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

Inputting accented characters


By default, LaTeX works with simple ASCII characters. For accented characters, such as in the German word "schön", you need to type sch\"on into your editor. The babel command with the ngerman option simplifies the syntax to sch"on. But there is an easier way.

How to do it...

We will activate extended input character support as follows:

  1. Check your editor's configuration and find out its input encoding setting. utf8 (UTF-8 means Unicode) is standard for Linux, Mac OS X, and some Windows editors. However, some Windows editors still work with latin1 or cp1250/cp1252, while some older Macs use applemac.

  2. Load the inputenc package with the corresponding option, like so:

    \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
  3. Now you can directly type characters such as a, ü, ö, é, and è in to your document.

Tip

If you need help with editor settings, you can post a question in the forum at http://latex-community.org/forum/. This web site provides support forums for various LaTeX editors.

How it works...