Rob's LaTeX Page

Rob's favorite links to all things LaTeX.

Basic Documentation

Getting the Software

There are many sources for LaTeX, almost all of them free. Here are some I, or people I respect, have used:

BibTex

Graphics, Equations, and the WWW

Support tools for LaTeX

Tips and Tricks

PdfLaTeX

I have not used classix LateX in years but rather pdfLaTeX. The advantages include:

Citation commands

Things have changed recently so that it is now easier to control how citations appear in the document. To get some control over citations, use the cite.sty package (i.e.,

 \usepackage{cite}
To have citation numbers appear as superscripts, change this to be
  \usepackage[super]{cite}
and that may be all you ever need to know. For more info, read the cite.sty file.

San Serrif fonts for grant applications

With the requirement of many granting agencies to submit applications using a san serrif font like Helvetica or Arial, there are several tricks in LaTeX.

Mine looks like this and gives an 11-point like font that NIH has accepted without problem on several occasions.

   \usepackage{times}
   % This command somehow makes Helvetica fonts
   \renewcommand\rmdefault{phv}

Typsetting Units

To get complex units to look good needs some math mode but without the math fonts, which requires the use of
\mathrm
, for example
   $\mathrm{\mu A / cm ^ 2}$
creates "micro-Amps per cm squared" with the correct fonts.

Wrapping Text around figures and other space saving tricks

LaTeX is not always efficient in the way it uses space on a page, sometimes leaving large white spaces and big gaps between elements of the document. There are several packages that support text wrapping and other tricks to getting better use of page space in LaTeX. Here are some pointers to a few.

Underlining

LaTeX folks (at least Leslie Lamport) seem to frown on the use of underlining but if you do like to use it, the package ulem.sty is your friend. With \usepackage{ulem}, you have the following new commands: Note that this package changes \em and \emph to be underline. To change this behavior back to normal, use the \normalem command, for example
\usepackage{ulem}
\normalem

Setting up Auctex

Getting and setting up Auctex is easy, either for a sysadmin type or a mere mortal. If you do not have local support, here are the steps:

  1. Go to here and get the latest stable version (who needs to live dangerously when writing is already hard enough)
  2. Put the folder in your local emacs lisp folder, typically something like ~/emacs/lisp
  3. Read the INSTALLATION file, where you will find the commands
    make
    make lispdir=$HOME/emacs/lisp install
  4. The nasty part of installing this yourself is the need to put the info files somewhere and set up your own info directory. You can ignore this and just read the PDF version of the manual I have prepared.
  5. Add the following lines to your .emacs file:
    (setq load-path (cons "~/emacs/lisp" load-path))
    (require 'tex-site)
    (setq TeX-auto-save t)
    (setq TeX-parse-self t)
    (setq-default TeX-master nil)
    (setq LaTeX-indent-level 4)
    (setq LaTeX-item-indent -2)

    Note: the first 2 lines are required; the rest are some useful settings you can alter at will.

  6. Run emacs on your latest LaTeX document and have a real blast!

Colourization of Emacs text

One of the mysteries of Emacs version 21 is how to set up colors for the different elements of a document. This used to happen with highlight packages but now it is built in and hence more powerful and sometimes more difficult to use. Here are some points to note in fumbling around with this feature.


Last modified: Sun Feb 6 13:09:14 MST 2005