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https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/142 | 593 | Sometimes, I want to have enumerate lists in LaTeX start at other than the first value (1, a, i, etc.) How can I make an enumerate list start at an arbitrary value?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | How can I make an enumerate list start at something other than 1? | false | If you only want to alter the starting value, the easiest way is:
```
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}\addtocounter{enumi}{41}
\item This item is numbered `42.'
\begin{enumerate}\addtocounter{enumii}{5}% This cannot be more than 25
\item This one is ``numbered'' `(f)'
\end{enumerate}
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}
```
While you can have six layers of nested list environments (itemize, description, enumerate), you can have no more than 4 of one type. The counters enumi through enumiv control the index of each item's label. You can increment (as shown) or decrement (add a negative value) all 4 levels.
Note, though, that this won't be entirely arbitrary. Levels enumerated alphabetically cannot have items after an item labeled 'z.' (You could, however, add a negative amount to the appropriate counter to get it back to the `a' label.)
(Now that I see the other answer, I wonder why I always opt for the relative `\addtocounter` rather than the absolute `\settocounter`?)
| 54 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | 150 | 100 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143 | 152 | When working with **Bibtex**, manually transferring the **citation information** for articles, prooceedings, books, etc. can be a tedious work. Some web sites provide citations in Bibtex format. What are your favorite sites to get Bibtex citations of your used references?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/46 | What are good sites to find citations in BibTex format? | false | For books I usually use a site, where it is possible to get Bibtex citations from Amazon.com articles. This is very good for books, and some inproceedings and incollections might be found here as well.
**Amazon:** <http://lead.to/amazon/en/>
As a Software Engineer I quite often have to deal with technical papers from ACM or IEEE. Both their catalogs provide Bibtex export capabilities.
**ACM:** <http://portal.acm.org>
**IEEE:** <http://ieeexplore.ieee.org>
| 11 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/46 | 152 | 101 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143 | 152 | When working with **Bibtex**, manually transferring the **citation information** for articles, prooceedings, books, etc. can be a tedious work. Some web sites provide citations in Bibtex format. What are your favorite sites to get Bibtex citations of your used references?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/46 | What are good sites to find citations in BibTex format? | false | [MathSciNet](http://www.ams.org/mathscinet) a subscription only service (but available on most university campuses) provides BIBTEX entries for the entire mathematical literature.
A nice aspect of their interface is a "clipboard", to which you can save articles, then ask for the BIBTEX for everything on your clipboard all at once.
Mathematicians might also be interested in [the shell scripts](http://sbseminar.wordpress.com/2009/06/14/have-someone-else-write-your-bibliography/) I wrote that automatically look up BIBTEX entries from MathSciNet, based on missing references in your `.aux` files.
| 19 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/77 | 153 | 102 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143 | 152 | When working with **Bibtex**, manually transferring the **citation information** for articles, prooceedings, books, etc. can be a tedious work. Some web sites provide citations in Bibtex format. What are your favorite sites to get Bibtex citations of your used references?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/46 | What are good sites to find citations in BibTex format? | false | [The Spires database](http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/) of high energy particle and astrophysics papers can display its results in Bibtex format.
They also have [some tools](http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/hep/bib/bibtex.shtml) to help update bibliography lists.
| 2 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/115 | 154 | 103 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143 | 152 | When working with **Bibtex**, manually transferring the **citation information** for articles, prooceedings, books, etc. can be a tedious work. Some web sites provide citations in Bibtex format. What are your favorite sites to get Bibtex citations of your used references?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/46 | What are good sites to find citations in BibTex format? | false | If you use Firefox and the wonderful extension [Zotero](http://www.zotero.org/), it can generally parse citation information from any webpage, and export a BibTeX-style citation from it.
| 11 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/48 | 155 | 104 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/138 | 236 | Often, TeX outputs underfull hbox and vbox warnings when running and in the generated log file. What are these and how can I get rid of them?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/87 | What are underfull hboxes and vboxes and how can I get rid of them? | true | TeX puts elements (letters, lines, paragraphs, pictures,...) in boxes and joins them together on pages using glue (put between them) that can stretch, e.g., to make sure that lines are justified, or that pages are filled to their specified height. In the first example, the line is put in a hbox (horizontal box, or box with material arranged horizontally with respect to one another, words in this case), in the second, the page is put in a vbox (vertical box, or box with material arranged vertically with respect to one another, usually paragraphs and displayed equations in this case).
Such a box is underfull in case TeX has to stretch the glue more than what is specified to be (aestethically) acceptable. In that case there will, e.g., be much whitespace between words of a line (hbox case) or extra whitespace between paragraphs (vbox case).
To avoid underfull hboxes (and also overfull ones), one can, in LaTeX, use the microtype package, which, when used in pdflatex mode (directly generating a `.pdf` file, and not a `.dvi` one), can stretch letters as well, which allows TeX to get acceptable whitespace in lines more often.
Another, manual route is to reformulate sentences and paragraphs, or add explicit hyphenation (e.g., `hyphen\-ation`) to get better linebreaks. One can sometimes even fix bad pagebreaks (overfull vboxes) in this way as well, by shortening or lengthening paragraphs with one line.
| 146 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/87 | 156 | 105 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143 | 152 | When working with **Bibtex**, manually transferring the **citation information** for articles, prooceedings, books, etc. can be a tedious work. Some web sites provide citations in Bibtex format. What are your favorite sites to get Bibtex citations of your used references?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/46 | What are good sites to find citations in BibTex format? | false | For computer science the [Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies](http://liinwww.ira.uka.de/bibliography/ "The Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies") is very useful.
| 2 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/34 | 157 | 106 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/70 | 105 | I've heard that with LuaTeX, you can embed Lua code in your document that work directly with TeX internals, making it possible to do several things that are hard to do with macros. What is a good specific example of stuff that you can accomplish easily with LuaTeX?
(I see [here](http://www.danielstender.com/granthinam/506/) that LuaLaTeX is already available on Debian testing, and you can write documents like:
```
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{luacode}
\begin{document}
A random number:
\begin{luacode}
tex.print(math.random())
\end{luacode}
\end{document}
```
resulting in something like
```
A random number: 0.135494265234
```
so I expect that other useful nontrivial things are possible.)
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/48 | What is a simple example of something you can do with LuaTeX? | false | Check out [those](http://wiki.luatex.org/) examples. Even if "normal" users might see no need for a general purpose language in LaTeX they will benefit from packages using Lua scripts internally.
| 5 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/97 | 159 | 107 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/129 | 45 | I'd like to include some basic math equations into a webpage. Is there an easy way of either compiling the LaTeX into an image which I can upload, or else of having the browser parse the code?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/68 | Embedding LaTeX equations into a webpage | false | A friend of mine hacked together [mathcache](http://mathcache.appspot.com/static/docs.html): put a short `<script>` block at the end of a webpage, and it parses all text within the standard delimiters as math formulas, inserting them into the page the viewer sees as PNG images (or SVG, if the browser supports them).
It's probably worth noting that [blogs hosted on WordPress.com have LaTeX support](http://en.support.wordpress.com/latex/). Text beginning with `$latex` and ending with `$` is parsed as LaTeX code and rendered as PNG. [Terry Tao](http://terrytao.wordpress.com/) uses a more elaborate system, [LaTeX2WP](http://lucatrevisan.wordpress.com/latex-to-wordpress/), which operates on the document level, turning a LaTeX file into something which can be pasted into WordPress. This allows for referencing by equation number; the `\ref` command gives clickable links.
| 3 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/112 | 160 | 108 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143 | 152 | When working with **Bibtex**, manually transferring the **citation information** for articles, prooceedings, books, etc. can be a tedious work. Some web sites provide citations in Bibtex format. What are your favorite sites to get Bibtex citations of your used references?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/46 | What are good sites to find citations in BibTex format? | false | I maintain my Bibtex database manually (using JabRef as a GUI).
In particular with conference proceedings, it's not possible to find everything that you need in one service, and if you copy & paste information from different services, your bibliography won't be internally consistent. And even if you copy Bibtex entries directly from the publisher's site (e.g., ACM and IEEE services mentioned in other answers), you will get a lot of garbage. Details such as accented characters in authors' names, math in titles, etc., are very often wrong.
MathSciNet is one of the very few sites that I actually trust so much that I usually copy & paste Bibtex entries almost verbatim. DBLP is useful but I nevertheless double-check the information that I get from it.
It's a lot of work initially, but as your Bibtex database grows, you will be able to reuse more and more entries in your new articles - especially as you don't need to check your bibliography again when you are preparing the final versions of your papers. Using Bibtex macros and/or cross-references helps a lot with the manual work.
| 8 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/100 | 164 | 109 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/162 | 55 | Are there newsgroups, forums, FAQs, and other sites that provide quality information on TeX, LaTeX and friends? Are all of these in English, or is there one in "my language of choice"?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/87 | What are other good resources on-line for information about TeX, LaTeX and friends? | false | The two big ones are <http://www.latex-community.org/> and <http://tug.org/>.
And the site you're on right now, of course!
| 8 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/70 | 166 | 110 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/161 | 111 | I use revision control (Subversion, to be exact) to keep track of the edits to my LaTeX documents. Is there a LaTeX package that interfaces with revision control? Specifically, it would be nice to see the revision number and time and date inside the document. (Obviously, I'd turn this off in the final version.) Also, it might be nice to get a PDF showing what was added and removed in a given revision.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/52 | LaTeX packages for use with revision control | false | To get the revision id, date and time inside the document you need to use [keyword substitution](http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.4/svn.advanced.props.special.keywords.html).
Once you've set up your repository to do the substitution you can then insert `$Id$`, `$Revision$`, `$Date$` or other keywords which will then be replaced when the file is committed.
| 6 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/115 | 168 | 111 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/161 | 111 | I use revision control (Subversion, to be exact) to keep track of the edits to my LaTeX documents. Is there a LaTeX package that interfaces with revision control? Specifically, it would be nice to see the revision number and time and date inside the document. (Obviously, I'd turn this off in the final version.) Also, it might be nice to get a PDF showing what was added and removed in a given revision.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/52 | LaTeX packages for use with revision control | true | Yes, there are packages called [`svn`](https://www.ctan.org/pkg/svn) and [`svninfo`](https://www.ctan.org/pkg/svninfo), as well as a few for other version-control systems. See the [TeX FAQ](https://texfaq.org/FAQ-RCS): you can have something like `\SVNdate $Date$` which will use the value of the `Date` SVN variable in your document, or have footers containing the date and version number in the document. I don't think either of them shows diffs, though.
| 45 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/48 | 169 | 112 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/142 | 593 | Sometimes, I want to have enumerate lists in LaTeX start at other than the first value (1, a, i, etc.) How can I make an enumerate list start at an arbitrary value?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | How can I make an enumerate list start at something other than 1? | false | The `enumitem` package provides a simple solution to very many common problems that are related to minor tweaks of enumerate/itemize/description. In this case, you can use the `start` parameter. Also have a look at the `resume` parameter.
| 93 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/100 | 170 | 113 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/165 | 64 | LaTeX documents print beautifully, but images often looks "ugly", "pixelated" or "low-res" compared to the text. By images I don't mean photos, which I rarely use, but rather diagrams, charts and drawings made in other programs such as Visio, Excel and Photoshop. I would love for these to look just as good as the rest of the report when printed.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/121 | How do I insert an image in LaTeX so it looks good on print? | false | If you're working with diagrams, I would recommend you to make them using vector graphics instead of raster graphics. This will allow you to upscale them infinitely. Inkscape (free) and Illustrator (paid) can make vector graphics. For graphs, I like to use graphviz (free).
| 18 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/4 | 171 | 114 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/141 | 38 | When I run my LaTeX document through `pdflatex`, some of the pages (the ones where figures appear) have all the text bolded. Why, and what can I do to make it stop?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/112 | Why are some pages in my PDF coming out bold? | true | I guess you are using Adobe Reader? If you use transparency in your illustrations, it seems that Adobe Reader renders text incorrectly (something like the wrong gamma correction in anti-aliasing perhaps), which makes the text look a bit too bold. It should look OK if you use other PDF readers, and it should also look OK when printed from Adobe Reader.
A simple solution is to avoid using transparency whenever possible.
You can remove transparency from existing PNG images using graphics editors like GIMP or Photoshop, or with a command-line program like [ImageMagick](http://www.imagemagick.org/). With ImageMagick, the command `convert image.png -background white -alpha off image_new.png` will remove the transparency (from <http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/masking/#alpha_remove>).
| 39 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/100 | 172 | 115 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/162 | 55 | Are there newsgroups, forums, FAQs, and other sites that provide quality information on TeX, LaTeX and friends? Are all of these in English, or is there one in "my language of choice"?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/87 | What are other good resources on-line for information about TeX, LaTeX and friends? | false | The [TeX FAQ](http://texfaq.org), where you'll the answer to what you're looking for surprisingly often.
| 11 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/48 | 173 | 116 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/162 | 55 | Are there newsgroups, forums, FAQs, and other sites that provide quality information on TeX, LaTeX and friends? Are all of these in English, or is there one in "my language of choice"?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/87 | What are other good resources on-line for information about TeX, LaTeX and friends? | false | <http://wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX>
And you can even help improving it yourself :)
| 14 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/4 | 174 | 117 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/163 | 86 | Is there a program equivalent to lint for LaTeX? (lint checks C code for syntax errors and possible mistakes.)
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | Is there a program equivalent to lint for LaTeX? | false | [lacheck](http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/support/lacheck/) and [ChkTeX](http://baruch.ev-en.org/proj/chktex/) are lint-like things that I have used. [check](http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/support/check/), which I have not used, also seems to provide syntax checking.
| 23 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | 175 | 118 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/163 | 86 | Is there a program equivalent to lint for LaTeX? (lint checks C code for syntax errors and possible mistakes.)
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | Is there a program equivalent to lint for LaTeX? | true | Yes, [`ChkTeX`](https://ctan.org/pkg/chktex) and `lacheck`. (You probably already have it: if you're using AucTeX on Emacs, when you hit `C-c C-c` to compile, type `ChkTex` or `Check` (for `ChkTex` and `lacheck` respectively). Or else, at the commandline, try `lacheck`.) Thanks for reminding me of this; I ought to use it more (though it can be very annoying :P).
| 59 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/48 | 176 | 119 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/165 | 64 | LaTeX documents print beautifully, but images often looks "ugly", "pixelated" or "low-res" compared to the text. By images I don't mean photos, which I rarely use, but rather diagrams, charts and drawings made in other programs such as Visio, Excel and Photoshop. I would love for these to look just as good as the rest of the report when printed.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/121 | How do I insert an image in LaTeX so it looks good on print? | false | I have switched to [PGF/TikZ](http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/) for all vector drawing. The level of control and the beauty of the results provided by this package is worth learning the syntax.
| 29 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/97 | 177 | 120 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/158 | 36 | Occasionally, I write letters that I actually print out and send by snail mail :).
I'd like them to look as formal as possible. Archaic (pre-typewriter) Dutch customs require the sender's address to be in the top left corner and the recipient's in the top right. The place and date should be aligned with the recipient's address. The sign off ("Yours truly") should also be aligned with that.
Of course there are also specific rules for the amount of vertical whitespace.
Does anyone know of a good package that lets me customize all this stuff, preferably in a .sty file or something that I can include, so I don't have to do it again for every letter?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/116 | Anyone know a good template for formal letters? | false | I haven't personally investigated any of them, but the internet tells me about [this link](http://lifeisallabout.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/letter-writing-in-latex/) which refers to several packages. The package scrlttr2 looks almost infinitely customizeable, so probably is what you want.
| 2 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/119 | 178 | 121 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/161 | 111 | I use revision control (Subversion, to be exact) to keep track of the edits to my LaTeX documents. Is there a LaTeX package that interfaces with revision control? Specifically, it would be nice to see the revision number and time and date inside the document. (Obviously, I'd turn this off in the final version.) Also, it might be nice to get a PDF showing what was added and removed in a given revision.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/52 | LaTeX packages for use with revision control | false | For systems like CVS or Subversion, which modify source files, the [TeX FAQ](https://texfaq.org/FAQ-RCS)'s bare-bones answer is my favourite:
```
\def\RCS$#1: #2 ${\expandafter\def\csname RCS#1\endcsname{#2}}
\RCS$Revision: 1.13 $ % or any RCS keyword
\RCS$Date: 2010/04/02 18:20:00 $
...
\date{Revision \RCSRevision, \RCSDate}
```
It's not very sophisticated, but you're only going to use it for draft versions, so this is a case where simple and robust beats pretty.
Systems like Mercurial or Git don't modify source files. In such cases, a good solution is to generate a file which can be `\input` into a source document. In the case of Mercurial, I use a Makefile rule like:
```
hg.id: .hg
hg log -r'p1()' --template '\\def\\HgNode\{{node|short}}\n\\def\\HgDate\{{date|rfc3339date}}\n\\def\\HgAuthor\{{author|person}}\n' >$@
```
I `\input` that file into the document, and use `\HgDate` and `\HgNode` in `\date` commands or footnotes.
**Update**: the OP also mentioned changes between versions. That turns out to be a bit tricky in LaTeX, but the [TeX FAQ](https://texfaq.org/FAQ-changebars) has a discussion of the various (not completely satisfactory) possibilities.
**Edit**: More recent versions of Mercurial require the `{` characters in the template to be escaped. I modified the answer to include that.
**Edit**: `hg parent` is better than `hg tip`, as it gives the correct result if you're formatting an old (tagged?) version of the repository. But (a further edit) `hg log -r'p1()'` is better than either, since it will produce a single result even in the occasional case when a working directory has two parents, such as when you are mid-merge and resolving merge conflicts.
| 39 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/96 | 179 | 122 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/148 | 79 | Sometimes I want an element on a frame to change in steps.
I do this by
```
\only<2>{
...
}
\only<3>{
...
}
```
etc.
But this causes the frame to jump due to different sizes of the included content.
How can this be avoided?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/34 | Avoiding jumping frames in beamer | true | Wrap your code fragment inside the `overlayarea` environment.
| 43 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/100 | 181 | 123 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143 | 152 | When working with **Bibtex**, manually transferring the **citation information** for articles, prooceedings, books, etc. can be a tedious work. Some web sites provide citations in Bibtex format. What are your favorite sites to get Bibtex citations of your used references?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/46 | What are good sites to find citations in BibTex format? | false | If, through some peculiar combination of circumstances, you find yourself citing a Wikipedia article, the "cite this page" item under the "toolbox" in the left-hand sidebar provides BibTeX information. For example, to cite what is now the current version of the [Isaac Newton](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton) article, one clicks "cite this page" and [receives](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Cite&page=Isaac_Newton&id=374986805)
```
@misc{ wiki:xxx,
author = "Wikipedia",
title = "Isaac Newton --- Wikipedia{,} The Free Encyclopedia",
year = "2010",
url = "\url{http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Isaac_Newton&oldid=374986805}",
note = "[Online; accessed 26-July-2010]"
}
```
The URL in this block includes a reference to the specific version number, so even if the article is changed later, the version being referenced can be retrieved.
| 5 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/112 | 182 | 124 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/45 | 105 | The slowest part is a dozen of diagrams in `TikZ.`
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/69 | How to speed up LaTeX compilation with several TikZ pictures? | false | I don't use TikZ, so I've no idea if this will help with TikZ-related slowness. But, the question asks how to speed up compilation (in general).
Using the `draft` option in your `\documentclass` declaration will cause many different packages to skip some steps or niceties and will thus give a speed boost. When compiling the final document, either remove the `draft` or replace it with `final`.
| 1 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | 183 | 125 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/64 | 151 | A lot of people write makefiles that say something like
```
paper.pdf: paper.tex
pdflatex paper
bibtex paper
pdflatex paper
pdflatex paper
```
To handle re-running TeX to get new/changed references and so forth. Is there a better way to do this?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/60 | Tools for automating document compilation | false | It does more than just compile documents, being a fully featured editor, but [Kile](http://kile.sf.net) is very good at completing all the compilation steps.
You can also define your own build processes which use command line tools. By adding a ViewPDF option at the end of the compile your pdf viewer of choice will be launched (or updated) after a successful compilation.
| 8 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/115 | 184 | 126 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143 | 152 | When working with **Bibtex**, manually transferring the **citation information** for articles, prooceedings, books, etc. can be a tedious work. Some web sites provide citations in Bibtex format. What are your favorite sites to get Bibtex citations of your used references?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/46 | What are good sites to find citations in BibTex format? | false | Since it hasn't appeared in the other answers, [Google Scholar](http://scholar.google.com/) also allows you to download a BibTeX citation for each of its search results. You have to enable the feature from the Preferences page.
The bibliographic data from Google Scholar is often not very well curated (I suspect it's automatically generated without any human review), but it does at least have *something* available for a very wide variety of publications. I'll often take the Google Scholar entry as a starting point and manually clean up the fields before using it.
| 10 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/125 | 185 | 127 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/64 | 151 | A lot of people write makefiles that say something like
```
paper.pdf: paper.tex
pdflatex paper
bibtex paper
pdflatex paper
pdflatex paper
```
To handle re-running TeX to get new/changed references and so forth. Is there a better way to do this?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/60 | Tools for automating document compilation | false | For emacs users, [AUCTeX](http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/) provides the command `TeX-command-master` (bound to `C-c C-c` by default) that doesn't quite answer the request, but nevertheless helps a lot. The command runs (pdf)latex, bibtex, and makeindex on a `.tex` file as required. You do have to invoke it multiple times, but it does a pretty good job of sorting out what commands need to be run in what order. (I have had the occasional document that outsmarted it, mostly ones using the `exam.cls` document class.)
Note that [TeX files must be parsed](https://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/manual/auctex/Parsing-Files.html) for this to work.
Starting from version 11.89, there is also the possibility to automatically run all commands needed to completely build the document at once: `TeX-command-run-all`, bound to `C-c C-a`. It's like running `C-c C-c` multiple times, it will compile the document until it's ready and automatically start the viewer if there are no errors. This feature can be considered a real automatic compilation tool.
| 21 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | 187 | 128 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/80 | 562 | If you have a TeX'ed resume, did you use a template or make your own? Are there any useful packages? What looks the most professional? How about special considerations for different areas of work (e.g. in academia)?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/8 | LaTeX template for resume/curriculum vitae | false | For my current one I just rolled my own. I use `fancyhdr` for the header and footer, and `lastpage` so that I can display `page x/y` in the footer (so that the person reviewing it would know if they lost a page).
The entirety of the rest of the document is built from nested customized `list`s.
| 10 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/119 | 188 | 129 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/80 | 562 | If you have a TeX'ed resume, did you use a template or make your own? Are there any useful packages? What looks the most professional? How about special considerations for different areas of work (e.g. in academia)?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/8 | LaTeX template for resume/curriculum vitae | false | I ended up making my own, but it took a while. Expect to have to fight LaTeX's defaults on a lot of things. That said, it's worth it. I learned a lot about LaTeX and have a good resume that I can say I wrote.
I wouldn't be surprised, but it seems like if you're going to use LaTeX for your resume, be prepared to answer truthfully whether you used a template or not, and be comfortable with the answer.
| 10 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/nan | 189 | 130 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/93 | 18 | What do I need in order to use TeX on Windows as an eventual replacement for Word?
What software is available for Windows for WYSIWYG editing of TeX files?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/91 | What do I need in order to use TeX on Windows as an eventual replacement for Word? | false | I'd suggest trying out <http://docs.latexlab.org>. You sign in with an existing Google account, and it has syntax highlighting, docs can be saved 'on the cloud', and everything can be compiled there and saved in pdf format.
| 5 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/126 | 190 | 131 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/93 | 18 | What do I need in order to use TeX on Windows as an eventual replacement for Word?
What software is available for Windows for WYSIWYG editing of TeX files?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/91 | What do I need in order to use TeX on Windows as an eventual replacement for Word? | false | One thing you need to move from MS Word to TeX and friends is to drop the desire for WYSIWYG. For complicated documents that paradigm is, at best, WYSIPCTYADFWYG: What You See is Probably Close To, Yet Actually Different From, What You Get. (Not the basis of a marketing campaign!)
TeX and friends offer a fundamentally different way to think about document composition.
Lyx, which other answers have directed you to, is WYSIWYG'*ish*, but the "ish" bears emphasis.
I personally think that while the Lyx folk are awesome, you are best to think of Lyx like training wheels. If you can learn to ride without them, you are better off.
| 17 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | 191 | 132 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/102 | 49 | Normally, I'm basically OK with BibTeX's choice of citation key (by which I mean, the short symbol it shows in the final document, like [2] or [Hil05], not the one one types in the tex file), but every once in a while there's a paper that cries out for a particular key (such as the paper of Freyd, Hoste, Lickorish, Millet, Ocneano and Yetter in which the HOMFLY polynomial is defined clearly should have the key [HOMFLY], not [FHL+95]), or BibTeX picks a particularly bad one.
*In these cases, is there a field one can insert into the bibtex entry to override the key choice, or something one can do other than editing the .bbl file?*
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/37 | Can one "manually override" BibTeX's choice of citation keys by adding a field to the entry? | false | If you use the [`natbib`](http://ctan.org/pkg/natbib) package, you can declare an "alias" or alternative citation for a source:
For example, the following `.bib` entry:
```
@techreport{caltrans2002,
Author = {{California Department of Transportation}},
Title = {{Humboldt Bay Bridges Seismic Substructure Retrofit Environmental Assessment/Finding of No Significant Impact (EA/FONSI)}},
Year = {2002}}
```
Produces the following output when `\citep{caltrans2002}` used in a document:
---
---
Having a citation that spans most of a line can be pretty bothersome- especially when the full name has to appear in the bibliography but there is a nice shorthand that should be used when citing in the text. By including `\usepackage{natbib}` in your preamble, you have access to citation aliases:
```
\defcitealias{caltrans2002}{\scshape CalTrans, 2002}
```
Then using `\citepalias{caltrans2002}` instead of `\citep{caltrans2002}` produces the following output:
---
---
In both cases, the associated entry in the bibliography looks like this:
---
---
The LaTeX and BibTeX source I used to create this example can be obtained from [GitHub](http://gist.github.com/491290).
| 20 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/17 | 192 | 133 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/80 | 562 | If you have a TeX'ed resume, did you use a template or make your own? Are there any useful packages? What looks the most professional? How about special considerations for different areas of work (e.g. in academia)?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/8 | LaTeX template for resume/curriculum vitae | false | I've been using a lightly tweaked version of Michael DeCorte's [res.cls](http://www.math.nyu.edu/student_resources/res.cls). No idea if it is best of breed (nor why I chose it), but if it ain't broke. . . .
| 12 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | 193 | 134 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143 | 152 | When working with **Bibtex**, manually transferring the **citation information** for articles, prooceedings, books, etc. can be a tedious work. Some web sites provide citations in Bibtex format. What are your favorite sites to get Bibtex citations of your used references?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/46 | What are good sites to find citations in BibTex format? | false | [Mendeley](http://www.mendeley.com/) allows you to sync your collection with a bibtex file.
| 9 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/nan | 194 | 135 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/196 | 241 | ### Motivation
I want to include a list of related equations, say, for a proof, in my LaTeX document. As far as I know, I have two good options, `eqnarray` and `align`.
### Question
What is the difference between `eqnarray` and `align`, and how do I know which I should be using? Or does it matter at all?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/70 | eqnarray vs align | true | Although `eqnarray` may seem to work "well enough", [Avoid eqnarray!](http://www.tug.org/pracjourn/2006-4/madsen/) [Avoid eqnarray!](http://texblog.net/latex-archive/maths/eqnarray-align-environment/) [Avoid eqnarray!](http://www.math.uiuc.edu/%7Ehildebr/tex/displays.html)
Two main problems are mentioned in the [doc above](https://www.tug.org/pracjourn/2006-4/madsen/madsen.pdf):
* `eqnarray` sets horizontal space around the `=` operator that is not consistent with the space set in other environments, such as `\[...\]` or `$$...$$` (it is wider).
* `eqnarray` (also `eqnarray*` !) has an ill-defined equation numbering, which leads to numbering errors on referencing—mostly when using the command `\nonumber`
Use `align` and the rest of the ams environments. See `texdoc amsldoc` ([PDF](http://texdoc.net/texmf-dist/doc/latex/amsmath/amsldoc.pdf)) or the [Short Math Guide for LaTeX](http://tug.ctan.org/info/short-math-guide/short-math-guide.pdf) for documentation on how to use them.
| 217 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/48 | 197 | 137 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/167 | 28 | Every now and then I use the description list environment
```
\begin{description}
\item[foo] foo is good
\item[bar] bar is bad
\end{description}
```
to create lists with non-numerical labels. Unfortunately the description list does not support the label-reference pair as normal latex: i.e. if I write
```
\begin{description}
\item[foo] \label{foo} foo is good
....
\end{description}
....
For good things (see, for example \ref{foo})...
```
the reference does not point to the item in the list. Instead it points to the closest environment that supports labeling (usually the subsection). So instead of showing the text foo (in boldface), it shows something like 2.2.1 (the subsection corresponding to where the description environment is sitting).
My question: is there a way or a package which allows references to description list items? My current work-around is to just type the text myself in the spot (since I named it myself, and it is not numbered, the formatting is unlikely to change the label =). But one of the good things about the label/reference pairs in latex is the implementation in pdflatex that allows in PDF hyperlinks between references and the objects referred to, this I cannot replicate myself.
**Edit**: let me rephrase my question. The primary goal is *not* to display `\ref` to something other than what LaTeX thinks the `\label` is. There are many ways to deal with it, some of which outlined in Michael Underwood's helpful answer below. What I am looking at is whether there exists an implementation of a list environment which is like the built-in `description` environment in that the displayed "title" for the list item is completely customized, while having support for `\label`s. (The built-in `description` environment does not support `\label`s, whereas the built-in `enumerate` environment does not support customized "title"s.) The `enumitem` package adds some customizability to the environments, but as far as I can tell it doesn't support exactly what I want.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/119 | How to cross-reference items in description lists? | false | It's possible to change what `\ref` will display for equations if you include the `amsmath` package and use the `\tag` command, like so:
```
\usepackage{amsmath}
...
\begin{equation}\label{eq:energy}\tag{Einstein}
E=mc^2
\end{equation}
...
Invoking the energy-mass equivalence of \ref{eq:energy}
```
I'm not aware of a straightforward method to accomplish it in general though, since if the tag you want is not going to be changed by edits or recompilations, there's no need to make TeX keep track of it.
I would accomplish what you are attempting by defining a new command to be the text of the description:
```
\newcommand{\foo}{foo}
....
\begin{description}
\item[\foo] foo is good
....
\end{description}
....
For good things (see, for example \foo)...
```
That way if you decide later that the description should instead be `bar`, you just have to change the one defining command to `\newcommand{\foo}{bar}` and all subsequent places that you use `\foo` will automatically get updated to display `bar`.
| 1 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/32 | 198 | 138 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/196 | 241 | ### Motivation
I want to include a list of related equations, say, for a proof, in my LaTeX document. As far as I know, I have two good options, `eqnarray` and `align`.
### Question
What is the difference between `eqnarray` and `align`, and how do I know which I should be using? Or does it matter at all?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/70 | eqnarray vs align | false | `align` is from `amsmath`, while `eqnarray` is from base LaTeX, so I would expect the former to be better. Some differences:
* `eqnarray` has two alignment points (it's basically just `array` with a default preamble); `align` has one. `x + y &=& z` versus `x + y &= z`
* `eqnarray` changes the spacing at the alignment points depending on different factors; `align` keeps it fixed (which is generally what you want)
* `eqnarray` allows page breaks between lines; `align` doesn't
* `\\ *` is treated the same as `\\*` in `eqnarray`, but won't work in `align` (since `*` shows up commonly in equations)
(largely from The LaTeX Companion §8.2.1)
| 70 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/29 | 199 | 139 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/196 | 241 | ### Motivation
I want to include a list of related equations, say, for a proof, in my LaTeX document. As far as I know, I have two good options, `eqnarray` and `align`.
### Question
What is the difference between `eqnarray` and `align`, and how do I know which I should be using? Or does it matter at all?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/70 | eqnarray vs align | false | The `align` environment only works if you use the AMS (American Mathematical Society) packages. If you need to use journal specific document classes or style files, the `align` environment may not be available. (For example, when I needed to use the `iopart` class for submission to an Institute of Physics journal, I had to change all my `align`s to `eqnarray`s for the file to compile.
But unless you are forced to, I generally recommend the `align` environment. [Here](http://texblog.net/latex-archive/maths/eqnarray-align-environment/)'s a good write-up of what the differences are.
| 20 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/119 | 200 | 140 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/161 | 111 | I use revision control (Subversion, to be exact) to keep track of the edits to my LaTeX documents. Is there a LaTeX package that interfaces with revision control? Specifically, it would be nice to see the revision number and time and date inside the document. (Obviously, I'd turn this off in the final version.) Also, it might be nice to get a PDF showing what was added and removed in a given revision.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/52 | LaTeX packages for use with revision control | false | For the last part of your question, I like the Perl script [`latexdiff`](http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/support/latexdiff/). This generates LaTeX documents displaying linebreak-insensitive differences, with changebars and other visual markup. (Alas, the implementation is quite hacky, relying on complex regular expressions for parsing, so it's worth ensuring one has Perl 5.8.10 or later installed for greater regular expression nesting depth.)
| 33 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/132 | 201 | 141 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/165 | 64 | LaTeX documents print beautifully, but images often looks "ugly", "pixelated" or "low-res" compared to the text. By images I don't mean photos, which I rarely use, but rather diagrams, charts and drawings made in other programs such as Visio, Excel and Photoshop. I would love for these to look just as good as the rest of the report when printed.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/121 | How do I insert an image in LaTeX so it looks good on print? | true | Vector Imagery
--------------
---
If you can, save diagrams as a vector-based format such as PDF or EPS- these formats can be readily included in LaTeX documents and scale without appearing pixelized. Note that PDF should be used for input to `pdflatex` and EPS should be used with plain `latex`.
[Inkscape](http://www.inkscape.org/) is an excellent, free, cross-platform program for creating and editing vector graphics- similar to Adobe Illustrator. There is even a project that is producing a plug-in for Inkscape that allows Inkscape graphics [to be exported to TikZ](http://code.google.com/p/inkscape2tikz/).
[TikZ](http://tug.ctan.org/cgi-bin/ctanPackageInformation.py?id=pgf) is a TeX-based language for creating vector graphics- it is incredibly expressive and lets you create graphics right inside your TeX document. However, using TikZ requires writing out the commands required to create an image- it is not a GUI-based drawing program.
If you are using `latex` instead of `pdflatex`, then the [PSTricks](http://tug.org/PSTricks/main.cgi/) package is also available- but your document must be rendered into PostScript somewhere along the for the images to appear. However, passing through PostScript has advantages- PostScript is a complete programming language for creating graphics which PSTricks is able to leverage in order to produce some effects that are difficult/impossible to replicate using TikZ.
Raster Imagery
--------------
---
If all you have is a raster image, PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, ect, **then you must pay close attention to the resolution** that the image file has been saved at. The resolution will determine how much scaling can occur before the image starts to appear pixelated.
Many programs default to saving images at 72 dpi (dots per inch) as that is a lightweight resolution that is commonly used for images displayed on the web. However, for printed output you need a much higher resolution for the results to look good. A common rule of thumb is that **the final scaled image should have a resolution of at least 300 dpi** if it is to appear on a printed page without noticeable pixelation.
| 52 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/17 | 202 | 142 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143 | 152 | When working with **Bibtex**, manually transferring the **citation information** for articles, prooceedings, books, etc. can be a tedious work. Some web sites provide citations in Bibtex format. What are your favorite sites to get Bibtex citations of your used references?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/46 | What are good sites to find citations in BibTex format? | true | Here's my compilation of the suggestions given. Feel free to edit in other suggestions as appropriate, in addition to posting each suggestion in a separate answer. Note that this list is manually updated and may not include all the links posted in other answers. If you find some other answer helpful, please upvote it as well.
**General-purpose reference collections that provide BibTeX citations**
* [ZoteroBib](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143/what-are-good-sites-to-find-citations-in-bibtex-format/207#comment1329631_155)
* [doi2bib](https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/185238/159613)
* [Bibsonomy](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143/what-are-good-sites-to-find-citations-in-bibtex-format/302#302)
* [BibTeX Search](https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/233633/159613)
* [Amazon](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143/what-are-good-sites-to-find-citations-in-bibtex-format/152#152)
* [Google Scholar](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143/what-are-good-sites-to-find-citations-in-bibtex-format/185#185)
* [Nelson Beebe's collection](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143/what-are-good-sites-to-find-citations-in-bibtex-format/779#779)
* [Citebay](https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/496648/125343)
* [semanticscholar.org](https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/608990/129388)
* [ottobib](https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/280249/129388)
**Subject-specific collections that provide BibTeX citations**
* [MathSciNet](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143/what-are-good-sites-to-find-citations-in-bibtex-format/153#153) (math) (Freely available [via MRef](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143/what-are-good-sites-to-find-citations-in-bibtex-format/781#781))
* [ACM catalog](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143/what-are-good-sites-to-find-citations-in-bibtex-format/152#152) (CS)
* [IEEE catalog](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143/what-are-good-sites-to-find-citations-in-bibtex-format/152#152) (engineering/technical)
* [Collection of CS Bibliographies](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143/what-are-good-sites-to-find-citations-in-bibtex-format/157#157) (computer science)
* [DBLP](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143/what-are-good-sites-to-find-citations-in-bibtex-format/208#208) (math/CS)
* [SPIRES](http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/) (high-energy physics)
* [Citing Wikipedia itself](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143/what-are-good-sites-to-find-citations-in-bibtex-format/182#182)
* [TeXMed](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143/what-are-good-sites-to-find-citations-in-bibtex-format/305#305), of PubMed (medicine, biology, bioinformatics)
* [PhilPapers](http://philpapers.org/) (philosophy, related disciplines)
* [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy](http://plato.stanford.edu/) (as it says on the tin)
* [Astrophysics Data System](https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/#) (astronomy and physics)
* [Ideas/RePEc](https://ideas.repec.org/) (economics)
**Reference managers that allow BibTeX export/import**
* [Bibliophile](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143/what-are-good-sites-to-find-citations-in-bibtex-format/296#296) for converting from other formats
* [JabRef](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143/what-are-good-sites-to-find-citations-in-bibtex-format/164#164)
* [Mendeley](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143/what-are-good-sites-to-find-citations-in-bibtex-format/194#194)
* [Qiqqa](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143/what-are-good-sites-to-find-citations-in-bibtex-format/218434#218434) - has a 'BibTeX Sniffer' wizard and auto-association of BibTeX with PDFs
* [Zotero](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143/what-are-good-sites-to-find-citations-in-bibtex-format/155#155) (Firefox extension)
* [KBibTeX](https://userbase.kde.org/KBibTeX)
**Browser Extensions**
* Google Chrome
+ [BibTeX entry from URL](https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/608989/129388)
+ [ottobib](https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/280249/129388)
* Firefox
+ [Zotero extension](https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/155/129388)
Please keep in mind that the .bib entries generated by some online services may have shortcomings and that it is a good idea to check the exported references manually. [Moewe](https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/35864/moewe) suggests to see [Software-generated bibliographic entries: common errors and other mistakes to check before use](https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/386053/35864)
| 103 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/125 | 207 | 144 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143 | 152 | When working with **Bibtex**, manually transferring the **citation information** for articles, prooceedings, books, etc. can be a tedious work. Some web sites provide citations in Bibtex format. What are your favorite sites to get Bibtex citations of your used references?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/46 | What are good sites to find citations in BibTex format? | false | [DBLP](http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/index.html) has good BibTeX entries for much of computer science. Their coverage is not comprehensive, and they have some awkward gaps pre-2000, but it is one of my favourite sources.
*Edit, five years later:* DBLP is still a mainstay of my bibliography needs, and now covers 3 million papers, including nearly all papers in the bit of theoretical computer science I am interested in, as well as much of discrete mathematics. It now also includes citations for ECCC and arXiv papers (although these really should not be of type `article` with the repository as the `journal`).
| 9 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/132 | 208 | 145 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/203 | 63 | I want to employ a `\verb` command in a footnote. But, when I run `pdflatex` on
```
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
I want this.\footnote{\verb|But, it does not work!|}
\end{document}
```
I get this:
```
! LaTeX Error: \verb illegal in command argument.
```
How can I do what I am after? (I know that I could just use `\footnote{\texttt{But, I lose the semantic mark-up.}}`)
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | How to obtain verbatim text in a footnote? | true | The package [`fancyvrb`](http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/fancyvrb/) supports this. Just put `\VerbatimFootnotes` anywhere after the preamble, and then:
```
We can put verbatim\footnote{\verb+_Yes!_+} text in footnotes.
```
Edit: As pointed out in the comment and [here](http://texfaq.org/FAQ-verbwithin), this may conflict with some footnote-specific packages, e.g. `footmisc` when used with the `para` option, but there are other alternatives. Quoting two from there:
* The `memoir` class defines its `\footnote` command so that it will accept verbatim in its arguments, without any supporting package.
* With `fancyvrb`, you can `\SaveVerb` something and `\UseVerb` it in a footnote.
There exist also further packages like [`examplep`](http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/examplep).
| 44 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/48 | 209 | 146 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/143 | 152 | When working with **Bibtex**, manually transferring the **citation information** for articles, prooceedings, books, etc. can be a tedious work. Some web sites provide citations in Bibtex format. What are your favorite sites to get Bibtex citations of your used references?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/46 | What are good sites to find citations in BibTex format? | false | I use <http://www.citeulike.org/> Briliant cite with loads of references and it is a bit of "social" referencing. You can create, import, export collections as bibtex and manage all of them online. It is pre-populated with loads of sources (I personally care only about IEEE which they pre-import via links.)
With this website the reference entry are by far the largest I saw including multiple web-view & purches links, full abstracts and customisable keys. Stopped writting bibtex files by-hand long time ago.
| 6 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/137 | 211 | 147 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/210 | 9 | I want to have two distinct sequences of "footnotes" in a single text, one as footnotes, the other as endnotes. Can this be accomplished in LaTeX? If so, how?
In case it isn't clear what I mean, here's the use-case. Sometimes one has two distinct classes of material for notes:
1. Notes that extend or amplify the discussion of the text and that most readers would want to (or ought to) read, and
2. Notes containing only scholarly apparatus or points of relevance to only the most specialized of specialists.
It is especially helpful if these two classes of notes can have a different sequence of references and if those of type (1) are footnotes while those of type (2) are endnotes.
(This use can be seen in, for instance, Martha Nusbaum's [The fragility of Goodness](http://books.google.ca/books?id=GCKqZkyzFO0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor%3a%22Martha+Craven+Nussbaum%22&hl=en&ei=6g9OTM7hNKOQnwe78cXYCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false).)
I would love to be able to achieve this in LaTeX, but I have no idea how to go about it.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | How can I get two sequences of "footnotes" in one LaTeX document, one as footnotes, the other as endnotes? | false | You can achieve this by using `\footnote` for Case 1 and `\cite` for Case 2. While `\cite` is designed to point to elements of the References list, there is no reason that your references must contain bibliographic data exclusively.
| 4 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/32 | 212 | 148 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/205 | 124 | What packages do you use and recommend for creating graphics in your LaTeX documents?
As this is a community wiki post, please add your package to the accepted answer (or add a comment, and someone with >100 rep will add it to the CW answer), and include a brief description of what differentiates it from others and how it can be used (GUI drawing tool which generates code, type in raw text, or generates image for inclusion in document). We'll eventually sort these answers under headings.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/136 | What graphics packages are there for creating graphics in LaTeX documents? | false | Depends on your particular needs.
I would recommend TikZ. Powerful, flexible, easy to use & stunning quality.
See samples here <http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/>
| 28 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/137 | 213 | 149 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/210 | 9 | I want to have two distinct sequences of "footnotes" in a single text, one as footnotes, the other as endnotes. Can this be accomplished in LaTeX? If so, how?
In case it isn't clear what I mean, here's the use-case. Sometimes one has two distinct classes of material for notes:
1. Notes that extend or amplify the discussion of the text and that most readers would want to (or ought to) read, and
2. Notes containing only scholarly apparatus or points of relevance to only the most specialized of specialists.
It is especially helpful if these two classes of notes can have a different sequence of references and if those of type (1) are footnotes while those of type (2) are endnotes.
(This use can be seen in, for instance, Martha Nusbaum's [The fragility of Goodness](http://books.google.ca/books?id=GCKqZkyzFO0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor%3a%22Martha+Craven+Nussbaum%22&hl=en&ei=6g9OTM7hNKOQnwe78cXYCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false).)
I would love to be able to achieve this in LaTeX, but I have no idea how to go about it.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | How can I get two sequences of "footnotes" in one LaTeX document, one as footnotes, the other as endnotes? | true | Have you looked at the `endnotes` package? It does precisely what you want, with the option to collect both footnotes and endnotes into one.
<http://ctan.tug.org/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/entries/endnotes.html>
| 12 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/119 | 215 | 150 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/165 | 64 | LaTeX documents print beautifully, but images often looks "ugly", "pixelated" or "low-res" compared to the text. By images I don't mean photos, which I rarely use, but rather diagrams, charts and drawings made in other programs such as Visio, Excel and Photoshop. I would love for these to look just as good as the rest of the report when printed.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/121 | How do I insert an image in LaTeX so it looks good on print? | false | One package that I'll do a shout out for is [Ipe](https://ipe.otfried.org/). You should think of Ipe as the next generation of xfig: great for line drawings, and by far the best killer feature: WYSIWYG latex. Ipe 7 has many of the modern vector graphics features (gradients, shading, transparency) etc that inkscape has, and is perfect for quick and dirty drawings.
it also has an extensible API, so if you need to demonstrate your algorithm, you can actually write an Ipe plugin in C++ that does the computation for you.
| 11 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/103 | 217 | 151 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/214 | 22 | Making tables in LaTeX can be painful. All you need is a semi complex table with cells that have to span multiple rows/columns. What tools do you use to get around this complexity? Tabular? Tabularx? Are there others?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/10 | What table tools/packages do you use? | false | One excellent package is the multicol package for spreading things across multiple columns or rows. I highly recommend it. tabularx is also very good. the cline package allows for partial lines to separate columns.
| 5 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/103 | 218 | 152 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/220 | 69 | I want to write my final thesis using LaTeX, what should I do in order to be able to do that through Eclipse on a Mac OS X? If any another good editor exists, feel free to write your opinion on why using this instead of something else.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/62 | I want to start using LaTeX on Mac OS X. Where do I start? | true | [MacTeX](http://tug.org/mactex/) is your friend! This contains the latest TeXLive distribution.
Personally, I edit using [Aquamacs](http://aquamacs.org/) with AUCTeX and friends enabled.
| 47 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/18 | 221 | 153 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/216 | 8 | My thesis currently has a few PSTricks and TikZ pictures. It takes a while to compile over [here Scott](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/45/how-can-i-speed-up-latex-compilation/86#) says he has some scripts to automate externalising TikZ pictures.
I'm looking ideally for something that will automatically name sequentially all of my figures, generate the graphics for them and automagically include them. I don't mind if I have to delete them by hand to recompile them if I change the code.
For PSTricks and TikZ please `=)` cause currently LaTeX is spanned for each PSTricks picture to generate a PDF graphic, and TikZ compilations starts to take up time.
P.S. half way through hte thesis I discovered TikZ but don't have time to redo PSTricks graphics.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/137 | Automagically externalising PSTricks and TikZ pictures | true | If you have a recent version of tikz, there is a handy command that will do this for you.
If you go here: <http://www.texample.net/tikz/builds/> you can download a up-to-date version of tikz. The documentation has instructions on how to implement the externalization in section 4.31 Externalization (in the current documentation this is page 340). The basic setup is explained in an example.
I use this for my own research and it is extremely easy. You can find a file I have implemented this in here [more-ar-quivers.tex](http://pastebin.com/xYcqfXPn).
| 5 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/144 | 223 | 154 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/219 | 1 | If I have some text and then \phantom{more text}, will LaTeX just allow an overfull (invisible) box at the end of the line, or could it potentially put in a line break and then have the invisible box at the start of the next line?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/136 | Will the \phantom{...} command break left justification if placed at the end of a line? | true | According to the test I just did, LaTeX will break the line before the invisible box under certain circumstances; however the box has to begin very close to the end of the line in order for this to happen. Otherwise it'll just complain about an overfull (invisible) hbox.
To see it yourself, try compiling this:
```
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah % remove this line to get overfull hbox
\phantom{blah blah blah foo blah blah blah blah blah blah}
blah blah blah blah
\end{document}
```
As it is, this document produces a blank space on the beginning of the second line. But if you remove the last two `blah`s before the `\phantom`, you get the blank space appearing at the end of the first line, and the second line starting at the left margin.
| 2 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/125 | 224 | 155 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/225 | 32 | There are many different kind of options that you can do in order to start using LaTeX on Ubuntu. I would prefer doing that through Eclipse, but if there is a better way of doing it, feel free to write your opinion on why using this instead of something else.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/62 | I want to start using LaTeX on Ubuntu. Where do I start? | false | The package you want to install the `texlive` package, or one of the things it depends on. Something like
```
sudo aptitude install texlive-latex-extra
```
ought to get you a pretty good starting point.
As for editors, even the basic pre-installed gedit ("Text Editor") should at least offer syntax highlighting.
| 11 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/60 | 228 | 156 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/225 | 32 | There are many different kind of options that you can do in order to start using LaTeX on Ubuntu. I would prefer doing that through Eclipse, but if there is a better way of doing it, feel free to write your opinion on why using this instead of something else.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/62 | I want to start using LaTeX on Ubuntu. Where do I start? | false | I don't run Ubuntu but perhaps these links will help:
<https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LaTeX>
<http://texlipse.sourceforge.net/>
| 3 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/20 | 229 | 157 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/225 | 32 | There are many different kind of options that you can do in order to start using LaTeX on Ubuntu. I would prefer doing that through Eclipse, but if there is a better way of doing it, feel free to write your opinion on why using this instead of something else.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/62 | I want to start using LaTeX on Ubuntu. Where do I start? | true | Eclipse strikes me as an odd choice of an IDE to use for LaTeX, but I guess it should work, since the steps in producing a LaTeX-generated document are quite similar to those involved in producing a computer program.
The first step is obviously to make sure you have Eclipse and LaTeX themselves installed. Then, if you haven't already done so, you should definitely install the [TeXlipse plugin](http://texlipse.sourceforge.net/) or some equivalent, which provides syntax highlighting and autocompletion, among other things. (Without it, Eclipse would be nothing more than a glorified text editor and in that case you'd be better off just using a plain text editor.) The TeXlipse [user manual](http://texlipse.sourceforge.net/manual/) provides a good description, including screenshots, which I would recommend you follow to the letter, as all the enabled features will most likely be useful to you. Once you've got the plugin installed and configured, just open a project and try compiling it to make sure it works and to get a sense of how the process works.
Eclipse is, of course, not the only IDE you can use for LaTeX; there are specialized LaTeX editors available. My favorite happens to be [Kile](http://kile.sourceforge.net/), which also provides syntax highlighting and autocompletion, as well as a LaTeX symbol list and graphical build commands that are designed specifically for the LaTeX toolchain. It is based on KDE, so if you are using the default graphical environment for Ubuntu (Gnome) you may have to install some - okay, a lot of - extra packages to use Kile, and it's your choice whether that's worth it or not.
| 19 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/125 | 230 | 158 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/214 | 22 | Making tables in LaTeX can be painful. All you need is a semi complex table with cells that have to span multiple rows/columns. What tools do you use to get around this complexity? Tabular? Tabularx? Are there others?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/10 | What table tools/packages do you use? | false | External Tools
--------------
---
I find that a lot of the pain involved in creating LaTeX tables comes simply from laying them out- it's tough to make a table markup syntax that isn't tedious to type and modify. Because of this, I use other programs to help me deal with some of the work involved in creating tables:
* If my LaTeX editor has a table wizard, I use it to create the table.
* If my data is in a spreadsheet, I use a plugin to export it to LaTeX. For Excel, I use [excel2latex](http://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/support/excel2latex/) and for OpenOffice I use [calc2latex](http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/en/project/Calc2LaTeX).
* If my data is in R, I use the [xtable](http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/xtable/index.html) package.
I find these tools take care of 80-95% of the work required to create a table- I then go through and refine some of the stylistic choices. The only problem with this approach is that the tools aren't of much use if a table requires a substantial update or re-write or needs to be generated automatically from an arbitrary dataset.
LaTeX Packages
--------------
---
Personally, I use the [Memoir](http://tug.ctan.org/cgi-bin/ctanPackageInformation.py?id=memoir) class for the majority of my documents. Memoir integrates the functionality of a ton of table packages such as booktabs and tabularx and integrates them in a sane way so your document doesn't end up with a list of `\usepackage{}`s that is a mile long. See Chapter 11: Rows and Columns of the Memoir manual for a description of the support provided by the class for tabular material.
In addition to Memoir, I often augment it's capabilities with the following two packages:
* The [longtable](http://tug.ctan.org/cgi-bin/ctanPackageInformation.py?id=longtable) package for laying out tables that flow across more than one page. Longtable's handling of table headers and footers is extremely nice for putting things like "Continued on the next page..." exactly where they are supposed to be.
* The [siunitx](http://tug.ctan.org/cgi-bin/ctanPackageInformation.py?id=siunitx) package- this package is all about typesetting units and numbers. The sinuitx package adds the `S` column descriptor which can be used to perform all kinds of advanced formatting for table columns that contain numbers such as:
+ Alignment of separators such as commas and decimal points.
+ Automatic rounding, truncation or conversion to scientific notation.
| 10 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/17 | 231 | 159 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/64 | 151 | A lot of people write makefiles that say something like
```
paper.pdf: paper.tex
pdflatex paper
bibtex paper
pdflatex paper
pdflatex paper
```
To handle re-running TeX to get new/changed references and so forth. Is there a better way to do this?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/60 | Tools for automating document compilation | false | [Latexmk](https://ctan.org/pkg/latexmk) is one possibility, although I've never used it myself.
| 108 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/125 | 234 | 160 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/227 | 267 | I want to add a footer to my document displaying the current number out of total number of pages. How do I do that?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/62 | How can I add "page # of ##" on my document? | true | I have not tried, but I found this at some old .tex files:
```
\usepackage{lastpage}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
...
\cfoot{\thepage\ of \pageref{LastPage}}
```
| 226 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/146 | 235 | 161 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/226 | 100 | One of the annoying aspects of LaTeX is the limited number of fonts that come by default, and the pain involved in making new fonts 'LaTeX' ready. I have a collection of truetype fonts that I'd like to prepare for use, and I definitely want to make sure I have vector versions of these fonts (i.e not type 3/bitmapped versions). Is there a relatively painless way to do this ?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/103 | Installing TTF fonts in LaTeX | true | One solution is to use [XeLaTeX](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XeTeX), which lets you use system fonts (mostly) hassle-free.
| 35 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/101 | 236 | 162 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/227 | 267 | I want to add a footer to my document displaying the current number out of total number of pages. How do I do that?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/62 | How can I add "page # of ##" on my document? | false | Using the [`lastpage`](http://www.ctan.org/pkg/lastpage) package, you can use the `\pageref{LastPage}` command to get the final page number of the document.
So the following code:
```
page \thepage\ of \pageref{LastPage}
```
would print "page # of ##" (where # is the current page number and ## is the final page number).
| 17 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/80 | 237 | 163 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/214 | 22 | Making tables in LaTeX can be painful. All you need is a semi complex table with cells that have to span multiple rows/columns. What tools do you use to get around this complexity? Tabular? Tabularx? Are there others?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/10 | What table tools/packages do you use? | true | I really like [booktabs](http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/booktabs/), it creates great, high quality tables (when I say quality I mean that they are really easy to read and look very clean). I feel weird when seeing a table with a lot of cluttered `\hline`s and `\cline`s everywhere...
| 20 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/146 | 241 | 164 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/93 | 18 | What do I need in order to use TeX on Windows as an eventual replacement for Word?
What software is available for Windows for WYSIWYG editing of TeX files?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/91 | What do I need in order to use TeX on Windows as an eventual replacement for Word? | false | [TeXworks](http://code.google.com/p/texworks/) is a great cross-platform, free and open-source editing environment. On Windows it works great, and has a built-in previewer which my previous editing setup with WinEdt did not have.
My most productive setup is having the editor in a window in one half of the monitor, and the previewer in a window in the other half of the monitor. Wide screens make this real nice; you can preview an entire page legibly.
| 3 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/149 | 242 | 165 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/11 | 383 | Which book (free or otherwise) was the most useful to you when you started learning LaTeX?
I am frequently asked this question by friends who want to learn LaTeX, and I recommend the book which got me started, [The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX2ε](http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf), but I feel that there might be better options around.
Also see [LaTeX Introductions in languages other than English](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/84384/latex-introductions-in-languages-other-than-english).
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/14 | What are good learning resources for a LaTeX beginner? | false |
>
> Ethan Bloch's A Brief Introduction to LaTeX for Bard Students which
> can be found [on his homepage](https://faculty.bard.edu/bloch/tex/)
> contains exactly enough info to get started (I started texing with it
> within an hour).
>
>
>
| 9 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/150 | 243 | 166 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/240 | 2 | I wan to be able adding numbered footnotes for some words in my documents, but displaying them on the same page and not at the end of the document. Ho do I do that?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/62 | How do I add numbered footnotes on every page? | false | You could define a macro for each term that you want to present this way, as follows:
```
\newcommand{\myword}{myword\footnote{stuff about myword}}
```
And whenever you would write `myword`, you write `\myword` instead.
Note that this has a slight capitalization issue, in that its case is fixed, regardless of use at the beginning of a sentence.
Please take my comment about this being a bad idea to heart, though.
| 3 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/60 | 244 | 167 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/80 | 562 | If you have a TeX'ed resume, did you use a template or make your own? Are there any useful packages? What looks the most professional? How about special considerations for different areas of work (e.g. in academia)?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/8 | LaTeX template for resume/curriculum vitae | false | I like [europass](https://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/europasscv) and everyone seems impressed when they see the results... specially for Europe applications!
| 49 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/146 | 245 | 168 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/232 | 89 | I imagine that many users are or were [PhD] students, so I would like to know: how do you use LaTeX to write a document (like the final dissertation) that requires many revisions from other people.
When I work with my professor, I usually send him a PDF generated by LaTeX and the source files. He then uses a process like such:
* Define some color for his commentaries or additions to the text
```
\usepackage{xcolor}
...
\define{\profSmith}[1]{{\color{red} #1}}
...
Lorem ipsum \profSmith{not very clever}
```
* He sends me his changes and I check his observations, marking my changes with another `\define`
* Repeat until everyone is satisfied
* For final versions comment defines and replace for `\define{\profSmith}[1]{#1}`
So yes, it is a bit cumbersome. I have tried margin notes, but space is limited and sometimes the professor's correction are inside some phrases or paragraphs.
I also thought about Version control differences (like svn, mercurial, etc), but my chances are low: everyone but me uses a one-liner for each paragraph. In consequence, I have a hard time checking these differences.
What do you guys [would] use in this case? Any other ideas or comments?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/146 | How can you use LaTeX to write a document with other people? | false | You can use a diff/merge tool to jump through each change made in a file and decide whether you want to accept that change or not. I personally use [diffmerge](http://www.sourcegear.com/diffmerge/) (which is free).
If the other users were to each access your source control system (or if you checked in Professor Smith's changes under an appropriate username), several source controls have a "blame" feature that allows you to identify who made a change to a file (based on who checked that version in).
| 7 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/147 | 247 | 169 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/240 | 2 | I wan to be able adding numbered footnotes for some words in my documents, but displaying them on the same page and not at the end of the document. Ho do I do that?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/62 | How do I add numbered footnotes on every page? | true | If I understand your edited question correctly, you're asking how to attach a footnote to a word and have the footnote display on the same page as the word. (Right?) The first thing I would say is that LaTeX generally does this by default, if you use the `\footnote{}` command. That is, writing the following in your LaTeX source
```
This is some text with a word\footnote{the footnote is attached to "word"}
and some more words
```
will produce a footnote that displays at the bottom of the page on which `word` appears.
If your footnotes are appearing at the end of the document instead, there must be some package or class you're using which causes that behavior. It may have an option to switch between footnotes and endnotes, but I couldn't tell you what that might be unless you provide more information (namely, your document preamble).
| 6 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/125 | 248 | 170 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/232 | 89 | I imagine that many users are or were [PhD] students, so I would like to know: how do you use LaTeX to write a document (like the final dissertation) that requires many revisions from other people.
When I work with my professor, I usually send him a PDF generated by LaTeX and the source files. He then uses a process like such:
* Define some color for his commentaries or additions to the text
```
\usepackage{xcolor}
...
\define{\profSmith}[1]{{\color{red} #1}}
...
Lorem ipsum \profSmith{not very clever}
```
* He sends me his changes and I check his observations, marking my changes with another `\define`
* Repeat until everyone is satisfied
* For final versions comment defines and replace for `\define{\profSmith}[1]{#1}`
So yes, it is a bit cumbersome. I have tried margin notes, but space is limited and sometimes the professor's correction are inside some phrases or paragraphs.
I also thought about Version control differences (like svn, mercurial, etc), but my chances are low: everyone but me uses a one-liner for each paragraph. In consequence, I have a hard time checking these differences.
What do you guys [would] use in this case? Any other ideas or comments?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/146 | How can you use LaTeX to write a document with other people? | true | I am using [todonotes](http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/todonotes/) with enlarged margins. You just enlarge the size of your document and one margin, but you keep the textwidth the same. You need to use the geometry package for that.
I actually wrote a [blogpost about it](http://empiricalev.blogspot.ca/2013/05/using-latex-todonotes-on-document-with.html).
A nice point about todonotes is that they are configurable (you can change the colour & background colour of your notes), that way you can define a `\todojim{}` command, a `\todojeff{}` command with different colour sets and you will know without any ambiguity who wrote the note.
Of course this would not be complete without a proper version control system. Pick your favourite!
| 45 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/10 | 249 | 171 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/246 | 1459 | There are two different commands to incorporate another file into the source of some document, `\input` and `\include`. When should I use one or the other? What are the differences between them? Are there more things like them to be aware of?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/60 | When should I use \input vs. \include? | true | **`\input{filename}`** imports the commands from `filename.tex` into the target file; it's equivalent to typing all the commands from `filename.tex` right into the current file where the `\input` line is.
**`\include{filename}`** essentially does a `\clearpage` before and after `\input{filename}`, together with some magic to switch to another `.aux` file, and omits the inclusion at all if you have an `\includeonly` without the filename in the argument. This is primarily useful when you have a big project on a slow computer; changing one of the include targets won't force you to regenerate the outputs of all the rest.
`\include{filename}` gets you the speed bonus, but it also can't be nested, can't appear in the preamble, and forces page breaks around the included text.
| 1336 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/29 | 250 | 172 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/246 | 1459 | There are two different commands to incorporate another file into the source of some document, `\input` and `\include`. When should I use one or the other? What are the differences between them? Are there more things like them to be aware of?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/60 | When should I use \input vs. \include? | false | From the [LaTeX Wikibook](http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Basics) :
>
> When working on big documents, you
> might want to split the input file
> into several parts. LaTeX has three
> commands to insert a file into another
> when building the document.
>
>
> The simplest is the `\input` command:
>
>
>
> ```
> \input{filename}
>
> ```
>
> `\input` inserts the contents of another
> file, named *filename.tex*; note that
> the .tex extension is omitted. For all
> practical purposes, `\input` is no more
> than a simple, automated cut-and-paste
> of the source code in *filename.tex*.
>
>
> The other main inclusion command is
> `\include`:
>
>
>
> ```
> \include{filename}
>
> ```
>
> The `\include` command is different from
> `\input` in that it's the output that is
> added instead of the commands from the
> other files. Therefore a new page will
> be created at every `\include` command,
> which makes it appropriate to use it
> for large entities such as book
> chapters.
>
>
> Very large documents (that usually
> include many files) take a very long
> time to compile, and most users find
> it convenient to test their last
> changes by including only the files
> they have been working on. One option
> is to hunt down all `\include` commands
> in the inclusion hierarchy and to
> comment them out:
>
>
>
> ```
> %\include{filename1}
>
> \include{filename2}
>
> \include{filename3}
>
> %\include{filename4}
>
> ```
>
> In this case, the user wants to
> include only *filename2.tex* and
> *filename3.tex*. If the inclusion
> hierarchy is intricate, commenting can
> become error-prone: page numbering
> will change, and any cross references
> won't work. A better alternative is to
> retain the include calls and use the
> `\includeonly` command in the preamble:
>
>
>
> ```
> \includeonly{filename2,filename3}
>
> ```
>
> This way, only `\include` commands for
> the specified files will be executed,
> and inclusion will be handled in only
> one place. Note that there must be no
> spaces between the filenames and the
> commas.
>
>
>
Also, you cannot do `\include` in an `\include`d document, so then just use `\input`.
| 86 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/10 | 251 | 173 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/246 | 1459 | There are two different commands to incorporate another file into the source of some document, `\input` and `\include`. When should I use one or the other? What are the differences between them? Are there more things like them to be aware of?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/60 | When should I use \input vs. \include? | false | `\input` effectively replaces the command with the contents of the input file. `\input`'s
can be nested. So, you can write:
```
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
AAA
\input{b}
AAA
\end{document}
```
where b.tex is:
```
BBB
\input{c}
BBB
```
and c.tex is:
```
CCC
```
to get output like:
```
AAA
BBB
CCC
BBB
AAA
```
`include` triggers a newpage both before and after the included material, rather as though you'd used an `\input` flanked by `\clearpage` commands. `include` also supports the `\includeonly` mechanism. So, the file:
```
\documentclass{article}
\includeonly{c}
\begin{document}
AAA
\include{b}
\include{c}
AAA
\end{document}
```
with `b.tex` and `c.tex` as before, will produce output with `AAA` on page one, `CCC` on page two, and `AAA` on page 3.
The `\include` and `\includeonly` pair is very useful for working on long documents: you can `\includeonly` the file which you are editing, and compilation is much faster. If you do two runs on the full file before using `\includeonly`, page numbers and cross-references will remain valid for the quicker `\includeonly` compilation.
| 111 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | 252 | 174 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/225 | 32 | There are many different kind of options that you can do in order to start using LaTeX on Ubuntu. I would prefer doing that through Eclipse, but if there is a better way of doing it, feel free to write your opinion on why using this instead of something else.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/62 | I want to start using LaTeX on Ubuntu. Where do I start? | false | If you're on ubuntu, then nothing like using XEmacs. Combined with the AUCTeX package, and reftex for handling citations. it's a dream to use, and is really the best IDE available. What it lacks is the nice latex support that Kile has, so I wouldn't recommend it if you're also trying to learn latex.
| 3 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/103 | 253 | 175 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/232 | 89 | I imagine that many users are or were [PhD] students, so I would like to know: how do you use LaTeX to write a document (like the final dissertation) that requires many revisions from other people.
When I work with my professor, I usually send him a PDF generated by LaTeX and the source files. He then uses a process like such:
* Define some color for his commentaries or additions to the text
```
\usepackage{xcolor}
...
\define{\profSmith}[1]{{\color{red} #1}}
...
Lorem ipsum \profSmith{not very clever}
```
* He sends me his changes and I check his observations, marking my changes with another `\define`
* Repeat until everyone is satisfied
* For final versions comment defines and replace for `\define{\profSmith}[1]{#1}`
So yes, it is a bit cumbersome. I have tried margin notes, but space is limited and sometimes the professor's correction are inside some phrases or paragraphs.
I also thought about Version control differences (like svn, mercurial, etc), but my chances are low: everyone but me uses a one-liner for each paragraph. In consequence, I have a hard time checking these differences.
What do you guys [would] use in this case? Any other ideas or comments?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/146 | How can you use LaTeX to write a document with other people? | false | Git has nifty options to do diffs like you want =)
<http://idnotfound.wordpress.com/2009/05/09/word-by-word-diffs-in-git/>
Also consider this tip to store preamble as a git submodule:
<http://markelikalderon.com/2008/07/31/keeping-your-latex-preamble-in-a-git-submodule/>
| 12 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/137 | 254 | 176 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/232 | 89 | I imagine that many users are or were [PhD] students, so I would like to know: how do you use LaTeX to write a document (like the final dissertation) that requires many revisions from other people.
When I work with my professor, I usually send him a PDF generated by LaTeX and the source files. He then uses a process like such:
* Define some color for his commentaries or additions to the text
```
\usepackage{xcolor}
...
\define{\profSmith}[1]{{\color{red} #1}}
...
Lorem ipsum \profSmith{not very clever}
```
* He sends me his changes and I check his observations, marking my changes with another `\define`
* Repeat until everyone is satisfied
* For final versions comment defines and replace for `\define{\profSmith}[1]{#1}`
So yes, it is a bit cumbersome. I have tried margin notes, but space is limited and sometimes the professor's correction are inside some phrases or paragraphs.
I also thought about Version control differences (like svn, mercurial, etc), but my chances are low: everyone but me uses a one-liner for each paragraph. In consequence, I have a hard time checking these differences.
What do you guys [would] use in this case? Any other ideas or comments?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/146 | How can you use LaTeX to write a document with other people? | false | I use `svn` to do version control (but I am the only one with access to the repository, so all I manually commit all edits sent to me via e-mail, with comments about who did what either included in the commit log or in the file itself as comments).
To see and merge differences, I just use `vimdiff`, which is the same as using the `diff` mode in the `vim` editor. This, however, requires prior knowledge on how to use `vim`.
| 2 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/119 | 255 | 177 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/233 | 8 | As [comprehensive](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/14/how-to-look-up-a-math-symbol) as the existing set of symbols is, it doesn't have *every possible* symbol that could exist, and it really takes the fun out of inventing a new symbol if you can't typeset it nicely.
One option I know of is "combining" existing symbols in some fashion, such as negative spaces. So I could write something like `m \gg\!\!= k`, but that technique has obvious limitations.
What's the best approach here? ("Stop making up new symbols for no good reason" is a valid answer.)
**Edit:** For a bit of context my actual interest is in nicer display for typeset source code, particularly making common operators written as multiple ASCII characters look more like a single symbol. This often results in symbols not otherwise used--but recognizable to other programmers--and for which the negative spacing technique suffices. As mentioned in a comment on vanden's answer, I was curious about the more general case.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/129 | Using custom symbols | false | I am trying hard to resist introducing a dontdothat tag :-)
While there genuinely are circumstances where a new symbol is needed, most areas seem to already have an embarrassment of riches. Inventing some new symbol ought be thought over long and hard, as doing so introduces a new barrier to communication.
I think we ought to be able to introduce new symbols in TeX and friends (we can), but that it ought be hard enough to discourage frivolous novelty.
If one really wants a new symbol and setting extant symbols on top of one another just won't do, that's what [METAFONT](http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/entries/metafont.html) is for.
| 5 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | 257 | 178 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/222 | 19 | There are at least two use cases where one might want to list items in a bibliography under separate subsections with different numbering conventions.
* a CV, where you'd like to list journal papers, conference papers, workshop papers, etc under different categories (often needed in academic settings);
* an annotated bibliography, where you might need different sections for different topics being covered.
What I'd like is a method that allows me to specify names of subsections, and for an added bonus, different numbering conventions for each subsection, and then will list `\cite`s in different sections as per my wishes.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/103 | How do I break up a bibliography into separately numbered sections? | false | I don't know that it will do all that you ask, but the [multibib](http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/entries/multibib.html) package will get you at least some of it.
| 6 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | 261 | 179 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/258 | 259 | What is the difference between the `\let` and `\def` commands in TeX/LaTeX?
Ideally please provide a simple example that will illustrate the difference between them.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/136 | What is the difference between \let and \def? | false | They're pretty completely different. `\let` copies a command to a new name, while `\def` creates a new command.
For example:
```
\def \foo {bar}
```
creates a new command `\foo`, that evaluates to `bar` when run.
```
\let \foo \bar
```
copies the commands from the `\bar` commands to the `\foo` command, so you can call either. Because it's a copy (and not a pointer from one to the other), redefining `\foo` won't change the behavior of `\baz`. Hence:
```
\def \foo {bar}
\let \baz \foo
\baz % Outputs 'bar'
\def \foo {new-definition}
\baz % Still outputs 'bar'
```
| 26 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/29 | 262 | 180 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/259 | 5 | I remember when I installed MiKTeX on my PC, I did it by clicking a series of links in a pdf document, which would run the various installer programs.
What (La)TeX commands were used to make that happen? How would I create a pdf with a link that, when clicked, will run `C:\path\program.exe` with command line arguments `-args`? Any differences for OSX/Linux?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/70 | How do I make links in my pdf to run other programs? | false | Potentially a high security risk, nonportable and may not work in many viewers.
Nonetheless, you are probably looking for hyperref, pdftex, pdfx & xmpincl.
The last one is the most complete package I know for including arbitrary XML/PDF stream objects in the pdf and the like.
Check your sample pdf, it was probably was made using Adobe products with ActionScript stuff. The above packages can do some advanced PDF features but I don't know exactly whether they can launch programs with arguments.
| 5 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/137 | 263 | 181 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/260 | 18 | I had evince, installed TexLive 2010 pretest (ubuntu lucid linx, fresh install). texdoc was using evince. Then I installed kubuntu ontop, and texdoc switched to okular. Now I've installed acroread and texdoc is using it now.
I want to globally set it to use evince. How do I do that? (tried all the environmental variables mentioned in the man page and no luck so far)
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/137 | How to set preferred PDF viewer for texdoc in TeXLive 2010 pretest. | true | If it hasn't changed since TeXLive 2009, you can set
```
viewer_pdf=evince
```
in the configuration file. To find out which file to put that in, run
```
texdoc -f
```
and you will see some output like this:
```
texdoc 0.61
Configuration files are:
absent /home/username/texmf/texdoc/texdoc-bin.cnf
(*) absent /home/username/texmf/texdoc/texdoc.cnf
absent /home/username/texmf/texdoc/texdoc-dist.cnf
absent /usr/local/share/texmf/texdoc/texdoc-bin.cnf
absent /usr/local/share/texmf/texdoc/texdoc.cnf
active /usr/share/texmf/texdoc/texdoc.cnf
(*) This is the recommended configuration file for your personal preferences.
```
Put the line in the filename marked by the `(*)`, creating it if necessary.
**EDIT:** To add to the above explanation: according to the documentation (and again, this is for TeXlive 2009), `texdoc` gets its configuration information from 5 sources.
1. Command-line options (irrelevant for this question, since there's no CL option to set the viewer app)
2. Environment variables ending with `_texdoc`. `PDFVIEWER_texdoc` is the one that controls the PDF viewer.
3. Other environment variables. For the PDF viewer app, these are
* `PDFVIEWER`
* `TEXDOCVIEW_pdf`
* `TEXDOC_VIEWER_PDF`The documentation isn't clear on which order they're checked in but `PDFVIEWER` is the preferred alternative so I'd expect it to take precedence over the others.
4. Values from configuration files, read in the order given by `texdoc -f`
5. Hard-coded defaults (system-dependent)
Again, this is all explained in the documentation, which can be accessed by running
```
texdoc texdoc
```
| 17 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/125 | 264 | 182 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/265 | 180 | How can I make text that is larger than the size of the output of `{\Huge ...}`?
I would like to be able to make text arbitrarily large (even if that is done by some suboptimal scaling routine).
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/136 | Fonts larger than \Huge? | false | In XeTeX (using fontspec) you can use system fonts many of which have a "Scale" attribute you can set to a large number. For instance, in one document I have this line for a largeish Japanese font:
```
\newfontinstance\bigkanafont[Color=000000,Scale=2.5]{Hiragino Mincho Pro W3}
```
| 17 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/18 | 266 | 183 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/265 | 180 | How can I make text that is larger than the size of the output of `{\Huge ...}`?
I would like to be able to make text arbitrarily large (even if that is done by some suboptimal scaling routine).
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/136 | Fonts larger than \Huge? | false | According to <http://www.mostlymaths.net/2009/03/big-fonts-in-latex.html>, you can use the [`fix-cm`](http://tug.ctan.org/cgi-bin/ctanPackageInformation.py?id=fix-cm) package to get arbitrary-size fonts. In fact, [searching CTAN for `fix-cm`](http://www.ctan.org/cgi-bin/search.py?metadataSearch=fix-cm) seems to give a few different packages that provide this functionality. I've never used any of them myself so I couldn't tell you which ones might work or not, but it shouldn't be hard to try them.
| 8 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/125 | 267 | 184 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/265 | 180 | How can I make text that is larger than the size of the output of `{\Huge ...}`?
I would like to be able to make text arbitrarily large (even if that is done by some suboptimal scaling routine).
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/136 | Fonts larger than \Huge? | true | You can use the [Memoir document class](http://ctan.org/pkg/memoir). It provides two things that are relevant to your question:
### More Base Font Sizes
---
The standard LaTeX document classes only allow you to choose 10pt, 11pt or 12point as the "base" font size for your document. Memoir provides many more choices: 9pt, 10pt, 11pt, 12pt, 14pt, 17pt, 20pt, 25pt, 30pt, 36pt, 48pt and 60pt. Since all font size declarations are affected by the base font size, using a bigger base font size will make `\Huge` render in a bigger font.
### The \HUGE Font Size
---
For when it absolutely has to be bigger than `\Huge`, crank it to 11 with `\HUGE`.
| 137 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/17 | 269 | 185 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/268 | 151 | When trying to write an e-mail address, there are always problems with the @ sign.
Solutions I've seen suggested are using some verbatim environment (more difficult in footnotes) and using a math-mode @.
What is *the* correct way to do this?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/135 | What's the best way to write e-mail addresses? | false | There are a number of things that you can try:
(with the hyperref package):
>
> \url{email address}
>
>
>
or more simply (for monospace font):
>
> \texttt{email address}
>
>
>
| 1 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/23 | 270 | 186 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/268 | 151 | When trying to write an e-mail address, there are always problems with the @ sign.
Solutions I've seen suggested are using some verbatim environment (more difficult in footnotes) and using a math-mode @.
What is *the* correct way to do this?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/135 | What's the best way to write e-mail addresses? | false | I don't think that there is a unique correct way to handle this. As another answer says, you can use hyperref. But, the [url](http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/entries/url.html) package can also be used to render email addresses:
```
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{url}
\begin{document}
\url{me@example.com}
\end{document}
```
| 3 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | 271 | 187 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/272 | 94 | How can I make things link url references, my index, table of contents, and cross references clickable links in documents produced by LaTeX? I generally use pdflatex to produce my documents.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | How to make clickable links and cross-references in pdfs produced by LaTeX? | true | The [hyperref package](https://texdoc.org/serve/hyperref/1) does all of these things. you may need to include it with options like backlinks`backref` to get back references, but it does everything you need.
| 91 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/103 | 273 | 188 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/268 | 151 | When trying to write an e-mail address, there are always problems with the @ sign.
Solutions I've seen suggested are using some verbatim environment (more difficult in footnotes) and using a math-mode @.
What is *the* correct way to do this?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/135 | What's the best way to write e-mail addresses? | true | Another thing one can to with the [hyperref](http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/entries/hyperref.html) package is to use the `href` command
```
\href{mailto:me@example.com}{me@example.com}
```
which has the advantage that when clicked-on in an electronic document, it will (ideally) call up the mailer and cue up the e-mail address.
| 167 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/119 | 276 | 189 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/274 | 62 | I need to use a minipage environment and I need a footnote in that minipage. I want the footnote to be numbered in the normal footnote sequence and to occur together with the rest of the footnotes in my document. But, as this minimal example shows:
```
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Spam
\begin{minipage}{.5\linewidth}
Foo\footnote{bar}
\end{minipage}
Ham
\end{document}
```
the obvious thing produces a footnote that 1) appears at the bottom of the minipage, and not the page itself, and 2) is "numbered" alphabetically.
How can I get a regular footnote in a minipage?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | Can I get a normal footnote in a minipage environment in LaTeX? How? | true | You should use the `footnotemark` and `footnotetext` commands to artificially insert the mark and text.
Modifying your MWE, we have
```
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Test\footnote{First footnote}
\begin{minipage}{.2\linewidth}
Test with a bit more text to show that it really is a minipage\footnotemark
Here is an internal footnote\footnote{Internal footnote}
\end{minipage}
\footnotetext{Second footnote}
Ham
\end{document}
```
which produces
| 54 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/119 | 277 | 190 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/279 | 214 | Often floats may land quite a bit later in the document than the point they are created, sometimes after a section break.
Is there a way to force a new section to start on a new page, after any unplaced floats?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/77 | How do I ensure that figures appear in the section they're associated with? | false | The command `\clearpage` will not only start a new page, but will also force any unset floats to be set before the page break. For documents with a left and a right page, `\cleardoublepage` does the same, but also ensures that the next non-blank page is a right hand page.
This is all independent of the section break, save that if you are using a class that does not put a page break before section breaks, this method will force them. But, from your question, this doesn't seem to be a problem in your case.
| 70 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | 281 | 191 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/279 | 214 | Often floats may land quite a bit later in the document than the point they are created, sometimes after a section break.
Is there a way to force a new section to start on a new page, after any unplaced floats?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/77 | How do I ensure that figures appear in the section they're associated with? | true | Use the [`placeins`](http://www.ctan.org/pkg/placeins) package.
As noted in the comments, you can use
```
\usepackage[section]{placeins}
```
to automatically ensure floats do not go into the next section.
The package also gives you a `\FloatBarrier` command that you can use to prevent floats to appear beyond some point in your document. Use it as
```
% ... some floats here ...
\FloatBarrier
\subsection{My new subsection}
```
| 238 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/143 | 282 | 192 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/48 | 44 | The preambles of my LaTeX documents often include many many lines of `\DeclareMathOperator` instructions, e.g.
```
\DeclareMathOperator{\Rep}{Rep}
\DeclareMathOperator{\Tet}{Tet}
\DeclareMathOperator{\Maps}{Maps}
\DeclareMathOperator{\Diff}{Diff}
```
Is there a nice way to *map* some macro over a list, so I could do this more concisely, and with less copying and pasting when I add a new math operator?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/77 | How can I specify a long list of math operators? | false | E.g.
```
\def\deflist#1{\ifx#1\stop\let\next=\kill\else\let\next=\parse\fi\next{#1}}
\def\kill#1{\relax}
\def\parse#1#2{\newcommand{#1}{\operatorname{#2}}\deflist}
\deflist
\holim{holim}
\hocolim{hocolim}
\stop
```
works (although I can't recommend using such tricks).
| 1 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/85 | 283 | 193 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/280 | 13 | In my field of work, mathematical operators that live on reduced dimensions are customarily defined as the normal one with a slash through it. For example, the gradient is usually written as `\nabla`, and if we restrict the gradient to the surface of a sphere, we usually denote it by the same symbol with a slash through it.
One way to produce a similar effect is to (ab)use the `\not` command. But as it is really built for binary relations, the slashes that it produces looks weirdly off-centre when applied to objects that are not binary relations.
Is there a better way to get slashes through arbitrary symbols?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/119 | Slashed symbols | true | There is a package to do this, appropriately called [slashed](http://www.ctan.org/pkg/slashed).
| 14 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/125 | 284 | 194 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/275 | 62 | Sometimes I find that floats don't fit nicely on a page, so I use
```
\resizebox{\textwidth}{!}{ <blah blah blah> }
```
so that the borders match the margins. However, I'm now working on a paper in two-column format (specifically using [`sigplanconf.cls`](https://www.sigplan.org/Resources/LaTeXClassFile/)) and if I use the above command, it stretches the table over both columns.
Is there a way I can find the "proper" `\textwidth`? As in, a variable that describes the width of a single column.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/154 | How to find the \textwidth in two-column mode? | true | Try `\columnwidth` as a drop-in replacement for `\textwidth`.
| 69 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/125 | 285 | 195 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/204 | 33 | The most obvious way to speed up LaTeX processing is to split a large and complex document into smaller pieces. For example, Makefiles, `\beginpgfgraphicnamed`/`\endpgfgraphicnamed` when using TiKZ, and splitting a large file into separate chapters are all helpful in splitting a large job into smaller, hopefully independent pieces. But sometimes this is not enough -- many packages do complicated things under the hood, leading to slow document processing.
>
> Are there any tools to help isolate
> the culprits?
>
>
>
It would be great to also have the profiling tool provide suggestions on ways to speed things up.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/132 | Are there LaTeX performance profiling tools? | true | Perhaps not quite what you're after, but the trace package is used by the LaTeX Project to get a feel for the 'cost' of different things. This package lets you include every TeX expansion and assignment in the log file. So you can check how many lines a particular function adds to the log, which gives you an idea of how hard TeX is working to do whatever you've asked for. Other than that, the approach I take is to create simple test files (say one with a loop to repeat one function many times), then use 'time' at the command line to see what changes as I alter the input.
| 15 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/73 | 287 | 196 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/226 | 100 | One of the annoying aspects of LaTeX is the limited number of fonts that come by default, and the pain involved in making new fonts 'LaTeX' ready. I have a collection of truetype fonts that I'd like to prepare for use, and I definitely want to make sure I have vector versions of these fonts (i.e not type 3/bitmapped versions). Is there a relatively painless way to do this ?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/103 | Installing TTF fonts in LaTeX | false | LuaTeX brings TTF-support, but I have no Idea how mature it is right now.
| 2 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/97 | 288 | 197 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/286 | 35 | I want to use LaTeX for exam and assignment papers for a class that I am teaching. I obviously could just do the whole thing myself. But, what alternatives are there for easily typesetting such documents? Ideally, the solution would handle points (providing a total) or percentage values (ensuring they sum to 100), multi-part questions, optionally provide space for answers, and allow for all of fill in the blanks, multiple choice, and straight-up questions.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/93 | How can I typeset an exam or assignment paper? | true | Check out the [exam document class](https://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/exam/); it does all that and more!
I've also had great success using it for homeworks and such (both as an instructor and as a student).
---
Here's an example exam created with the package:
The corresponding code:
```
\documentclass[addpoints]{exam}
\firstpageheader{subject name, class name}{First Exam}{October 25, 2019}
\firstpagefooter{}{}{Page \thepage\ of \numpages}
% Lower the footer a bit
\extrafootheight{-.8in}
% Define how bonus points are labelled
\bonuspointpoints{bonus point}{bonus points}
\begin{document}
\begin{center}
\fbox{\fbox{\parbox{5.5in}{\centering
Answer the questions in the spaces provided on the page. If you run out of room for an answer, continue on the back of the page.
}}}
\end{center}
\vspace{.1in}
\makebox[\textwidth]{Your name:\enspace\hrulefill}
\vspace{.2in}
\begin{questions}
\question[10]
Why is there air?
\vspace{.8in}
\question[15]
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
\vspace{.5in}
\begin{parts}
\bonuspart[5]
How many seashells does she sell by the seashore?
\vspace{.5in}
\end{parts}
\question[10]
Compute $\displaystyle\int_0^1 x^2 \, dx$.
\vspace{\stretch{1}}
\bonusquestion[10]
Prove this: $A \land (B \lor C) \equiv (A \land B) \lor (A \land C)$
\end{questions}
% Put the grade table at the bottom of the page
\vspace*{\fill}
\begin{center}
\combinedgradetable[h]
\end{center}
\end{document}
```
Here are some resources on the `exam` package:
* [Overleaf](https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Typesetting%20exams%20in%20LaTeX)
* [Paul-Scherrer-Institut](https://sharelatex.psi.ch/learn/Typing_exams_in_LaTeX)
| 40 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/92 | 290 | 198 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/232 | 89 | I imagine that many users are or were [PhD] students, so I would like to know: how do you use LaTeX to write a document (like the final dissertation) that requires many revisions from other people.
When I work with my professor, I usually send him a PDF generated by LaTeX and the source files. He then uses a process like such:
* Define some color for his commentaries or additions to the text
```
\usepackage{xcolor}
...
\define{\profSmith}[1]{{\color{red} #1}}
...
Lorem ipsum \profSmith{not very clever}
```
* He sends me his changes and I check his observations, marking my changes with another `\define`
* Repeat until everyone is satisfied
* For final versions comment defines and replace for `\define{\profSmith}[1]{#1}`
So yes, it is a bit cumbersome. I have tried margin notes, but space is limited and sometimes the professor's correction are inside some phrases or paragraphs.
I also thought about Version control differences (like svn, mercurial, etc), but my chances are low: everyone but me uses a one-liner for each paragraph. In consequence, I have a hard time checking these differences.
What do you guys [would] use in this case? Any other ideas or comments?
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/146 | How can you use LaTeX to write a document with other people? | false | I usually use [Dropbox](https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTIxNzUxNzg5 "Dropbox") to manage files, using comments in the code to specify changes and notes, though the collaboration is usually done somewhat synchronously, with communication in some other form (IM, talking IRL, etc.) to help co-ordinate who is doing what...
| 7 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/92 | 292 | 199 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/167 | 28 | Every now and then I use the description list environment
```
\begin{description}
\item[foo] foo is good
\item[bar] bar is bad
\end{description}
```
to create lists with non-numerical labels. Unfortunately the description list does not support the label-reference pair as normal latex: i.e. if I write
```
\begin{description}
\item[foo] \label{foo} foo is good
....
\end{description}
....
For good things (see, for example \ref{foo})...
```
the reference does not point to the item in the list. Instead it points to the closest environment that supports labeling (usually the subsection). So instead of showing the text foo (in boldface), it shows something like 2.2.1 (the subsection corresponding to where the description environment is sitting).
My question: is there a way or a package which allows references to description list items? My current work-around is to just type the text myself in the spot (since I named it myself, and it is not numbered, the formatting is unlikely to change the label =). But one of the good things about the label/reference pairs in latex is the implementation in pdflatex that allows in PDF hyperlinks between references and the objects referred to, this I cannot replicate myself.
**Edit**: let me rephrase my question. The primary goal is *not* to display `\ref` to something other than what LaTeX thinks the `\label` is. There are many ways to deal with it, some of which outlined in Michael Underwood's helpful answer below. What I am looking at is whether there exists an implementation of a list environment which is like the built-in `description` environment in that the displayed "title" for the list item is completely customized, while having support for `\label`s. (The built-in `description` environment does not support `\label`s, whereas the built-in `enumerate` environment does not support customized "title"s.) The `enumitem` package adds some customizability to the environments, but as far as I can tell it doesn't support exactly what I want.
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/119 | How to cross-reference items in description lists? | true | I don't know of a pre-built package that allows you to do this, but if I correctly understand what you're after then it is achievable by combining a counter with custom commands and the `hyperref` package. The first step is to create a new counter for the described items, and a pair of new commands to use in place of `\item` and `\ref`. In the preamble, put the following:
```
\newcounter{desccount}
\newcommand{\descitem}[1]{%
\item[#1] \refstepcounter{desccount}\label{#1}
}
\newcommand{\descref}[1]{\hyperref[#1]{#1}}
```
The new command `\descitem` is to be used in place of `\item` within a `description` environment. It takes a single argument and creates an item labeled with it. It also increments the new counter, sets it as the current value for the `\ref` command, and labels the location with the item's descriptor. The new command `\descref` takes the same argument and makes a hyperlink reference to the label, displaying the argument instead of the counter's value.
The commands work together like this:
```
\begin{description}
\descitem{foo} foo is good
\descitem{bar} bar is bad
\end{description}
...
For good things (see, for example \descref{foo})...
```
| 26 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/32 | 293 | 200 |
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/278 | 48 | The commands `\clap`, `\llap` and `\rlap` are useful "horizontal" analogues of `\smash`: they reduce the horizontal width of a box to zero, aligning the box with either the middle, left or right of the typeset contents. Unfortunately they don't work in math mode.
>
> Can someone suggest a math mode macro that has the effect of `\clap` and friends?
>
>
>
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/77 | Can I use \clap, \rlap and \llap in math mode? | false | I don't know if they are implemented in a specific package (search CTAN), but there's an article in TUGBoat, (TUGboat 22 (2001), 350–352.) that gives an implementation. Here's the article on the author's website:
<http://math.arizona.edu/~aprl/publications/mathclap/>
I suspect that anyone putting this in a package would have used the same names, or at least referred to this article, so searching on CTAN for the command names used there would be a reasonable thing to do.
(Breadcrumb trail: I first learnt of this via [this blog post](http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/itex2MMLcommands.html) about these commands in iTeX.)
(I'm feeling generous: I just tried the obvious searches on CTAN and nothing came up; so based on that, you should copy the definitions from that article.)
| 13 | https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/86 | 294 | 201 |
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