tags cross-referencing and
equations. This makes it easy to find answers to certain subjects.
Specialized experts watch their favorite tags.
Answers are voted on. Users vote helpful and meaningful answers up, while
misinformation is voted down. This way, the best answer floats to the top.
So you don't have to read through an entire multi-page thread to find the best
solution, like it's necessary in classical web forums.
Both tagging and voting enhance the information access. They may be used for
sorting and refining search results.
There's another concept called reputation . You don't need to care about that, but
perhaps you would like to know what it means. Users who post good questions
and useful answers earn reputation points depending on the votes on their
questions and answers. A certain amount of reputation points allows going
beyond simply asking and answering, for example:
You can leave comments
You can create new tags or retag questions
Advertising is reduced
You are able to edit other users posts
You could even have access to moderation tools
The reputation is a rough measurement for the user status in the community. A user
with high reputation is so trusted by the community that we can be sure he/she
would act carefully. Thus, the site is community-moderated and shows aspects of
a collaborative Wiki.
The site offers a list of frequently asked questions that explain all the details—
check it out. Such lists are common, so let's have a look at LaTeX-specific lists
next.
Frequently Asked Questions
Now you know where to ask for help. However, during the long existence of
online LaTeX communities, the probability that another user has had the same
problem like you is very high! There's a bunch of questions which appear again
and again. If you post such a question, the community member might point you to a
FAQ. This is an abbreviation for "Frequently Asked Questions" and refers to a
list of such questions that also contains answers to them.
UK TeX FAQ
http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?introduction=yes
This is a FAQ site maintained by the UK TeX Users' Group, especially by Robin
Fairbairns. It is regularly posted to comp.text.tex. It contains several hundred
frequently asked questions and well-thought answers. They are sorted by topic,
and that list is still growing and is continuously being improved.
Visual LaTeX FAQ
http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/entries/visualfaq.html
This is a very different approach: the Visual FAQ is a PDF document containing
hundreds of text and graphic elements, such as tables, figures, lists, footnotes, and
math formulas: thirty pages full of samples. At all these objects, key positions are
marked and hyperlinked. Just click on any marked object and you will be lead to
the corresponding UK TeX FAQ entry. Take a look—it's a fancy interface.
MacTeX FAQ
http://tug.org/mactex/faq/
Are you a Mac user? Then this FAQ is made for you. It covers installation and
use of the MacTeX LaTeX distribution and the popular Mac LaTeX editor
TeXShop.
AMS-Math FAQ
http://www.ams.org/tex/amsmath-faq.html
As you know, amsmath is the most recommended math package. There's a list of
questions and answers to amsmath and AMS classes and packages on the website
of the American Mathematical Society.
LaTeX Picture FAQ
http://ctan.org/pkg/l2picfaq
As a lot of questions are about including pictures, this How-to has been
developed. It deals, for example, with the various image file formats, conversion
tools, picture manipulation, and placement of floating figures. The document
contains a lot of small code examples and is a very useful small resource for a
LaTeX beginner.
As it originates in a German LaTeX forum, http://mrunix.de, it's been written in
German. It has been translated into English, but the translation is not yet published
on CTAN.
Mailing lists
Now we come again to a classic media: electronic mailing lists. They are both
used for announcements and for discussion. If you subscribe to such a list, you
will receive announcements and discussion contributions by other subscribers.
You could silently receive and read all the messages, and you could send e-mails
to the list address which would then be sent to all other subscribers. Now you
know you should read an FAQ before.
Today many people prefer easier accessible media, such as web forums.
However, these lists still exist and might be as long as e-mail is popular.
texhax
http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/texhax
This is a list for general TeX discussion, a companion to comp.text.tex,
established in the 1980s. It has hundreds of subscribers and there are many
experts among them.
tex-live
http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/tex-live
The name says it all: it deals with the TeX Live collection. If you installed this
software distribution, you might be interested in subscribing to get the latest news
and to read and write about issues with it.
texworks
http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/texworks
This list supports the user of the LaTeX editor—TeXworks, that we used in the
first chapter. If you decided to use that editor later on and you are interested in the
latest builds, tricks, scripts, and news, you may subscribe.
List collections
Aforementioned were some especially useful examples matching the software
used in this book. There's a lot more that you can find here:
http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo : More than 50 mailing lists for TeX and
LaTeX-specific subjects such as bibliographies, hyphenation, PostScript,
pdfTeX, and development.
http://gmane.org/lists.php : A collection of mailing lists; some of them are
(La)TeX related.
TeX user groups as well as developers of LaTeX editors and other software often
provide mailing lists, especially for announcements. You can read about that on
their homepages. We shall now look at some of them.
TeX user group sites
TeX user groups are organizations for people interested in TeX and LaTeX. They
provide support for their members, but also for TeX and LaTeX users in general.
TUG – the TeX users group
http://www.tug.org/
That's a big institution. It was founded in 1980 and has always had a great
influence on the development and popularity of TeX. Their homepage is a portal
to the TeX world with links to support, documentation, and software.
The LaTeX project
http://www.latex-project.org/
The LaTeX3 project team maintains the LaTeX 2e standard and develops the next
version of LaTeX, called LaTeX3. This website informs about their work and
about LaTeX in general.
UK TUG – TeX in the United Kingdom
http://uk.tug.org/
This user group supports and promotes TeX in the UK. Also this site is a good
starting point to explore TeX resources but specifically those offered by the UK
TUG.
Local user groups
http://www.tug.org/usergroups.html
http://www.ntg.nl/lug/
These pages list local TeX user groups from many countries in the world. Their
websites often contain material in national languages and further information on
the TeX world.
Homepages of LaTeX software and
editors
Like most software manufacturers and distributors, free and open source software
projects offer information on their homepages.
LaTeX distributions
Today there are two big LaTeX distributions, both very modern and
comprehensive, plus some descendants:
TeX Live : http://tug.org/texlive/ is a cross-platform LaTeX software
collection. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Unix.
MiKTeX: http://www.miktex.org/ is a very user-friendly and popular
LaTeX distribution specifically for the Windows operating system.
proTeXt: http://www.tug.org/protext/ is a MiKTeX-based distribution for
Windows that especially focuses on easy installation.
MacTeX: http://www.tug.org/mactex/ is derived from TeX Live and has
been customized specifically for Mac OS X.
LaTeX editors
There are many LaTeX editors available, from easy-to-use to complex and
professional.
Cross-platform
These editors support many systems including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and
Unix:
TeXworks: http://tug.org/texworks/ is light-weight and comfortable.
Texmaker: http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/ offers many features.
TexmakerX: http://texmakerx.sourceforge.net/ is derived from Texmaker
and provides many additional capabilities.
Emacs: http://www.tug.org/mactex/ is extensible and very customizable,
though not easy-to-use for everybody. However, it's great together with
AUCTeX: http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/.
vim: http://www.vim.org/ is based on commands given in a text interface.
It's enhanced by the vim LaTeX-suite: http://vim-latex.sourceforge.net/.
Windows
These editors are specifically for the Windows operating system, running on most
versions:
TeXnicCenter: http://www.texniccenter.org/ is an enormously feature-rich
editor, a great tool for developing complex TeX projects.
LEd: http://www.latexeditor.org/ is a free-to-use multilingual LaTeX editor
with project management.
WinShell: http://www.winshell.de/ is a free and multilingual customizable
editor, also with project management and wizards.
MeWa LaTeX editor: http://www.meshwalk.com/latexeditor/ is another
LaTeX editor with a graphical user interface similar to TeXnicCenter.
WinEdt: http://www.winedt.com/ is powerful and very popular. This one is
distributed as shareware. Also see the WinEdt community site on
http://www.winedt.org/.
Linux
Besides the cross-platform editors, TeXworks, Texmaker, TexmakerX, Emacs,
and vim there are:
Kile: http://kile.sourceforge.net/ is very powerful and designed for the KDE
window system, but also runs on other window managers like GNOME, if
KDE libraries are installed. Just this editor is worth using KDE also on
GNOME.
gedit: http://www.gnome.org/projects/gedit/ is the light-weight GNOME
standard editor and there's a LaTeX plugin:
http://live.gnome.org/Gedit/LaTeXPlugin.
Mac OS X
Though cross-platform editors run on Macs, there's one very popular Mac LaTeX
editor:
TeXshop: http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/ is believed to have led
many new users to LaTeX because of its outstanding usability.
LaTeX archives and catalogs
There are websites archiving and sharing LaTeX tools and packages and
providing catalogs for easy look-up.
CTAN – the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network
http://ctan.org/
This network consists of many servers world-wide, which store the biggest
collection of TeX-related material. Nearly every serious LaTeX package can be
found in this archive. On the homepage, you will find search features or you may
just start browsing the archive directories.
The TeX Catalogue Online
http://texcatalogue.sarovar.org/
This catalog offers a topical, a hierarchical, a brief, and an alphabetical index to
nearly 4,000 TeX and LaTeX packages and tools. It is closely related to CTAN,
which actually stores the software. This site is great for browsing especially if
you work on a topic, but don't know which packages may exist for that purpose.
The LaTeX Font Catalogue
http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/
Nearly all fonts available for use with LaTeX are listed here. About a dozen
categories, such as Sans-Serif, Typewriter, and Calligraphy fonts, assist in
finding the right font. The fonts are displayed both briefly in overviews but also
extensively with several style and math examples. The cherries on the cake are
concrete code examples.
TeX Resources on the Web
http://www.tug.org/interest.html
This extensive collection of TeX-related Internet resources is maintained by the
TeX users group. An index and a substantial amount of links point you the way to
helpful material on the Internet.
Friends of LaTeX
Some software builds on LaTeX or is closely related and offers different
interesting approaches.
XeTeX
http://scripts.sil.org/xetex
XeTeX extends TeX by Unicode support and modern font technologies for using
OpenType and TrueType fonts and Apple Advanced Typography. It natively
supports Unicode.
The LaTeX version is called XeLaTeX.
Initially developed for Mac OS X, XeTeX is now available for Windows and
Linux/Unix as well. For example, you can use it with TeXworks by choosing
XeTeX, XeLaTeX respectively, as typesetng engine
LuaTeX
http://www.luatex.org/
LuaTeX is an extended version of pdfTeX. It uses Lua as its scripting language.
The LuaTeX project aims to develop an enhanced TeX version while keeping
downward compatibility.
Lua is a fast and powerful but light-weight and portable scripting language. You
can read about it at http://www.lua.org/.
ConTeXt
http://wiki.contextgarden.net/
Like LaTeX, ConTeXt is a document markup language based on TeX. Unlike
LaTeX, it offers a direct interface for handling typography giving the user more
control over the formatting. It supports both pdfTeX and LuaTeX.
LyX
http://www.lyx.org/
LyX looks and feels like word processor software, but is built on LaTeX. It
combines an easy-to-use graphical user interface with the power and structure of
LaTeX. You can develop documents mainly using LyX's toolbars and menus, but
you may insert LaTeX code at any point.
The LyX wiki offers an extensive documentation at http://www.lyx.org/.
On one of the LyX homepage's, you will find links for download, news, and
support. As LyX is very popular, it's also the subject of discussions at
http://www.latex-community.org/. Questions about LyX are also welcome at
http://tex.stackexchange.com/.
LaTeX blogs
Are you interested in LaTeX news and expert opinions? Then LaTeX blogs may
supply you with current LaTeX reading.
The TeXblog
http://texblog.net/
This is the blog of the author of this book. It regularly brings LaTeX-related news,
offers a lot of tips and tricks, and provides a structured link collection, sorted by
subject. And of course, it contains all code examples of this book, plus
supplementary material.
Some TeX Developments
http://www.texdev.net/
Joseph Wright, a member of the LaTeX project and author of LaTeX tools, writes
this blog.
LaTeX Alive
http://latex-alive.tumblr.com/
This is the blog of the LaTeX developer Will Robertson. It provides interesting
insights.
LaTeX for Humans
http://latexforhumans.wordpress.com/
This blog supports LaTeX in the humanities, with a special focus on Middle
Eastern Studies.
The TeX community aggregator
http://www.texample.net/community/
This page summarizes about 30 TeX and LaTeX-related blogs and may keep you
updated.
Summary
While you have learned about the LaTeX fundamentals in this book, this chapter
gave an overview about further reading online.
Now you know about:
Finding and downloading LaTeX software
Accessing the world wide LaTeX community knowledge
Getting the latest news from blogs
Asking questions online if you would encounter any problem that you cannot
solve alone.
TeX friends will welcome you on any community website. As you have learned
much in this book, you may soon become an experienced LaTeX user who
supports LaTeX novices. At some time, you might be the advisor who answers
questions on LaTeX web forums.
Appendix A. Pop Quiz Answers
Chapter 2: Formatting Words, Lines,
and Paragraphs
Commands
Question
Answer
1
d.
2
b.
Lines and paragraphs
Question
Answer
1
c.
2
c.
3
b.
Chapter 3: Designing Pages
Question
Answer
1
c.
2
a.
3
b.
4
d.
5
d.
Chapter 4: Creating Lists
Question
Answer
1
c.
2
b.
3
c.
Chapter 5: Creating Tables and
Inserting Pictures
Tables
Question
Answer
1
a.
2
d.
Pictures and floats
Question
Answer
1
b.
2
d.
Chapter 6: Cross-Referencing
Question
Answer
1
b.
2
c.
Chapter 7: Listing Content and
References
Question
Answer
1
a.
2
c.
3
a.
Chapter 8: Typing Math Formulas
Question
Answer
1
b.
2
b.
3
d.
Chapter 9: Using Fonts
Question
Answer
1
b.
2
c.
Chapter 10: Developing Large
Documents
Question
Answer
1
a.
2
b.
Chapter 11: Enhancing Your
Documents Further
Question
Answer
1
d.
2
c.
Chapter 12: Troubleshooting
Question
Answer
1
a.
2
c.
Index
A
accents, ligatures
setting / Setting accents
experimenting with / Time for action – experimenting with accents
using / Time for action – using accents directly
afterpage package / Forcing the output of floats
all caps
about / What just happened?
alpha / What just happened?
AMS-Math FAQ
about / AMS-Math FAQ
URL / AMS-Math FAQ
amsmath matrix environments
about / Typesetting matrices
smallmatrix / Typesetting matrices
Vmatrix / Typesetting matrices
vmatrix / Typesetting matrices
Bmatrix / Typesetting matrices
bmatrix / Typesetting matrices
pmatrix / Typesetting matrices
matrix / Typesetting matrices
amsmath package
about / Customizing displayed formulas
amssymb package
about / Exploring the wealth of math symbols
arguments / Understanding LaTeX commands
arrays
creating / Creating arrays
arrows
about / Arrows
asparaenum, numbered lists / What just happened?
asparaitem, bulleted lists / What just happened?
automatic line breaking
improving / Breaking lines and paragraphs
hyphenation, improving / Improving hyphenation
division points, stating for words / Time for action – stating division
points for words, What just happened?
hyphenat package, exploiting / Have a go hero – exploiting the hyphenat
package
justification further, improving / Improving the justification further,
What just happened?
microtype package, using / Time for action – using microtype
automatic reference names
using / Using automatic reference names
cleveref, using / Time for action – referring cleverly, What just
happened?
B
babel package / What just happened?, Changing the headings
back matter, document
creating / Creating front and back matter
about / Creating front and back matter
appendix, adding / Time for action – adding a dedication and an
appendix, What just happened?
backtick / What just happened?
beamer class / Have a go hero – creating colorful tables
Bera Mono, typewriter fonts
about / Bera Mono
Bera Sans, sans-serif fonts
about / Bera Sans
biblatex package / Time for action – installing a LaTeX package
bibliography
creating / Creating a bibliography
references, listing / Time for action – citing texts and listing the
references, Listing references without citing
texts, citing / Time for action – citing texts and listing the references
standard bibliography environment, using / Using the standard
bibliography environment
bibliography databases, using with BibTeX / Using bibliography
databases with BibTeX
BibTeX entry fields / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
BibTeX entry types / Understanding BibTeX entry types
bibliography style, selecting / Choosing the bibliography style
bibliography style
selecting / Choosing the bibliography style
plain / Choosing the bibliography style
unsrt / Choosing the bibliography style
alpha / Choosing the bibliography style
abbrv / Choosing the bibliography style
BibTeX
about / Time for action – creating and using a BibTeX database
BibTeX database
using / Time for action – creating and using a BibTeX database, What
just happened?
creating / Time for action – creating and using a BibTeX database,
What just happened?
BibTeX entry fields
address / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
annote / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
author / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
booktitle / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
chapter / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
crossref / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
edition / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
editor / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
howpublished / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
institution / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
journal / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
key / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
month / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
note / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
number / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
organization / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
pages / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
publisher / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
school / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
series / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
title / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
type / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
volume / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
year / Looking at the BibTeX entry fields
BibTeX entry types
article / Understanding BibTeX entry types
book / Understanding BibTeX entry types
booklet / Understanding BibTeX entry types
conference / Understanding BibTeX entry types
manual / Understanding BibTeX entry types
mastersthesis / Understanding BibTeX entry types
misc / Understanding BibTeX entry types
phdthesis / Understanding BibTeX entry types
proceedings / Understanding BibTeX entry types
techreport / Understanding BibTeX entry types
unpublished / Understanding BibTeX entry types
BibTeX reference / Understanding BibTeX entry types
binary operation symbols
about / Binary operation symbols
binary relation symbols
about / Binary relation symbols
binomial coefficients
writing / Writing binomial coefficients:
bitmap formats / Choosing the optimal file type
blindtext package / Have a go hero – evaluating and enhancing templates
Bookman, serif fonts
about / Bookman
bookman package
about / Bookman
bookmarks
adding, to documents / Using hyperlinks and bookmarks, Time for
action – adding hyperlinks, What just happened?
creating manually / Creating bookmarks manually
special symbols / Math formulas and special symbols in bookmarks
math formulas / Math formulas and special symbols in bookmarks
booktabs package / Time for action – adding nicer horizontal lines with the
booktabs package
bulleted list
building / Building a bulleted list
LaTeX packages, listing / Time for action – listing LaTeX packages,
What just happened?
nesting / Nesting lists
packages, listing by topic / Time for action – listing packages by topic,
What just happened?
compactitem / What just happened?
inparaitem / What just happened?
asparaitem / What just happened?
C
captionof command / Avoiding floating at all
captions
adding, to tables / Adding captions to tables
adding, to font table / Time for action – adding a caption to our font
table, What just happened?
placing above / Placing captions above
customizing / Have a go hero – customizing captions
cells
merging, \multicolumn used / Time for action – merging cells
merging, multirow used / Time for action – merging cells using the
multirow package, What just happened?
center environment / What just happened?
Charter, serif fonts
about / Charter
cite package / Using the standard bibliography environment
class / Exploring the document structure
class options
using, for document style configuration / Using class options to
configure the document style
cleveref
using / Time for action – referring cleverly, What just happened?
combining with, varioref / Combing cleveref and varioref
cleverev package
about / Using automatic reference names
cm-super package / Installing additional fonts
cmbright package
about / Computer Modern Bright
color package / Coloring your document
colortbl package / Coloring tables
command / Exploring the document structure
comment / Commenting your source text
common complaints
about / Using commands and environments
comp.text.tex
about / comp.text.tex
compactenum, numbered lists / What just happened?
compactitem, bulleted lists / What just happened?
Computer Modern
comparing, to Latin Modern / Time for action – comparing Computer
Modern to Latin Modern, What just happened?
Computer Modern Bright, sans-serif fonts
about / Computer Modern Bright
Computer Modern Roman
about / Serif fonts
concrete package
about / Concrete Roman
Concrete Roman, serif fonts
about / Concrete Roman
control sequence
about / What just happened?
Cork encoding / What just happened?
counter / Adjusting the depth of the TOC
Courier, typewriter fonts
about / Courier
cross-referencing
referencing, setting / Setting labels and referencing
labels, setting / Setting labels and referencing
top list items, referencing / Time for action – referencing items of a top
list, What just happened?
intelligent page references, creating / Producing intelligent page
references
custom commands
creating / Saving time and effort – creating your own commands, What
just happened?
intelligent spacing, adding / Gentle spacing after commands, What just
happened?
universal commands, creating / Creating more universal commands –
using arguments
macro, creating for formatting keywords / Time for action – creating a
macro for formatting keywords
optional arguments, using / Using optional arguments
keywords, marking with optional formatting / Time for action – marking
keywords with optional formatting, What just happened?
D
dcolumn package / Aligning columns at the decimal point
declaration / What just happened?
definition list
creating / Producing a definition list
packages capabilities, explaining / Time for action – explaining
capabilities of packages, What just happened?
dimensions, adjusting / Have a go hero – adjusting the dimensions of
lists
delimiters
about / Variable sized delimiters
description environment / Time for action – explaining capabilities of
packages
displayed formulas, customizing
options / Customizing displayed formulas
fleqn / Customizing displayed formulas
leqno / Customizing displayed formulas
multi-line formulas, typesetting / Time for action – typesetting multi-
line formulas
multi-line equations, aligning / Aligning multi-line equations
rows in multi-line formulas, numbering / Numbering rows in multi-line
formulas
text, inserting into formulas / Inserting text into formulas
displaymath environment / Displaying formulas
document
headings, designing / Designing headings
chapter and section headings, designing / Time for action – designing
chapter and section headings, What just happened?
documentclass / Time for action – swapping out preamble and chapter
contents
document page layout
defining / Defining the overall layout
margins, defining / Defining the margins yourself
margins, specifying / Time for action – specifying margins, What just
happened?
geometry package, using / Using the geometry package
package documentation, obtaining / Obtaining package documentation
constructing, typearea used / Have a go hero – constructing the page
layout with typearea
line spacing, changing / Changing the line spacing
documents
text, inserting in columns / Writing in columns
table, typesetting / Typesetting tables
picture, inserting / Inserting pictures
pictures, inserting / Inserting pictures
floating environments, managing / Managing floating environments
documents, developing
input, splitting / Splitting the input
preamble and chapter contents, swapping out / Time for action –
swapping out preamble and chapter contents, What just happened?
codes, including / Including small pieces of code
one or more pages, including / Including bigger parts of a document
partial document, compiling / Compiling parts of a document
front matter, creating / Creating front and back matter
back matter, creating / Creating front and back matter
title page, designing / Designing a title page
templates, working with / Working with templates
documents, enhancing
hyperlinks, adding / Using hyperlinks and bookmarks, Time for action –
adding hyperlinks, What just happened?
bookmarks, adding / Using hyperlinks and bookmarks, Time for action
– adding hyperlinks, What just happened?
hyperlink appearance, customizing / Time for action – customizing the
hyperlink appearance, What just happened?
PDF metadata, editing / Time for action – editing PDF metadata, What
just happened?
hyperlinks, creating manually / Creating hyperlinks manually
bookmarks, creating manually / Creating bookmarks manually
texts, coloring / Coloring your document
colorful tables, creating / Have a go hero – creating colorful tables
document style
configuring, class options used / Using class options to configure the
document style
two-column landscape document, creating / Time for action – creating a
two-column landscape document, What just happened?
dots, ligatures
setting / Setting dots
differently spaced dots, using / Time for action – using differently
spaced dots, What just happened?
comparing, to ellipsis / Time for action – comparing dots to ellipsis
doublespace / What just happened?
dvips
about / Choosing the optimal file type
E
ellipsis, math formulas
producing / Producing an ellipsis
entries, in TOC
shortening / Shortening entries
adding manually / Adding entries manually
enumerate environment / What just happened?
enumitem commands
\setlist / What just happened?
\setitemize / What just happened?
\setenumerate / What just happened?
parameters / What just happened?
enumitem package / Choosing bullets and numbering format
environment / Exploring the document structure
environments
using, for adjusting font size / Using environments, What just happened?
epstopdf
about / Choosing the optimal file type
errors
fixing / Understanding and fixing errors, Time for action – interpreting
and fixing an error
interpreting / Time for action – interpreting and fixing an error
commands and environments, using / Using commands and
environments
math formulas, writing / Writing math formulas
preamble and document body, handling / Handling the preamble and
document body
files, working with / Working with files
tables and arrays, creating / Creating tables and arrays
lists, working with / Working with lists
floating figures and tables, working with / Working with floating figures
and tables
syntax errors / General syntax errors
eso-pic package / Putting images behind the text
expressions
stacking / Stacking expressions
overlining / Underlining and overlining
underlining / Underlining and overlining
accents, setting / Setting accents
symbol, putting above another / Putting a symbol above another
F
fancy / What just happened?
fancyhdr package / Time for action – customizing headers with the fancyhdr
package
fancyref package / What just happened?
fancyunits / Writing units
FAQs
about / Frequently Asked Questions
UK TeX FAQ / UK TeX FAQ
Visual LaTeX FAQ / Visual LaTeX FAQ
MacTeX FAQ / MacTeX FAQ
AMS-Math FAQ / AMS-Math FAQ
LaTeX Picture FAQ / LaTeX Picture FAQ
fixltx2e package / Embedding math expressions within text
floating
limiting / Limiting floating
floating environments
about / What just happened?
managing / Managing floating environments
testing / Time for action – letting a figure float, What just happened?
float placement options / Understanding float placement options
float output, forcing / Forcing the output of floats
floating, limiting / Limiting floating
floating, avoiding / Avoiding floating at all
figures and tables, spanning over text columns / Spanning figures and
tables over text columns
text, flowing around figures / Letting text flow around figures
picture, embedding within text / Time for action – embedding a picture
within text, What just happened?
figures and tables, grouping / Breaking figures and tables into pieces
floats
about / Managing floating environments
flushleft / What just happened?
flushright / What just happened?
font, math formulas
modifying / Changing the font, style, and size
fontenc / What just happened?
font packages
Latin Modern / Latin Modern – a replacement for the standard font
Kp-fonts / Kp-fonts – a full set of fonts
fonts, LaTeX
encoding, preparing / Preparing the encoding
special characters, using / Time for action – directly using special
characters, What just happened?
additional fonts, installing / Installing additional fonts
main font, selecting / Choosing the main font
reference link / Exploring the world of LaTeX fonts
exploring / Exploring the world of LaTeX fonts
footnotes
using / Using footnotes
using, in text and headings / Time for action – using footnotes in text
and in headings
dividing line, modifying / Modifying the dividing line
footnote line, redefining / Time for action – redefining the footnote line,
What just happened?
expanding, packages used / Using packages to expand footnote styles
fourier math fonts
about / New Century Schoolbook
fractions, math formulas
writing / Writing fractions
front matter, documents
creating / Creating front and back matter
about / Creating front and back matter
dedication, adding / Time for action – adding a dedication and an
appendix, What just happened?
full justification
disabling / Turning off full justification
paragraph, justifying to left / Time for action – justifying a paragraph to
the left, What just happened?
ragged-left text, creating / Creating ragged-left text
title, centering / Time for action – centering a title, What just happened?
environments, using / Using environments for justification
verses, centering / Time for action – centering verses, What just
happened?
G
general modes, LaTeX
paragraph mode / Writing basic formulas
left-to-right mode / Writing basic formulas
math mode / Writing basic formulas
geometry package, document page layout
using / Using the geometry package
paper size, selecting / Choosing the paper size
text area, specifying / Specifying the text area
margins, setting / Setting the margins
German umlauts
working / Time for action – directly using special characters
getnonfreefonts / Installing additional fonts
graphicx package / Inserting pictures
Greek letters, math formulas
about / Greek letters
grffile package / What just happened?
group / What just happened?
H
harpoons
about / Harpoons
headers
customizing, fancyhdr package used / Time for action – customizing
headers with the fancyhdr package, What just happened?
headers and footers, designing
headers, customizing with fancyhdr package / Time for action –
customizing headers with the fancyhdr package, What just happened?
page styles / Understanding page styles
customizing / Customizing header and footer
decorative lines, using / Using decorative lines in header or footer
header marks, changing / Changing LaTeX's header marks
headings
changing / Changing the headings
changing, natbib using / Have a go hero – using natbib
designing / Designing headings
chapter and section headings, designing / Time for action – designing
chapter and section headings, What just happened?
Helvetic, sans-serif fonts
about / Helvetica
homepage, TeX Live
demo / Installing LaTeX
horizontal lines
adding, to table / Time for action – adding nicer horizontal lines with
the booktabs package
hyperlink appearance
customizing / Time for action – customizing the hyperlink appearance
hyperlinks
adding, to documents / Using hyperlinks and bookmarks, Time for
action – adding hyperlinks, What just happened?
creating manually / Creating hyperlinks manually
hyperref
about / Have a go hero – turning references into hyperlinks
hyperref package
about / Using hyperlinks and bookmarks
loading / Time for action – adding hyperlinks
options / What just happened?
meta-information options / What just happened?
user commands / Creating hyperlinks manually
hyperref package, options
draft / What just happened?
final / What just happened?
debug / What just happened?
raiselinks / What just happened?
breaklinks / What just happened?
pageanchor / What just happened?
backref / What just happened?
hyperindex / What just happened?
hyperfootnotes / What just happened?
linktocpage / What just happened?
colorlinks / What just happened?
linkcolor / What just happened?
anchorcolor / What just happened?
citecolor / What just happened?
filecolor / What just happened?
urlcolor / What just happened?
frenchlinks / What just happened?
bookmarks / What just happened?
bookmarksopen / What just happened?
bookmarksnumbered / What just happened?
pdfstartpage / What just happened?
hyphenat package
exploiting / Have a go hero – exploiting the hyphenat package
I
Imagemagick
about / Choosing the optimal file type
in-line formulas
comparing, to displayed formulas / Comparing in-line formulas to
displayed formulas
Inconsolata, typewriter fonts
about / Inconsolata
index, generating
words, marking / Time for action – marking words and building the
index, What just happened?
subentries, defining / Defining index entries and subentries
index entries, defining / Defining index entries and subentries
page ranges, specifying / Specifying page ranges
symbols and macros, using / Using symbols and macros in the index
cross-reference / Referring to other index entries
page numbers, emphasizing / Fine-tuning page numbers
index layout, designing / Designing the index layout
inequality relation symbols
about / Inequality relation symbols
inparaenum, numbered lists / What just happened?
inparaitem, bulleted lists / What just happened?
input, LaTeX
spaces, inserting / Time for action – trying out the effect of spaces, line
breaks, and empty lines
line breaks, inserting / Time for action – trying out the effect of spaces,
line breaks, and empty lines
source text, commenting / Commenting your source text
special symbols, printing out / Printing out special symbols
special characters, writing / Time for action – writing special
characters in our text
inputenc / What just happened?
inputenc package / What just happened?
installation, LaTex
about / Installing LaTeX
TeX Live, installing using net installer wizard / Time for action –
installing TeX Live using the net installer wizard
offline installation / Time for action – installing TeX Live offline
intelligent page references
creating / Producing intelligent page references
variable references, introducing / Time for action – introducing
variable references, What just happened?
page references, fine-tuning / Fine-tuning page references
page ranges, referring to / Referring to page ranges
automatic reference names, using / Using automatic reference names
cleveref and varioref, combining / Combing cleveref and varioref
labels, referring to / Referring to labels in other documents
references, turning into hyperlinks / Have a go hero – turning references
into hyperlinks
itemize environment / What just happened?
K
Kile
about / Have a go hero – checking out advanced LaTeX editors
URL / Have a go hero – checking out advanced LaTeX editors
KOMA-Script classes
about / Have a go hero – trying KOMA-Script classes
KOMA-Script documentation / What just happened?
Kp-fonts
about / Kp-fonts – a full set of fonts
kpathsea library / Have a go hero – examining a package source file
kpsewhich tool / Have a go hero – examining a package source file
Kurier, sans-serif fonts
about / Kurier
L
l2tabu / Have a go hero – evaluating and enhancing templates
labels and referencing, cross-referencing
setting / Setting labels and referencing
top list items, referencing / Time for action – referencing items of a top
list, What just happened?
key, assigning / Assigning a key
key, referring to / Referring to a key
page, referring to / Referring to a page
landscape orientation
using / Using landscape orientation
LaTeX
about / What is LaTeX?
overview / What is LaTeX?
reference link / What is LaTeX?
benefits / How we can benefit
features / How we can benefit, Protection for your work
merits / The virtues of open source
basic principle / Separation of form and content
classes / Separation of form and content
packages / Separation of form and content
portability / Portability
protection, for work / Protection for your work
comparing, with word processor software / Comparing it to word
processor software
challenges / What are the challenges?
installing / Installing LaTeX
logical formatting / Understanding logical formatting
input, reading / How LaTeX reads your input
text formatting / Formatting text – fonts, shapes, and styles
macros, creating / Saving time and effort – creating your own
commands
paragraph width, limiting / Using boxes to limit the width of paragraphs
line breaking / Breaking lines and paragraphs
ligatures, exploring / Exploring the fine details
full justification, disabling / Turning off full justification
quotes, displaying / Displaying quotes
book, writing with chapters / Time for action – writing a book with
chapters, What just happened?
default page layout, reviewing / Reviewing LaTeX's default page layout
page breaking / Breaking pages
page, enlarging / Enlarging a page
empty page, sparing / Time for action – sparing an almost empty page,
What just happened?
footnotes, using / Using footnotes
bulleted list / Building a bulleted list
numbered list / Creating a numbered list
lists, customizing / Customizing lists
definition list / Producing a definition list
TOC, customizing / Customizing the table of contents
lists of figures, creating / Creating and customizing lists of figures
lists of figures, customizing / Creating and customizing lists of figures
list of tables, creating / Creating a list of tables
packages, for customization / Using packages for customization
index, generating / Generating an index
bibliography, creating / Creating a bibliography
headings, changing / Changing the headings
basic formulas, writing / Writing basic formulas
general modes / Writing basic formulas
mathtools package / Have a go hero – checking out the mathtools
package
common complaints / Using commands and environments
warning messages, handling / Handling warnings
troubleshooting / General troubleshooting
web forums / Web forums, discussion boards, and Q, Web forums
Usenet groups / Usenet groups
LaTeX-Community.org
URL / LaTeX-Community.org
about / LaTeX-Community.org
LaTeX base classes
letter / What just happened?
beamer / What just happened?
powerdot / What just happened?
article / What just happened?
book / What just happened?
report / What just happened?
slides / What just happened?
options / What just happened?
LaTeX commands
about / Understanding LaTeX commands
LaTeX distribution
TeX Live / Installing LaTeX
LaTeX distributions
about / LaTeX distributions
TeX Live / LaTeX distributions
MiKTeX / LaTeX distributions
proTeXt / LaTeX distributions
MacTeX / LaTeX distributions
LaTeX document
creating, TeXworks used / Time for action – writing our first document
with TeXworks, What just happened?
LaTeX editors
about / Have a go hero – checking out advanced LaTeX editors
Kile / Have a go hero – checking out advanced LaTeX editors
TeXShop / Have a go hero – checking out advanced LaTeX editors
Texmaker / Have a go hero – checking out advanced LaTeX editors
Cross-platform / Cross-platform
Windows / Windows
Linux / Linux
Mac OS X / Mac OS X
LaTeX environments
about / Understanding environments
LaTeX macros / Have a go hero – adjusting the dimensions of lists
LaTeX package
installing / Time for action – installing a LaTeX package
LaTeX packages
listing / Time for action – listing LaTeX packages, What just happened?
LaTeX Picture FAQ
URL / LaTeX Picture FAQ
about / LaTeX Picture FAQ
LaTeX project
about / The LaTeX project
URL / The LaTeX project
latexsym package / Exploring the wealth of math symbols
LaTeX typesetting
errors / Understanding and fixing errors
Latin Modern
about / Latin Modern – a replacement for the standard font
layouts / Have a go hero – adjusting the dimensions of lists
left-to-right mode
about / Writing basic formulas
length macros / Have a go hero – adjusting the dimensions of lists
letter-like symbols
about / Symbols derived from letters
letterspacing
about / What just happened?
ligatures
exploring / Exploring the fine details, Time for action – exploring
ligatures, What just happened?
understanding / Understanding ligatures
dash, selecting / Choosing the right dash
dots, setting / Setting dots
accents, setting / Setting accents
special characters, using in editor / Using special characters directly in
the editor
line breaking, manually
line breaks, using / Time for action – using line breaks, What just
happened?
line breaking options, exploring / Have a go hero – exploring line
breaking options
linebreaks, preventing / Preventing line breaks
linebreaks, managing / Managing line breaks wisely
line spacing, document page layout
changing / Changing the line spacing
increasing / Time for action – increasing line spacing, What just
happened?
package source file, examining / Have a go hero – examining a package
source file
lipsum package / Have a go hero – evaluating and enhancing templates
list of diagrams
creating / Time for action – creating a list of diagrams, What just
happened?
list of tables
creating / Creating a list of tables
lists, customization
about / Customizing lists
compact lists, saving space with / Saving space with compact lists,
Time for action – shrinking our tutorial, What just happened?
bullets and numbering format, selecting / Choosing bullets and
numbering format, Time for action – modifying lists using enumitem,
What just happened?
enumitem, using / Time for action – modifying lists using enumitem
lists, continuing / Suspending and continuing lists
lists, suspending / Suspending and continuing lists
local user groups
URLs / Local user groups
logical formatting
about / Understanding logical formatting
document, tilting / Time for action – titling your document
document structure, exploring / Exploring the document structure
longtable package / Generating multi-page tables
ltablex package / Generating multi-page tables
ltxtable package / Generating multi-page tables
M
Mac OS X
LaTex, installing / Installation on other operating systems
macros
about / Saving time and effort – creating your own commands
MacTeX
about / LaTeX distributions
URL / LaTeX distributions
MacTeX FAQ
URL / MacTeX FAQ
about / MacTeX FAQ
mailing lists
about / Mailing lists
texhax / texhax
tex-live / tex-live
texworks / texworks
reference links / List collections
main font
selecting / Choosing the main font
Computer Modern, comparing to Latin Modern / Time for action –
comparing Computer Modern to Latin Modern, What just happened?
font packages, loading / Loading font packages
serif fonts / Times Roman
sans-serif fonts / Sans-serif fonts
typewriter fonts / Courier
margins, geometry package
setting / Setting the margins
math accents / Setting accents
math expressions
embedding, within text / Embedding math expressions within text
math formulas
writing / Writing basic formulas
general modes / Writing basic formulas
quadratic equations and roots / Time for action – discussing quadratic
equations and roots
math expressions, embedding within text / Embedding math expressions
within text
displaying / Displaying formulas
equations, numbering / Numbering equations
superscripts, adding / Adding subscripts and superscripts
subscripts, adding / Adding subscripts and superscripts
roots, extracting / Extracting roots
fractions, writing / Writing fractions
Greek letters / Greek letters
Script letters / Script letters
ellipsis, producing / Producing an ellipsis
in-line formulas, comparing to displayed formulas / Comparing in-line
formulas to displayed formulas
font, modifying / Changing the font, style, and size
style, modifying / Changing the font, style, and size
size, modifying / Changing the font, style, and size
displayed formulas, customizing / Customizing displayed formulas
fine-tuning / Fine-tuning formulas
operators, using / Using operators
math symbols, exploring / Exploring the wealth of math symbols
units / Writing units
theorems and definitions, writing / Writing theorems and definitions
math mode
about / Writing basic formulas
mathpazo package
about / Palatino
mathptmx package / Times Roman
math structures
building / Building math structures
arrays, creating / Creating arrays
binomial coefficients, writing / Writing binomial coefficients:
matrices, typesetting / Typesetting matrices
math styles
display / Changing the font, style, and size
text / Changing the font, style, and size
script / Changing the font, style, and size
scriptscript / Changing the font, style, and size
math symbols
about / Exploring the wealth of math symbols
binary operation symbols / Binary operation symbols
binary relation symbols / Binary relation symbols
inequality relation symbols / Inequality relation symbols
subset and superset symbols / Subset and superset symbols
variable sized operators / Variable sized operators
arrows / Arrows
harpoons / Harpoons
letter-like symbols / Symbols derived from letters
delimiters / Variable sized delimiters
miscellaneous symbols / Miscellaneous symbols
mathtools package
about / Have a go hero – checking out the mathtools package
features / Have a go hero – checking out the mathtools package
matrices
typesetting / Typesetting matrices
memoir class / Creating front and back matter
meta-information options, hyperref package
pdftitle / What just happened?
pdfauthor / What just happened?
pdfsubject / What just happened?
pdfcreator / What just happened?
pdfproducer / What just happened?
pdfkeywords / What just happened?
microtype package / Time for action – using microtype
MiKTeX
about / Installing LaTeX, LaTeX distributions
URL / LaTeX distributions
minipage environment
using / Time for action – using the minipage environment
footnote, creating / Have a go hero – creating a footnote inside a
minipage
miscellaneous symbols
about / Miscellaneous symbols
monospaced font / What just happened?
multi-line equations
aligning / Aligning multi-line equations
multi-line formulas
typesetting / Time for action – typesetting multi-line formulas
multi-page tables
generating / Generating multi-page tables
multicols package / What just happened?
N
natbib package / Choosing the bibliography style
newcent package
about / New Century Schoolbook
New Century Schoolbook, serif fonts
about / New Century Schoolbook
numbered list
creating / Creating a numbered list
step-by-step tutorial, writing / Time for action – writing a step-by-step
tutorial, What just happened?
compactenum / What just happened?
inparaenum / What just happened?
asparaenum / What just happened?
O
onehalfspace / What just happened?
onehalfspacing / What just happened?
operators
about / Using operators
optional arguments
marking / Using optional arguments
P
package documentation
obtaining / Obtaining package documentation
geometry package manual, searching / Time for action – finding the
geometry package manual
packages, for customization
using / Using packages for customization
tocloft / Using packages for customization
titletoc / Using packages for customization
multitoc / Using packages for customization
minitoc / Using packages for customization
tocbibind / Using packages for customization
page breaking
about / Breaking pages
page breaking options
exploring / Have a go hero – exploring page breaking options
page breaks
inserting / Time for action – inserting page breaks, What just happened?
page styles
about / Understanding page styles
Palatino, serif fonts
about / Palatino
pangram / Choosing the main font
paper size, geometry package
selecting / Choosing the paper size
paragraph mode
about / Writing basic formulas
paragraph mode, basic formulas
about / Writing basic formulas
paragraph width, limiting
narrow text column, creatiing / Time for action – creating a narrow text
column, What just happened?
common paragraph boxes / Common paragraph boxes
minipage environment, using / Boxes containing more text, What just
happened?
footnote, creating inside a minipage / Have a go hero – creating a
footnote inside a minipage
parameters, enumitem commands
font / What just happened?
label / What just happened?
align / What just happened?
start / What just happened?
resume* / What just happened?
resume / What just happened?
noitemsep / What just happened?
nolistsep / What just happened?
parskip package / What just happened?
pdfjam / What just happened?
PDF metadata
editing / Time for action – editing PDF metadata, What just happened?
pdfpages package / What just happened?
pictures
inserting in tables / Inserting pictures, Time for action – including a
picture, What just happened?
scaling / Scaling pictures
optimal file type, selecting / Choosing the optimal file type
whole pages, including / Including whole pages
putting, behind text / Putting images behind the text
placeins package / Limiting floating
preamble / Exploring the document structure
proTeXt
URL / LaTeX distributions
about / LaTeX distributions
ps2pdf
about / Choosing the optimal file type
Q
quotation environment / Quoting longer text
quote environment / What just happened?
quotes
scientist, quoting / Time for action – quoting a scientist, What just
happened?
longer text, quoting / Quoting longer text
TeX benefits, quoting / Time for action – quoting TeX's benefits
paragraphs, seperating by vertical space / Time for action – spacing
between paragraphs instead of indentation
R
raster graphics / Choosing the optimal file type
rccol package / Aligning columns at the decimal point
reputation
about / What just happened?
Roman fonts / What just happened?
roots, math formulas
extracting / Extracting roots
rotating package / Using landscape orientation
row height, table
increasing / Increasing the row height
rows, in multi-line formulas
numbering / Numbering rows in multi-line formulas
S
sans-serif font / What just happened?
sans-serif fonts
Helvetica / Helvetica
Bera Sans / Bera Sans
Computer Modern Bright / Computer Modern Bright
Kurier / Kurier
scope / What just happened?
scrbook class / Creating front and back matter
Script letters, math formulas
about / Script letters
semantic markup / What just happened?
serif fonts
about / Serif fonts
Times Roman / Times Roman
Charter / Charter
Palatino / Palatino
Bookman / Bookman
New Century Schoolbook / New Century Schoolbook
Concrete Roman / Concrete Roman
setspace package / What just happened?
singlespace / What just happened?
siunits / Writing units
siunitx package / Aligning columns at the decimal point, Writing units
size, math formulas
modifying / Changing the font, style, and size
smallmatrix environment / Typesetting matrices
special characters
using / Time for action – directly using special characters
stabular package / Generating multi-page tables
Stack Exchange
about / TeX and LaTeX on Stack Exchange, What just happened?
question, asking online / Time for action – asking a question online,
What just happened?
standard bibliography environment
using / Using the standard bibliography environment
style, math formulas
modifying / Changing the font, style, and size
style file / Have a go hero – examining a package source file
subcaption package / Breaking figures and tables into pieces
subfig package / Breaking figures and tables into pieces
subset and superset symbols
about / Subset and superset symbols
supertabular package / Generating multi-page tables
syntax errors
about / General syntax errors
T
T1 font encoding / Time for action – directly using special characters
tabbing environment
using / Time for action – lining up information using the tabbing
environment
tables
coloring / Coloring tables
tables, typesetting
about / Typesetting tables
table, building / Time for action – building a table of font family
commands, What just happened?
lines, drawing / Drawing lines in tables
arguments, formatting / Understanding formatting arguments
row height, increasing / Increasing the row height
horizontal lines, adding with booktabs package / Time for action –
adding nicer horizontal lines with the booktabs package, What just
happened?
lengths, adjusting / Have a go hero – adjusting lengths
entries, spanning over multiple columns / Spanning entries over
multiple columns
cells, merging / Time for action – merging cells, What just happened?
code, inserting column-wise / Inserting code column-wise
array package, using / Time for action – using the array package
entries, spanning over multiple rows / Spanning entries over multiple
rows
cells, merging using multirow package / Time for action – merging cells
using the multirow package
captions, adding / Adding captions to tables
captions, adding to font table / Time for action – adding a caption to our
font table, What just happened?
captions, placing above / Placing captions above
captions, customizing / Have a go hero – customizing captions
columns, auto-fitting to table width / Auto-fitting columns to the table
width
multi-page tables, generating / Generating multi-page tables
tables, coloring / Coloring tables
landscape orientation, using / Using landscape orientation
columns, aligning at decimal point / Aligning columns at the decimal
point
narrow columns, handling / Handling narrow columns
tabular environment
about / Typesetting tables
tabularx package / Auto-fitting columns to the table width
tabulary package / Auto-fitting columns to the table width
templates
working with / Working with templates
creating / Working with templates, Time for action – starting with a
template
enhancing / Have a go hero – evaluating and enhancing templates
evaluating / Have a go hero – evaluating and enhancing templates
tex-live
about / tex-live
URL / tex-live
TeX.SE
about / What just happened?
TeX Catalogue
visiting online / Time for action – visiting the TeX Catalogue Online
TeX discussion board
comp.text.tex / comp.text.tex
TeX distributions
about / Portability
texdoc / What just happened?
texhax
URL / texhax
about / texhax
TeX Live
about / Portability, Installing LaTeX, LaTeX distributions
URL / Installing LaTeX, LaTeX distributions
homepage / Installing LaTeX
installing, net installer wizard used / Time for action – installing TeX
Live using the net installer wizard
offline installation / Time for action – installing TeX Live offline
installing, on other operating systems / Installation on other operating
systems
TeX Live 2010
DVIOUT DVI viewer / What just happened?
PS_VIEW / What just happened?
TeX Live documentation / What just happened?
TeX Live Manager / What just happened?
TeXdoc GUI / What just happened?
TeXworks editor / What just happened?
Texmaker
about / Have a go hero – checking out advanced LaTeX editors
URL / Have a go hero – checking out advanced LaTeX editors
TeXnicCenter
about / Choosing the optimal file type
TeX Q&A site
about / What just happened?
TeXShop
URL / Have a go hero – checking out advanced LaTeX editors
about / Have a go hero – checking out advanced LaTeX editors
text
inserting, into formulas / Inserting text into formulas
text, aligning in columns
information, lining up using tabbing environment / Time for action –
lining up information using the tabbing environment, What just
happened?
font commands, lining up / Time for action – lining up font commands,
What just happened?
text area, geometry package
specifying / Specifying the text area
text formatting
font shape, tuning / Time for action – tuning the font shape, What just
happened?
font family, selecting / Choosing the font family
typewriter fonts, switching to / Time for action – switching to sans-serif
and to typewriter fonts, What just happened?
sans-serif, switching to / Time for action – switching to sans-serif and
to typewriter fonts, What just happened?
serifs fonts / What just happened?
Roman fonts / What just happened?
sans-serif font / What just happened?
monospaced font / What just happened?
typewriter font / What just happened?
fonts, switching / Switching fonts
font family, switching / Time for action – switching the font family,
What just happened?
declarations, summarizing / Summarizing font commands and
declarations
font commands, summarizing / Summarizing font commands and
declarations
command effect, delimiting / Delimiting the effect of commands
grouping, exploring by braces / Time for action – exploring grouping by
braces, What just happened?
font sizes, exploring / Time for action – exploring font sizes, What just
happened?
font sizes, adjusting using environments / Using environments, What just
happened?
textpos package / Putting images behind the text
TeX user group sites
about / TeX user group sites
TUG / TUG – the TeX users group
LaTeX project / The LaTeX project
UK TUG / UK TUG – TeX in the United Kingdom
local user groups / Local user groups
TeX users group
URL / TUG – the TeX users group
about / TUG – the TeX users group
texworks
URL / texworks
about / texworks
TeXworks
about / Portability
thebibliography environment / What just happened?
theorems and definitions
writing / Writing theorems and definitions
TikZ package / Have a go hero – creating colorful tables
times package / Times Roman
Times Roman, serif fonts
about / Times Roman
title page, document
designing / Designing a title page
creating / Time for action – creating a title page, What just happened?
titlepage environment / What just happened?
titlesec
about / Designing headings
titling package / What just happened?
TOC
creating / Creating a table of contents, What just happened?
entries, shortening / Sectioning and the contents, What just happened?,
Shortening entries
customizing / Customizing the table of contents
refining / Time for action – refining an extensive table of contents, What
just happened?
depth, adjusting / Adjusting the depth of the TOC
entries, adding manually / Adding entries manually
troubleshooting
about / General troubleshooting
log files, examining / Have a go hero – examining LaTeX's log files
TUG
URL / TUG – the TeX users group
tutorial, lists
shrinking / Time for action – shrinking our tutorial, What just
happened?
two-column landscape document
creating / Time for action – creating a two-column landscape document,
What just happened?
txfonts package / Times Roman
typearea package / Have a go hero – constructing the page layout with
typearea
typewriter fonts
Courier / Courier
Inconsolata / Inconsolata
Bera Mono / Bera Mono
U
UK TeX FAQ
URL / UK TeX FAQ
about / UK TeX FAQ
UK TUG
URL / UK TUG – TeX in the United Kingdom
about / UK TUG – TeX in the United Kingdom
unicode / What just happened?
unicode encoding / Time for action – directly using special characters
units
writing / Writing units
about / Writing units
Usenet groups
about / Usenet groups
comp.text.tex / comp.text.tex
German or French Usenet TeX group / Newsgroups in other languages
user commands, hyperref package
\href / Creating hyperlinks manually
\url / Creating hyperlinks manually
\nolinkurl / Creating hyperlinks manually
\hyperref / Creating hyperlinks manually
\hypertarget / Creating hyperlinks manually
\hyperlink / Creating hyperlinks manually
V
variable sized operators
about / Variable sized operators
varioref commands
\vref / Time for action – introducing variable references
\vpageref / Time for action – introducing variable references, Referring
to page ranges
\vpagerefrange / Referring to page ranges
varioref package / Referring to a page
combining with, cleveref / Combing cleveref and varioref
vector graphics format / Choosing the optimal file type
verbatim text
about / What just happened?
Visual LaTeX FAQ
about / Visual LaTeX FAQ
URL / Visual LaTeX FAQ
W
warning messages
handling / Handling warnings
sans-serif font, emphasizing / Time for action – emphasizing on a sans-
serif font
text, justifying / Justifying text
referencing / Referencing
fonts, selecting / Choosing fonts
figures and tables, placing / Placing figures and tables
document class, customizing / Customizing the document class
obsolete packages, avoiding / Avoiding obsolete classes and packages
web forums, LaTeX
about / Web forums
LaTeX-Community.org / LaTeX-Community.org
Stack Exchange / TeX and LaTeX on Stack Exchange
wide accents / Setting accents
wrapfig package / Letting text flow around figures
wrapfigure environment / What just happened?
X
xcolor package / Coloring your document, Have a go hero – creating colorful
tables
xtab package / Generating multi-page tables

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