# All Questions

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### Package switches within the document?

Many packages come with switches, to be defined in the preamble. Is it possible to hit such a switch also in the body of the document? Example: Can I switch from the functionality of ...
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### How to type the three dots in a product?

I have to type the product of n variables, $x_1\cdot\ldots\cdot x_n$. Although maybe this is semantically the right way (like it is for the sum), it doesn't look very well. What should be, ...
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### Drawing a hypergraph

What is the proper way to draw a hypergraph? Is there a package to do this, or is there an easy way to draw such diagrams with a common drawing method like tikz? I'm trying to draw something like
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### How to get rotating and/or rotfloat to work

Using LyX 1.6.5/MacTex-2009 my floating sideways figures only occupy half the page and the other half of the figure disappears off the left margin. I tried the rotfloat and rotating packages and they ...
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### Which command should I use for displayed equations?

A number of related questions have already been asked about this issue: align vs equation which is preferable to what to do with this hyperref note on amsmath and even eqnarray vs align But I'm ...
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### Changing the way authors' names are displayed in a citation?

For example, currently if I do a \cite{name} I get this: (AUTHOR1, 2000) (AUTHOR1; AUTHOR2, 2000) (AUTHOR1; AUTHOR2; AUTHOR3, 2000) What I'd like is to have et al. beyond 2 authors and have "and" ...
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### Included PNG appears blurry in PDF

This is a follow-up to Included png appears too big in PDF, but it's a separate issue so I'll put it in its own question instead of burying it in comments. The problem: an included PNG, included ...
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### How does TiKZ calculate positioning of picture on page?

I'm trying to use \beginpgfgraphicnamed to externalise some complex figures in a large document, using the latest released version of TiKZ (2.00). This produces standalone PDF images but for me the ...
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### What version control system should I use for my LaTeX documents? [closed]

The answers to this question have convinced me I want to start using some kind of version control system. The question is, which should I use? First this is mainly just for myself, not for ...
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### Included png appears too big in PDF

I'm a beginner with LaTex and writing an article in it (letter-sized). WinEDT and MikTeX (versions seen in the log). I have a PNG chart (obtained from R/ggplot2) which is 471 x 335 pixels and which ...
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### Pushouts and pullbacks

How do I typeset that little symbol which indicates that a commutative square is a pushout or pullback square? I usually draw my diagrams in XY-pic, so I'd be most interested in how to do it there. ...
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### Where do I place my own .sty or .cls files, to make them available to all my .tex files?

I know how to define a package or a class, but how do I make it available (to myself) at all times? Say I have the package file commonstuff.sty (or myprettyclass.cls), that I want to be able to ...
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### Define command for bold list-item

I have a set of commands for producing various kinds of specific list-items, such as \newcommand{\staritem}{\item[$\star$]} % not really, but you get the gist All the ones I currently have can be ...
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### Include section number in list number

As a follow-up to this question, I'd like to know if it is possible to automatically include the current section number, including all nesting levels, in the list number. How do I accomplish this? ...
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### Can latexdiff be used for mathematics documents?

I've been pulling my hair out trying to get latexdiff to work with a mathematics document. It produces output that latex can't compile if one of the files is this: \documentclass{amsart} ...
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### What is “TeX daemon” and why and how is it used?

Recently I've come across a question that asks about "TeX daemon" for Windows. I always thought that nature of TeX is compilation of document sources. Why would anyone use a daemon for that? So, ...
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### What are the advantages of using version control (git, CVS etc) in LaTeX documents

Why would I need to use version control with my LaTeX documents? I know people who do it, and I've seen questions about it on here and on SO, but I haven't understood what value there is to doing ...
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### TeXlipse installation problems

I have installed the most recent version of Eclipse (version 1.3.0.20100617-0521, build id 20100617-1415) and am trying to install the TeXlipse plugin. I've followed the installation guide thoroughly ...
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### Problem with defining shortcuts for TikZ matrices.

For answering a question yesterday I wanted to define a shortcut for creating a matrix inside a tikzpicture. As a minimal example, consider \newcommand\mymatrix[1]{ \begin{tikzpicture} ...
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### include pdf pages in a latex document as appendix

I am writing a report and would like to include as appendix another document which is in pdf format.
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### TeX daemon for Windows

A simple question (in theory): is there any (La)TeX distribution for Windows that is capable of running as a daemon? I am not aware that either MiKTeX or TeX Live are capable as running as daemons on ...
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### Custom title font in LyX

(My first problem of compiling at all is solved, so I'm now posing a slightly different question). Hi, I'd like some help with producing handouts for my students. I'm using LyX as I'm far from fluent ...
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### How to install “vanilla” TeXLive on Debian or Ubuntu?

Debian and Ubuntu have very good texlive packaging. But I'd like to use tlmgr to have a more fine-grained control about upgrades and which packages I want to be installed. So how do I install ...
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### What is the best way to typeset spectral sequences?

While writing articles about algebraic topology, I have had to typeset spectral sequences. These are tools for calculating homology and cohomology. Examples appear on page 10 of this book by Hatcher. ...
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### Defining a custom ‘wrapfig’ environment

[ This is an updated version of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3233031/latex-defining-a-custom-wrapfig-environment ] The wrapfig package interacts badly with the setup and teardown done by \begin ...
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### Which graphics formats can be included in documents processed by latex or pdflatex?

There several types of graphics files. In no particular order .jpeg .eps .pdf .png .tif .jif (and no doubt others). Some work with latex, dvips and some work with pdflatex. How am I supposed to know ...
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### Insert code into a latex doc. without leading tabs

When I write latex I usually indent my sections like this (it allows easier folding in vim, is like reading code, etc). section{section} bla bla bla bla bla subsection{a} bla bla ...
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### Full-page figure without extraneous whitespace in text?

My question is along the lines of How do I ensure that figures appear in the section they're associated with?, but slightly different. I have a figure that occupies a full page. By default, LaTeX ...
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I just spotted someone use \newcommand* in an answer and realised that I'd never quite sorted out in my head what the star (asterisk) was there for. (This one is practically impossible to search for ...
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### Installing bibexport on Mac OS X

I recently installed bibexport on my mac (10.5). This command lets you export a small document-specific .bib file using only the references that you cite in that particular document. This is useful ...
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### In TikZ, is it possible to nest nodes?

My use case: I am drawing chemical schemes. Each molecule contains several nodes. However, I also want to put each molecule into a "wrapper" node, so that I can use the usual anchors in combining ...
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### How to keep my TeX Live installation up to date?

What is the recommended way to keep my TeX Live installation up to date? Is there any package manager (like MiKTeX on Windows) that could help me with this? If it helps I'm running on Mac OS X and my ...
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### How can I typeset the date/time at compile time?

For printed drafts of my papers, I would like to add a timestamp on every page with the date/time when the document was last compiled. Is there any LaTeX command that produces the current date/time at ...
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### How to obtain perfect greyness with TeX?

Greyness, or typographic color is the apparent blackness of a block of text. I would be curious how you deal with improving it in TeX. How much can TeX's inherent line-breaking algorithm be fine-tuned ...
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### What to do with this hyperref note on amsmath?

http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/hyperref/ has this note copied below: amsmath ------------- The environments equation and eqnarray are not supported too well. For ...
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### Why is the MacTeX distribution so large? Is there anything smaller for OS X?

I would like to know how to install LaTeX on Mac 10.6 or higher. But the MacTeX is some 1.28 GB file! Is there a smaller distribution I could install? What exactly is TeX Live?
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### What font package do I use to get the vertical Russan/German style integral signs?

What font package do I use to get the vertical Russan/German style integral signs? (subject says all)
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### passing options to the newenvironment

I have a GrayBox environment defined as follows. It is used \begin{GrayBox}...\end{GrayBox} or \begin{GrayBox}[\textwidth]...\end{GrayBox}, that is, it can pass optional parameter to the environment. ...
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### BibTeX style that groups by author

I'm looking for a BibTeX style that formats the reference list at the end in the way shown below. The key points are: The references are sorted by the (list of) authors, and then each author has a ...
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### parameter passing to \verb|| environment

I happen to write the following code over and over again. {\color{blue}\verb|>|} {\footnotesize\verb|HI|} So, I came up with the following code to make it a command. \newcommand{\result}[2]{% ...