Package listings doesn't work

Question

I'm trying to understand how to use listings.

In the preamble I have:

\usepackage {listings}

Inside my document I wrote:

\begin{lstlisting}
for i:=maxint to 0 do
begin
{ nothing !}
end;
write(’Welcome !’);
\end{lstlisting}

It all doesn't work. I'm wondering why.

MWE :

\documentclass[a4paper,singleside,11pt]{report} 
\usepackage{ia_urb_thesis} 
\usepackage[italian]{babel} 
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc} 
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc} 
\usepackage{graphicx} 
\titolo{xxxxxx... \[5mm] } 
\candidato{io} 
\relatore{Chiar.mo Prof.~A} 
\annoaccademico{2011-2012} 
\copertinatesi \dedica{Ai miei genitori} 
\indice \indicefigure \indicetabelle \iniziatesto 
\include{cap_1} 
\include{cap_2} 
\appendix 
\include{app_a} 
\include{biblio} 
\ringraziamenti Vorrei ringraziare ... 
\end{document}

Answer 1

Try the following MWE (in this form it is compilable without errors):

%http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/85260/package-listings-doesnt-work
\documentclass[a4paper,singleside,11pt]{report} 
\usepackage[italian]{babel} 
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} % utf8
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc} 
\usepackage{xcolor}

\usepackage {listings}

%configurating listings:
\lstset{language=Pascal,             % Language in Listing
  basicstyle=\normalfont\ttfamily,   % generall style for listing
  commentstyle=\ttfamily,            % type writer font for comments
  stringstyle=\rmfamily,             % normal font for strings
  showstringspaces=true,             % shows blanks in strings
  breaklines=true,                   % allows breaking of lines
  frameround=ffff,                   % see manual
  frame=lines,                       % see manual
  backgroundcolor=\color{yellow},    % just to show
} 

\begin{document}
Inside my document I wrote:
\begin{lstlisting}
for i:=maxint to 0 do
begin
{ nothing !}
end;
write('Welcome !');
\end{lstlisting}
\end{document}

I corrected the line with the welcome as mentioned in my comment to get a runable MWE. I also deleted all not nececcary for a MWE to give you a start point. Perhaps your thesis package causes errors ...

Update: I added a part (see macro lstset) to configure listings. Have please a look on the comments I inserted in the MWE. With texdoc listings on the command line you can read the manual (very useful :-). You can use predefined languages (here Pascal), you can define the used fonts for the complete listings (here \ttfamily) and so on. To configure your listing please have a look into the manual.

Answer 2

I found an external link to ia_urb_thesis. It is a google code project.

It seems there are a lot of things wrong/missing in your example.

Firstly, there is no \begin{document} in your example.

Secondly,

\titolo{<>} 
\candidato{<>} 
\relatore{<>} 
\annoaccademico{<>} 
\copertinatesi 
\dedica{<>} 
\indice 
\indicefigure 
\indicetabelle 
\iniziatesto 

must go after \begin{document}.

Thirdly, the \[ in \titolo{xxxxxx... \[5mm] } puts the succeeding code into math environment. You can change it into \\[5mm] for vertical spacing but I doubt that it will do you any good. You should just write \titolo{xxxxxx...} as it is.

The character ’ throws errors around but if you replace it with ' it works fine even with latin1 input. I don't know what you use that encoding for. But generally, you can get by with utf8.

Here is the code. You can use Kurt's modification of the lstlistings environment or use your own fancier one.

Here is the code.

\documentclass[a4paper,singleside,11pt]{report} 
\usepackage{ia_urb_thesis} 
\usepackage[italian]{babel} 
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc} 
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc} 
\usepackage{graphicx} 
\usepackage{listings}
\lstset{language=Pascal}
\begin{document}
\titolo{xxxxxx} 
\candidato{io} 
\relatore{Chiar.mo Prof.~A} 
\annoaccademico{2011-2012} 
\copertinatesi \dedica{Ai miei genitori} 
\indice \indicefigure \indicetabelle \iniziatesto 
\begin{lstlisting}
for i:=maxint to 0 do
begin
{ nothing !}
end;
write(`Welcome !');
\end{lstlisting}
\end{document}

Here is the output.