# All Questions

35k views

17k views

### TikZ: How to draw an arrow in the middle of the line?

Like this: .------<------. | | v ^ | | '------>------' I am currently using \begin{scope}[very thick,->] \draw (-4,1)--(-4,0)--(0.1,0); \draw ...
2k views

### Drawbacks of xspace

I'm certain I have read that xspace can cause more problems than it solves. But I cannot find anything to that effect either on this site or the web. Are there any drawbacks or risks associated with ...
2k views

### What is the meaning of double pound symbol (##1) in an argument?

I've seen sometimes that people use a double pound sign (##) when defining/using arguments. What is the difference between the normal argument, #1, and the double sign one, ##1? Are there any ...
5k views

### How to include a picture over two pages, left part on left side, right on right (for books)?

When writing a long book (from 300 to over a 1000 pages), there is often need to include large pictures and one wishes to have them displayed over two pages, left half on the left page, right half on ...
17k views

### How to make the PDFs produced by pdflatex smaller?

I feel that the PDFs produced by pdflatex are too huge. So for example my 50 page book with no illustrations is 500KB. I feel it should be more like 50K or even less. The .tex files together are just ...
49k views

### utf8x vs. utf8 (inputenc)

I normally use \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} for my latex document but on this site i saw a lot of code with \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}. What are the differences between the 2 options ? Is there one ...
9k views

### How to write (La)TeX (with parentheses) [or any other TeX-related logo]

I'm looking after a macro to write the (La)TeX logo (with parentheses), i.e. something similar to \TeX, \LaTeX, but where the output includes ()'s.
22k views

### Using BibTeX to make a list of references without having citations in the body of the document?

Is there any way to have BibTeX insert a bibliography without having citations in the body of the document itself? Maybe a way to hide the in-text citations, so that BibTeX still sees them and ...
18k views

### Cyrillic in (La)TeX

What are different ways to use Cyrillic in (La)TeX? What are their pros and cons?
3k views

### How to keep a constant baselineskip when using minipages (or \parboxes)?

When a minipage is used to box a text paragraph, the first line of the minipaged text and the last line of the previous text paragraph are closer than two consecutive lines in a standard text ...
596 views

### What are the ways to position things absolutely on the page?

I know that there is tikz, but also eso-pic and textpos. I'd like to see a list of possible ways (not necessarily packages) for absolute positioning of things (which I believe amounts to "boxes") on ...
6k views

### Defining commands/abbreviations that contain numbers

87k views

### How to include SVG diagrams in LaTeX?

I'm making all my diagrams in SVG format using Inkscape and then I export them to some other format (e.g. PDF, EPS or PNG). I wrote a short script that does this for me automatically, but I'd like to ...
25k views

### Style/class tutorials

What are some good tutorials on writing custom styles (classes) that clearly explain commands used and some of the features that TeX has to offer in the way of styles?
151k views

### How can I get bold math symbols?

To make Latin-letter variables bold I can use e.g. \mathbf{a}, but while putting Greek letters or symbols such as \nabla inside \mathbf doesn't cause any errors or warnings, it also doesn't do ...
8k views

### Biblatex/biber fails with a strange error about missing recode_data.xml file

I'm trying to use biblatex and when I compile my document I get an error like the following: Windows data source C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp\par-5061756c\ ...
20k views

### What is the difference between TeX and LaTeX?

I know LaTeX and I've heard that LaTeX is a set of macros in TeX. But what does it exactly mean?
96k views

### Commenting out large sections

So to "comment out" a line, I need to insert a % at the beginning of the line (so that line will not be compiled). Is there way to comment out a large section without having to manually putting a % ...
1k views

### Where are the necessary places to be appended with % to remove unwanted spaces?

I have experience where empty spaces cause unwanted effects. It is not easy to trace the cause of these unwanted effects. In order to eliminate any doubt, I often overuse % as follows. \usepackage% ...
12k views

### Diagonal lines in table cell

I need this table: (each row and column should have the same height and length, last cell should be divided by diagonal line). I tried the following code: \documentclass[11pt]{article} ...
648 views

### Writing a table with equally spaced columns, based on the widest column

Friends, I'm trying to generate a table in which I have all columns equally spaced (same width). In my case, the width for all columns would be the width of the widest column of the table: ...
138k views

### What commands are there for horizontal spacing?

I know that \: in LaTeX produces a space when rendered. Are there any alternatives, because my LaTeX renderer doesn't support \: (it renders it as text), and there is no help / FAQ that I can find.
94k views

### What point (pt) font size are \Large etc.?

In the preamble I have: \documentclass[a4paper,11pt]{article} \usepackage{fontspec} \setmainfont{Arial} What can be inferred about the real font pt size for the following? \tiny, \scriptsize, ...
10k views

### What GUI applications are there to assist in generating graphics for TeX?

I found GeoGebra to be a useful tool to help generate code for graphs. I suppose there must be other tools to help draw diagrams such as Sets/Venn Diagrams or Electrical Circuits (Logic Gates). Which ...
9k views

### Can one TeX file output to multiple PDF files?

I'd like to be able to create a TeX file that will output multiple PDF files with one compilation. I'm not even sure if this is possible. Here is the setup: I am writing dozens of cover letters for ...
7k views

### Different command definitions with and without optional argument

I want to define a command that expands to two completely different things depending on whether I supply, or not, an optional argument. For example, \mycmd{normal} -> something(normal) ...
6k views

### Vertical and horizontal lines in pgf-tikz

It is easy to produce a path between two nodes consisting of a single horizontal and a single vertical line (from the manual): \begin{tikzpicture} \draw (0,0) node(a) [draw] {A} (1,1) node(b) ...
6k views

### Which package version am I using?

Is there a LaTeX command for printing the versions of the currently installed packages? I need to know the installed version of the pgfplots package.
19k views

### Why is the ifthen package obsolete?

In the LaTeX companion, the authors recommend to use the package ifthen for complex conditional. But in his answer to LaTeX conditional expression Will Robertson doesn't mention it, and in the ...
12k views

### How to make \left, \right pairs of delimiter work over multiple lines?

I have a very long equation that must be separated into two lines, and it has several pairs of nesting \left \right delimiters. Unfortunately, it seems that they need to be on the same line in order ...
6k views

### \includegraphics PDF, color problem

I'm using pdflatex, and use \includegraphics to include content of figures from PDF. PDF are exported from InkScape. \begin{figure} [!h] \centering \includegraphics[height=3cm]{fig/SUSAN.pdf} ...