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 minimal example


The best way to get help from someone is by handing the problem to them on a silver platter. They'll have no need to ask for further details and no need to guess, and the work won't be too boring. Describe the problem with a code example that meets these criteria:

  • It should be complete, so we can try to compile it

  • It should actually show the problem

  • It should be as small as possible

This usually makes the problem easy to solve. It's handy enough for posting in a forum and the readers can easily try it out.

How to do it...

A good strategy is "divide and conquer". This refers to a technique of solving a problem by splitting it recursively into smaller problems until just simple problems remain. In our case, we repeatedly divide and simplify until we narrow it down, so we see the solution ourselves or cannot simplify it anymore, so it's ready to be shown to others.

Follow these steps to isolate the cause of a problem:

  1. Create a copy of your document. If it consists of several...