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)

Optimizing PDF Files

Initially, LaTeX produced output in DVI format. This stands for device independent file. It is still supported; however, today there are newer page description languages, such as PostScript (PS) and the widely favored Portable Document Format (PDF).

There are converters from DVI to PS, PS to PDF, and DVI to PDF. A modern TeX compiler, called pdfTeX, can directly generate PDF output. Combined with the LaTeX format, this is called pdfLaTeX, and it’s pretty much the standard today.

In this chapter, we will use LaTeX to utilize the features of the PDF format. We will cover recipes for the following tasks:

  • Using hyperlinks
  • Adding metadata
  • Including copyright information
  • Inserting comments
  • Producing fillable forms
  • Optimizing the output for e-book readers
  • Removing white margins
  • Combining PDF files
  • Creating an animation