about particular ways to work with TeX and friends, e.g. compile sequences and the process from ideas via draft to a final document.
65
votes
5answers
2k views
What are the finishing touches you put to a document?
I'm curious about the finishing touches that people put to LaTeX documents. Are there any canonical or special things that people do in finalizing a document?
What I do:
Careful proofreading of ...
52
votes
12answers
2k views
Reducing the time it takes to write a paper
I often have situations in which I must quickly write and print a report, within a short time. Some features of TeX allow me to work quickly. For example, with BibTeX, I can quickly add a source to an ...
49
votes
3answers
5k views
A simpleton's guide to (…)TeX workflow with emacs
Progress Report
Four months on, I thought it a good idea to "report back" here, and I wrote something. Then, I had better thoughts and turned it into a blog post.
You can read it on the TeX.sx blog.
...
48
votes
4answers
3k views
Everyday LaTeX and workflow?
I'm a LaTeX beginner and am wondering what a typical workflow looks like when writing a (longish) document.
The draw for me is the ability to separate content and presentation, but it still seems ...
28
votes
5answers
454 views
How to build two different .tex files from same .tex file
When I prepare an exercise list for my students I use to also include there my own solutions. I prepare these documents with some macros based on mdframed and with comment help I easily obtain two ...
27
votes
4answers
975 views
References for learning how to check for typesetting problems
The following thread discusses a number of tasks one must accomplish to finish up a document: What are the finishing touches you put to a document?
Did the original author of TeX make such small ...
20
votes
6answers
639 views
How can other programming languages and tools be used to create content for TeX documents?
When writing about programming languages or tools one often wants to include output from them in the document. Then it is useful if such output can be created as the document is compiled. For ...
19
votes
3answers
705 views
As a devoted LaTeX user, how do I most effectively use software which is *not* TeX-based?
I realize that this question is heretical here and may even be off topic but I cannot think of another place to ask.
I am an enthusiastic LaTeX user. I use it for even the briefest communications, ...
18
votes
3answers
518 views
Draft mode for pgfplots
I'm working on a fairly big document that has a lot of graphs of functions- so far it has around 200, by the end it will have around 1500. I use pgfplots for each graphic, and the functions are pretty ...
18
votes
2answers
537 views
What are good working practices for VCS with LaTeX documents?
I am interested in using a VCS to track changes as I write short LaTeX documents in my daily research. Essentially, I use LaTeX as a whiteboard for developing ideas, and then I have documents to ...
16
votes
5answers
1k views
Looking for an efficient way to create polished scientific graphics
I’m looking for a professional and efficient way to create scientific graphics.
There are basically two types of graphics I want to create (and maybe not a joint approach works for both):
Plots of ...
14
votes
1answer
6k views
Personal notes when preparing a talk with LaTeX-beamer class
Suppose I prepare a talk using the beamer class. To each slides I want to take personal notes (what I exactly want to say, frequently asked questions etc.). So is there a smart way to write those ...
11
votes
2answers
483 views
Tips and tricks to tightly couple LaTeX paper and Beamer presentation
My typical approach is to write the paper in LaTeX, then (in a new file) to write the presentation in Beamer.
I am now getting to the point in my education/career where the first version of a paper ...
8
votes
2answers
505 views
Producing printable pdfs
I've finished writing my thesis, and it is now at our University print service. However, I got a call from the today, saying that they can't print my thesis, because of some errors (don't know which ...
7
votes
4answers
495 views
Many documents, same preamble
I work with many documents which I hope will have the same style throughout.. When making a decision about the design, I want that to be applied to all of the documents uniformly. I've created 1 file ...
6
votes
0answers
227 views
Does anyone have suggestions on a workflow for correcting bugs in Mendeley's automatically generated citations? [closed]
Mendeley's automatic BiBTeX file generation is a godsend in terms of avoiding the mindless and potentially error-prone work of copying citation information from PDFs of research papers to to BiBTeX. ...
5
votes
1answer
281 views
Creating a common settings file
I have created a file which provides convenient options to change the settings for all of my documents. For e.g.:
\def\BookFontRoman{Gentium Plus}
\def\BookFontCJK{Adobe Song Std}
\def\PageWidth{280}
...
4
votes
2answers
105 views
Mark parts requiring rework
Doing my first more complicated paper using LaTeX, I wonder if there are any possibilities to specially mark sections or parts requiring rework.
It would be nice if those sections appeared in a ...
4
votes
1answer
152 views
Is this the correct way to format a book in LaTeX?
I have a question that may be subjective but I will try to make it as less subjective as possible.
Is this the correct way to format a book in LaTeX?
What I have done is the following:
...
4
votes
0answers
329 views
Bibliography tooltips with XeLaTeX and automated workflow [closed]
I would like to make bibliographic entries appear in a popup tooltips (in a supporting PDF viewer) when you hover over the citation key.
An approach to realise this was discussed here: Showing the ...
3
votes
2answers
174 views
Shell script which parses .tex files for figures
I would like to pull all figures including captions out of multiple .tex files and write them into a single new .tex file. This means I have to parse for
\begin{figure}
. . .
\end{figure}
and ...
3
votes
1answer
206 views
work on documents on Linux and Windows (umlaut, newline)
We work on a latex document with three persons using emacs on linux, emacs on windows and texniccenter on windows. We encountered problems with umlauts and linebreaks. I would like to know:
We ...
3
votes
0answers
269 views
LaTeX + Sketch: Workflow—Can It Be Simpler?
I am brand-new to LaTeX, Sketch, and even using the command line. My purpose is to write assignments as high-quality documents next semester for Physics, Math, Chemistry, and Engineering ...
1
vote
1answer
212 views
Sorting logs into different folders
When I run xelatex (or other compilers), I always end up with many log files in a single folder. This gets difficult to manage. I could create a script which moves them into various folders (e.g. one ...
1
vote
0answers
249 views
More generic live preview editor? (can support pandoc and/or custom scripts) [closed]
I'm a fan of using things like pandoc, GPP and Rake to make my source files to look cleaner, be human readable, simplify my workflow and get some level of style/semantics separation (especially for ...
0
votes
1answer
86 views
Emacs interacting with MS Windows: how to minimize windows [closed]
Title says it: Is there a way to hide MS windows windows from within Emacs?
What I would like to do is create a function to:
Hide all windows including Emacs
Restore Emacs
Restore SumatraPDF (which ...
