A "best practice" is a technique or approach that TeXnicians recognize as giving better results than other approaches.
30
votes
7answers
856 views
Should I place \title, \author, \date in the preamble or after \begin{document}?
The motivation for this question
Forgive me if this looks very basic to you but nobody has pointed out to me yet until now in a comment to a question that the \title command (and thus the other two ...
27
votes
3answers
909 views
What is the difference of \mathop, \operatorname and \DeclareMathOperator?
One sees all kind of versions in source files for defining something like a limit etc. So my question is which one serves what purpose. Is there any "best practice" in chosing one over the other?
10
votes
1answer
152 views
What are best practices for package authors to deal with package conflicts?
One occasionally encountered problem with LaTeX is incompatibility between packages. What are best practices for package authors to deal with package conflicts?
For example:
What is the best way to ...
25
votes
2answers
433 views
Coordinating the work of Biblatex style authors
I am not sure whether this is an admissible question. If it is not, please close it.
The problem
Biblatex opens up the realistic possibility of highly complex citation systems such as those used in ...
20
votes
1answer
272 views
When to use the xcolor package instead of the color package?
Can someone explain when to use the xcolor package instead of the color package?
Unless you are creating your own specific colors, the differences between the packages seem to be fairly superficial. ...
10
votes
2answers
357 views
How frequently should one update packages?
When programming, I take some care regarding updating of external dependencies, to be sure that my code isn't affected. With LaTeX (I'm using MikTeX), it seems harder to know when I should update ...
8
votes
1answer
862 views
List of symbols/abbreviations and macros
It's on my task list for a while now, and this post made me ask a follow up question which is, in my mind, a missing part when setting such a list.
As an example, think of the standard notation of an ...
19
votes
3answers
588 views
Modifying .sty files?
Yesterday I did some changes in the layout of my TeX document. I couldn't accomplish the changes until I opened the .sty files and modified some of their code. I am sure this is not the best idea. For ...
17
votes
4answers
933 views
How to manage LaTeX files in a directory?
I use LaTeX to generate all of the documents for my courses and as a result I have a lot of small documents in a given directory, which can then be hard to navigate due to all of the files generated ...
10
votes
2answers
1k views
What is the preferred way of defining a TikZ constant?
I'm drawing a TikZ figure and am going to need a couple of constant that I could easily change between compilations, e.g. a main radius, a proportion, a number of lines, etc. What is the preferred way ...
9
votes
1answer
380 views
How should one maintain and update a MiKTeX installation?
Every once in a while after updating MiKTeX, the installation gets into an inconsistent state. This might be a problem with the packages (an example is described in this question), but sometimes ...
9
votes
2answers
2k views
\flushbottom vs \raggedbottom
I use \documentclass{book}.
If I use \flushbottom, I get messages of the sort Underfull \vbox (badness 10000) has occurred while \output is active []. See question.
These messages disappear when I ...
10
votes
2answers
889 views
Best practices for spacing regarding fractions and roots?
My problem is that I am about to write a longer mathematical text, and it will be filled with integrals. Integrals tend to be filled with pesky fractions, square roots and what not.
Personally I feel ...
6
votes
2answers
335 views
best practice international template
I would like to have a template which can be internationalised (i.e. is suited for latin script languages) and uses the microtype package. I suppose that we therefore need the following packages:
...
4
votes
1answer
3k views
typesetting modulus operator, as in remainder
Is there a standard way to typeset the modulus operator (as in arithmetic remainder)? The percent sign (%) is often used by programming languages and mathematicians tend to use mod, but because of the ...
4
votes
1answer
658 views
Is it a bad practice to declare variables locally inside macros or environments?
For me, declaring variables globally will clutter the project. Especially when there are many variables to be declared.
In addition, declaring variables locally will save our time because we don't ...
28
votes
3answers
1k views
Teaching LaTeX and friends
Similar questions on how to teach LaTeX have been posted here already, but I would like to give them a slightly different touch:
Has anybody experience with teaching LaTeX in relation with other ...
31
votes
2answers
2k views
Styleguide for LaTeX similar to the Google styleguides?
Even though I don't work at Google, the Google Styleguides have been very helpful for me in adopting consistent, readable style conventions for my code. Unfortunately, there is no Google Styleguide ...
50
votes
3answers
53k views
“Correct” way to bold/italicize text?
Is either of these considered better/more readable/more "proper"/more conventional than the other for making text bold? If so, what is the reason?
I like my text \textbf{bold}
versus:
I like my ...
48
votes
2answers
715 views
Detecting unused packages in LaTeX document
I have quite a bad habit of copy-and-pasting my packages from one LaTeX document to another. Is there any way we can detect unused packages (i.e. \usepackage commands) so that they can be removed from ...
28
votes
3answers
818 views
Why use .sty files?
Why is it preferable to put inclusions of commonly used packages and user defined commands in a .sty file instead of putting them in an ordinary .tex file?
38
votes
1answer
5k views
When should one use \begingroup instead of \bgroup?
Is there ever a case when the use of \begingroup is preferred to \bgroup? Obviously, \bgroup is necessary in cases where you need to have balanced braces and thus cannot use {, but when is it ...
30
votes
4answers
545 views
What's the folk-lore on automatic testing of TeX programming?
Say you write a macro or a package, which goes through the usual course of software life-cycle. How would you define a set of tests, and have this set run automatically to make sure that changes to ...
38
votes
5answers
922 views
Why use a package to typeset units?
I've seen a lot of posts about different packages for typesetting units and their relative strengths and weaknesses. Most posts seem to agree that the siunitx package is the most up to date package, ...
34
votes
3answers
967 views
Who *doesn't* use e-TeX?
I was just browsing the new questions and noticed egreg's recent answer, in which he uses a certain extension from e-TeX and cautions the reader that it is not compatible with Knuth TeX. And so I ...
21
votes
3answers
532 views
Managing hundreds of separate components in a large document
I am making a workbook containing hundreds activities. Each activity appears as its own section and generally contains instructions, spaces to write or draw, and sometimes illustrations or diagrams to ...
12
votes
2answers
2k views
How to properly typeset footnotes/superscripts after punctuation marks?
I find the spacing of footnote marks after punctuation marks quite unsatisfactory, especially with sans serif fonts and compared to the spacing after letters. Example follows:
I came up with a ...
10
votes
2answers
446 views
Why are these commands considered as bad practice?
I was reading LaTeX: Do not use these commands, but the author didn't explain why they are bad. Could anyone help me understand.
\\ (except inside a special environment like tabular, array, or ...
19
votes
3answers
1k views
Should I \mathrm the d in my integrals?
When writing an integral, it seems like something should be done to separate the "d", as in \int f(x) dx, so as not to confuse it with a variable. I've seen it left as-is, bolded, and straightened. ...
18
votes
3answers
1k views
Canonical way to typeset spacing in abbreviations
In a comment to When one should use spacing line \quad or \, Herbert claims that e.\,g. is the canonical way to typeset spacing in abbreviations (this is not about spacing before or after ...
17
votes
1answer
224 views
Write to logfile
I want to write some things to the log file. What is the best practice for this? Is it \message{} or \typeout{} or what?
12
votes
1answer
136 views
Which command should I use for textual subscripts in math mode?
Textual subscripts like in W_{total} should be typeset in an upright text font (so that code isn't good practice), as has been discussed in various questions here. Now there are several ways to ...
12
votes
5answers
785 views
Which equations should be numbered?
Is the best practice to number all equations, or just those that will be referred to?
12
votes
3answers
1k views
Good strategy for line breaks with paragraphs of LaTeX source
What approach is recommended regarding line breaks when writing paragraphs of LaTeX?
Should a new line be started at the end of each sentence?
Is it better to manually start new lines or to let the ...
17
votes
1answer
332 views
How to write overlay-specification–aware macros that work w/o the beamer class
The LaTeX beamer class provides with \newcommand<> and \newenvironment<> an interface to define own commands that can deal with beamer's overlay specifications. Internally, commands ...
12
votes
2answers
313 views
How to format source to take advantage of VCS?
Building on What are good working practices for VCS with LaTeX documents?, are there best practices for formatting (La)TeX source files to take advantage of version-control systems?
I keep my résumé ...
34
votes
1answer
525 views
What is the advantage of using $f^\prime$ instead of $f'$?
Although the two outputs look quite similar, what is the advantage of using $f^\prime$ instead of $f'$?
By the way, here is my code:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\[ f^\prime ...
18
votes
2answers
350 views
How bad is slack \makeatother discipline really?
Following Will Robertson's admission that Fwiw, i'm not aware of any troubles with a missing \makeatother, but you're right. It's a bad habit of mine to omit it, and my own progressive slackness about ...
10
votes
4answers
197 views
What are the consideration when choosing either newcommand or newenvironment?
The first time I learnt LaTeX, I thought \newcommand properly fits for inline mode and \newenvironment for displayed mode.
Later I noticed it is not correct. So the question is
What is the rule of ...
8
votes
2answers
631 views
Splitting a large document into several files
Why is it recommended to split a large document into several parts and include them with \include? Is it only a relic of the past times when computers and LaTeX compilers were slower, or is it still ...
7
votes
3answers
915 views
Good LaTeX preambles for math thesis
Can someone provide me an example of a nice preamble to write a math thesis?
I am currently using
\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\topmargin -15mm
\textheight 24truecm
\textwidth 16truecm
...
6
votes
1answer
236 views
Correct way to set margins
I set the margins of my document in this way using the geometry package
\usepackage[left=2.5cm,top=3cm,right=2.5cm,bottom=3cm,bindingoffset=0.5cm]{geometry}
Is it a correct way or does there exist ...
4
votes
3answers
165 views
Shorthand for variables lead to name clash
In formulas I need often the same constants and variables with lot of "make-up".
I want to have readable and maintainable LaTeX code, so I thought about writing \newcommands like
...
17
votes
4answers
811 views
Possible conflicts with fixltx2e?
I only recently came across the fixltx2e package. Given that it patches aspects of LaTeX, my spidey-sense begins to tingle out of a concern for possible package conflicts.
Are there known conflicts? ...
12
votes
1answer
876 views
Differences and best practices: \onslide vs. \uncover, \onslide+ vs. \visible, \onslide* vs. \only?
Page 81 of the Beamer v3.20 user guide describes the behavior of the \onslide command. In particular, there are three forms when the optional text argument is given:
\onslide⟨overlay ...
9
votes
2answers
1k views
Downsides of using \par instead of two new lines
Coming from an HTML background using <p> to mark paragraphs I consequently use \par to mark paragraphs instead of using two consecutive blank lines. This feels more semantic (of course I realize ...
8
votes
1answer
133 views
Does a zero-length line with an arrow make sense? Is it a bug?
\documentclass[pstricks,border=12pt]{standalone}
\usepackage{pstricks-add}
\begin{document}
\multido{\i=0+30}{12}{%
\begin{pspicture}(-2,-2)(2,2)
\pscircle{1}
\pnode(1;\i){R}
...
7
votes
3answers
485 views
What is the correct way to delineate directories in Lua?
I have been experimenting with some Lua code to list directories and provide them to the TeX engine.
I have been using the Lua File System (lfs) module.
The first part list the current directory ...
7
votes
2answers
238 views
amsmath nobreakdash definition to allow normal hyphenation
In the amsmath package documentation it is written:
\newcommand{\n}[1]{$n$\nobreakdash-\hspace{0pt}}
The last example
shows how to prohibit a linebreak after the hyphen but allow normal
...
7
votes
4answers
307 views
Short version of \emph and non standard code
The question regarding short version of \emph yielded brand new options for me and I should add impressive ones. However, the method suggested there results with non-standard code on the one hand but ...
