Book Image

LaTeX Cookbook

By : Stefan Kottwitz
Book Image

LaTeX Cookbook

By: Stefan Kottwitz

Overview of this book

LaTeX is a high-quality typesetting software and is very popular, especially among scientists. Its programming language gives you full control over every aspect of your documents, no matter how complex they are. LaTeX's huge amount of customizable templates and supporting packages cover most aspects of writing with embedded typographic expertise. With this book you will learn to leverage the capabilities of the latest document classes and explore the functionalities of the newest packages. The book starts with examples of common document types. It provides you with samples for tuning text design, using fonts, embedding images, and creating legible tables. Common document parts such as the bibliography, glossary, and index are covered, with LaTeX's modern approach.You will learn how to create excellent graphics directly within LaTeX, including diagrams and plots quickly and easily. Finally, you will discover how to use the new engines XeTeX and LuaTeX for advanced programming and calculating with LaTeX. The example-driven approach of this book is sure to increase your productivity.

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LaTeX Cookbook
Stefan Kottwitz
Oct, 2015 | 378 pages
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Table of Contents (19 chapters)
LaTeX Cookbook
LaTeX Cookbook
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
The Variety of Document Types
The Variety of Document Types
Introduction
Writing a short text
Writing a thesis
Designing a book
Creating a presentation
Designing a curriculum vitae
Writing a letter
Producing a leaflet
Creating a large poster
2
Tuning the Text
Tuning the Text
Introduction
Inputting accented characters
Improving justification and hyphenation
Converting numbers to words
Putting text into a colorful box
Visualizing the layout
Visualizing boxes of letters and symbols
Typesetting in a grid
Absolute positioning of text
Starting a paragraph with an over-sized letter
Fitting text to a shape
Creating a pull quote
3
Adjusting Fonts
Adjusting Fonts
Introduction
Choosing a font for a document
Locally switching to a different font
Importing just a single symbol from a font family
Writing bold mathematical symbols
Getting the sans serif mathematics font
Writing double stroke letters as if on a blackboard
Enabling the searching and copying of ligatures
Suppressing ligatures
Adding a contour
4
Working with Images
Working with Images
Introduction
Including images with optimal quality
Automating image positioning
Manipulating images
Adding a frame to an image
Cutting an image to get rounded corners
Shaping an image like a circle
Drawing over an image
Aligning images
Arranging images in a grid
Stacking images
5
Beautiful Designs
Beautiful Designs
Introduction
Adding a background image
Creating beautiful ornaments
Preparing pretty headings
Producing a calendar
Mimicking keys and menu items
6
Designing Tables
Designing Tables
Introduction
Creating a legible table
Adding footnotes to a table
Aligning numeric data
Coloring a table
Merging cells
Splitting a cell diagonally
Adding shape, shading, and transparency
Importing data from files
7
Contents, Indexes, and Bibliographies
Contents, Indexes, and Bibliographies
Introduction
Tuning a table of contents, lists of figures, and tables
Creating a bibliography
Adding a glossary
Creating a list of acronyms
Producing an index
8
Getting the Most out of the PDF
Getting the Most out of the PDF
Introduction
Adding hyperlinks
Adding metadata
Adding copyright information
Inserting comments
Producing fillable forms
Optimizing the output for e-book readers
Removing white margins
Combining PDF files
Creating an animation
9
Creating Graphics
Creating Graphics
Introduction
Building smart diagrams
Constructing a flowchart
Building a tree
Building a bar chart
Drawing a pie chart
Drawing a Venn diagram
Putting thoughts in a mind map
Generating a timeline
10
Advanced Mathematics
Advanced Mathematics
Introduction
Quick-start for beginners
Fine-tuning math formulas
Automatic line-breaking in equations
Highlighting in a formula
Stating definitions and theorems
Drawing commutative diagrams
Plotting functions in two dimensions
Plotting in three dimensions
Drawing geometry pictures
Doing calculations
11
Science and Technology
Science and Technology
Introduction
Typesetting an algorithm
Printing a code listing
Application in graph theory
Writing physical quantities with units
Writing chemical formulae
Drawing molecules
Representing atoms
Drawing electrical circuits
12
Getting Support on the Internet
Getting Support on the Internet
Introduction
Exploring online LaTeX resources
Using web forums
Framing a really good question
Creating a minimal example
Index
Index

Doing calculations

Besides writing math, sometimes it's useful to actually calculate something.

We have several options:

  • The calc package offers basic math with LaTeX, with lengths and counters

  • The fp package provides fixed point arithmetic with high precision

  • The pgfmath package belongs to the PGF/TikZ package and provides many functions and a good parser

  • LuaLaTeX is a version of LaTeX which allows programming calculation in the programming language Lua

Here, let's work with the pgfmath package, as we already worked with TikZ, and it's better documented than the other options.

How to do it...

Follow these steps:

  1. Start a document, load the tikz package, and begin your document without indentation at the beginning:

    \documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}
\noindent

  2. In your text, use the \pgfmathparse command for calculating and the \pgfmathresult command for printing:

    In a right-angled triangle the two shortest sides
got widths of 3 and 7, respectively. The longest side has a
width...
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