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.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
LaTeX Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Creating a legible table


When we learn to write tables with LaTeX, we get to know how to write in rows and columns, and how to draw lines between cells and borders around the table. Though, using all borders can result in such a table:

Such a habit may result from using WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) software such as Excel or Word to write tables. However, while such a grid is useful for entering data, it makes reading really difficult.

In good books, we can find more legible tables. Let's take a look at how to create one.

How to do it...

We will use the booktabs package, which has been written with good design in mind. Specifically, it enhances lines in tables. It focuses on horizontal lines with improved spacing and adjustable thickness.

For our example, we will sketch a table that shows the availability of certain structuring features in LaTeX's base classes. Here's how to do this:

  1. Specify the class. You could simply use the article class for now:

    \documentclass{article}
  2. Load the booktabs...