Book Image

LaTeX Cookbook - Second Edition

By : Stefan Kottwitz
Book Image

LaTeX Cookbook - Second Edition

By: Stefan Kottwitz

Overview of this book

The second edition of LaTeX Cookbook offers improved and additional examples especially for users in science and academia, with a focus on new packages for creating graphics with LaTeX. This edition also features an additional chapter on ChatGPT use to improve content, streamline code, and automate tasks, thereby saving time. This book is a practical guide to utilizing the capabilities of modern document classes and exploring the functionalities of the newest LaTeX packages. Starting with familiar document types like articles, books, letters, posters, leaflets, and presentations, it contains detailed tutorials for refining text design, adjusting fonts, managing images, creating tables, and optimizing PDFs. It also covers elements such as the bibliography, glossary, and index. You’ll learn to create graphics directly within LaTeX, including diagrams and plots, and explore LaTeX’s application across various fields like mathematics, physics, chemistry, and computer science. The book’s website offers online compilable code, an example gallery, and supplementary information related to the book, including the author’s LaTeX forum, where you can get personal support. By the end of this book, you’ll have the skills to optimize productivity through practical demonstrations of effective LaTeX usage in diverse scenarios.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)

Constructing a flowchart

We used predefined chart types in the prior recipe, Building smart diagrams. If greater flexibility is required, creating custom diagrams from scratch is a viable option. Doing this is simple, and it’s an excellent way to develop your skills in drawing with TikZ.

Just as we observed in the descriptive diagram from the first recipe, we’ll do the following:

  1. Define shapes and colors.
  2. Place nodes using a matrix.
  3. Insert labeled arrows between selected nodes.

Of course, the actions of each step can be adjusted as needed. It’s common to position nodes and arrows initially and later refine the shapes and colors.

Now, let’s dive into it. Follow the following steps, and refer to the graphical output to understand the purpose of each drawing task.

  1. Start with a document class:
    \documentclass{article}
  2. Load the geometry package, and specify a vertical margin so that our long chart will fit the page:
    \usepackage...