# All Questions

124k views

### How to typeset subscript in usual text mode?

It's easy to make subscripts in math mode: $a_i$. How do I make a subscript outside math environment, likethis?
7k views

### LaTeX packages for use with revision control

I use revision control (Subversion, to be exact) to keep track of the edits to my LaTeX documents. Is there a LaTeX package that interfaces with revision control? Specifically, it would be nice to see ...
5k views

### Put entire thesis on one A0 poster?

The question Is there any way to automatically scale and put an entire document on an A0 page? The thesis for which this is to be done is available as LaTeX code, as well as PDF output. Of course I ...
17k views

### Alternatives to LaTeX

Are there any professional alternatives to TeX/LaTeX which produce equal or even better typesetting? Maybe expensive commercial ones. The software counts if it is comparable or superior to LaTeX ...
5k views

### Starting a PhD; Any guides to setting up a 'system'?

I'm starting a PhD and am being overwhelmed with the different possible ways people do things, and how they very rarely mix. I'm (obviously) sold on TeXing it, and have a ViM background I intend on ...
175k views

### How can I manually install a package on MiKTeX (Windows)

I'm new to LaTeX, investigating using it for some work projects. I'm using MiKTeX on Windows. My employer's locked-down network blocks the application's automatic installation function. I can take ...
65k views

### Lengths and when to use them

There are many lengths in LaTeX. For instance, \enskip, \enspace, \quad, \parskip, \smallskip, ... Some of them are mostly used for vertical spacing, some others are mostly used for horizontal ...
115k views

### How to write “ä” and other umlauts and accented letters in bibliography?

How to write in bibliography (package natbib) letter "a" with two dots above? Specially, I mean the word Birkhäuser. Is there a general rule or way how to write such umlauts or other accented letters ...
27k views

### List of available TikZ libraries with a short introduction

Quick links: Summary ❧ Intersections library ❧ Arrow tips library ❧ Calc library ❧ Mindmap Library ❧ Shapes library ❧ Paper Folding Library ❧ Chains Library ❧ Shapes library Very often I ...
99k 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, ...
34k views

### Is it wrong to use \clearpage instead of \newpage?

The commands \newpage and \clearpage both force a page break. In addtion, the latter command also "flushes" all pending floats from the stack, i.e., forces them to be typeset starting on the page that ...
18k views

### What is XeTeX exactly and why should I use it?

I have been using LaTeX for five years now and have been using PDFLaTeX ever since. I find it hard to monitor the progress of LaTeX development. Recently there is a lot of talk about XeTeX. What is ...
21k views

### How can I design a book cover?

Can anyone share his or her experience on designing a book cover? I just finished writing my "Awk One-Liners Explained" e-book and now I am designing the cover. I tried \maketitle and the result was ...
17k views

### What is the difference between \let and \def?

What is the difference between the \let and \def commands in TeX/LaTeX? Ideally please provide a simple example that will illustrate the difference between them.
3k views

### Why does TeX Live “require” yearly updates?

Every year TeX Live provides a new version. My recollection is that soon after a new version is released, the old version's tlmgr stops fetching updates to packages. They provide upgrading ...
26k 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?
32k views

### Continuous v. per-chapter/section numbering of figures, tables, and other document elements

Some document elements (e.g., figures in the book class) are numbered per chapter (figure 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, ...). How can I achieve continuous numbering (figure 1, 2, 3, ...)? And vice versa: Some ...
9k views

### Choosing whether to include PDF or PNG in PDFLaTeX

Can I tell graphicx somehow which graphic format to choose when I omit the file extension in includegraphics and both a PDF and a PNG version of the same image exist? The reason is that I have some ...
28k views

### Vertical space in lists

What is the best way to globally change the amount of vertical space between items in list environments?
11k views

### Which measurement units should one use in LaTeX?

There are various measurement units that one can use (such as pt, mm, in, em, ex etc.) for specifying lengths and heights. For font-based units (em and ex) the actual spacing will vary slightly ...
9k views

### Suppress “In:” biblatex

How do I suppress the "In: " before the journaltitle? Like so: In: Journal of Applied Physics
5k views

### How to draw a Sankey Diagram using TikZ

I would like to draw something similar to this (not exactly): using TikZ. Ideally I would be able to set the width by variables and rejoin two flows into one again. Is there a good way to do this? ...
31k views

### Why should I use LaTeX?

I have heard a lot about LaTeX, but never used it myself. It is mainly used for typesetting professional research papers. But I am not writing research papers. Is LaTeX for me? If yes, why should I ...
51k views

### How do I create an invisible character?

I cannot remember how to create an invisible character in LaTeX, i.e. I want to put a space the that has the width of a particular character, say M'. I know there is a command for this, and this is ...
7k views

### Is there an easy way to have my whole document with a space between paragraphs rather than indentation?

I would like to have my whole document showing a blank line (or space) between paragraphs and no indentation. I know how to do it line by line, but is there a way to change that with just one or a few ...
5k views

### How can I draw an egg using TikZ?

I would like to draw an egg-format element, but I have only found ways of drawing ellipses.
4k views

### Showcase of optical illusions made with TeX/LaTeX/LuaTeX/ConTeXt

Optical illusions are fun, so I thought it would be a good idea to have a list of optical illusions designed using MetaPost, or PGF/TikZ, or PS-Tricks, or Asymptote. Each entry should display one ...
13k views

I'm searching for nice predefined chapter headings. I've found the fncychap package, and seen that memoir has quite a few, too. Do you know other packages that provide predefined fancy chapter ...
22k views

### “Track changes” in LaTeX

I am writing a scientific paper with my collaborator. We have submitted a version to a journal and now we got a review from them, so we need to fix a few things. In Microsoft Word there is the option ...
44k views

### \emph or \textit

In the comments section of Does it matter if I use \textit or \it, I asked for a clarification of these points. The clarification has mostly been made, but it was requested that I turn this into a ...
9k views

### Drawbacks of XeTeX/LuaTeX

Currently I use pdflatex to process my documents, but I want to be with the cool kids and switch to XeTeX or LuaTeX. My documents are moderately multilingual (main text in portuguese or english, ...
11k views

### Simulate a scanned paper

I'm try to move my current paperwork routine towards a paperless workflow (for the “administrative” type of papers, of course… not for serious reading tasks). There is one major annoyance thwarting ...
21k views

### Creating fillable PDFs

I'd like to create a LaTeX document that when rendered into PDF, has forms that can be filled out using Adobe Reader or other such programs. Then I'd like to be able to extract the data. I ...
4k views

### Is there some way to embed LaTeX source code in a PDF file?

Several times now I have inadvertently lost the .tex file that generated a PDF file with pdflatex. Given what I know of the internal structure of PDF files, it should be possible to embed a text file ...
6k views

### Sieve of Eratosthenes in tikz

I am writing notes for my students under the topic of prime factorization and I needed to illustrate the Sieve of Eratosthenes and this is what I came up with in tikz: \documentclass{article} ...
8k views

### How can we display fireworks?

Soon we can celebrate the New Year. How can we use TikZ for drawing fireworks? For example like this, photographed by Kurume-Shimin, found on Wikipedia: Click on Image search for getting further ...
18k views

### Latin Modern vs cm-super?

I've read various answers to questions on here that suggest the original Computer Modern fonts have been superceded. Sometimes it is suggested we use the cm-super package, sometimes that we instead ...
3k 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 ...
99k views

### eqnarray vs align

I want to include a list of related equations, say, for a proof, in my LaTeX document. As far as I know, I have two good options, eqnarray and align. What is the difference between them, and how do I ...
14k views

### \includegraphics: Dots in filename

\includegraphics cannot handle filenames that contain more than the one dot, separating the filename from the extension. Apparently it uses everything after the first dot as extension and then, of ...
2k views

### What can *I* do to help the LaTeX3 Project

First, I appreciate this may not be the right place for this question, so absolutely no offence if it gets closed. I'm very much an end-user, rather than a programmer, of LaTeX, and I watch with awe ...
29k views

### LaTeX document to epub or mobi ebook formats (with mathematical formulas)

Recently I purchased an ebook reader (Kindle), and I want to export some of my document in LaTeX to an ebook format. I tried exporting from LaTeX to PDF, but isn't perfect because I have to zoom ...
5k views

### As an expert, can you always use TeX for (nearly) any kind of document?

I am just beginning to learn TeX. Coming from web-development, I find separating content from style very sensible, and I like the logic behind it. To me it looks that having control over formatting is ...
6k views

### What are penalties and which ones are defined?

Very often you can find solutions by changing the penalty. One is widowpenalty. However what are penalties and is there a small list of every defined penalty. There is a German site which does ...
7k views

### PDF colour model and LaTeX

(Strictly speaking, this is a question about XeLaTeX and the xcolor package but I’m assuming that the issue is actually with the color model of PDF.) I’m having the problem that colours in my PDF ...
29k views

### Regarding the book, report, and article` document classes: what are the main differences?

What are the main differences between the book, report, and article document classes? I am interested in the following: visual differences in the final document; differences in the way the ...
17k views

### Should \tikzset or \tikzstyle be used to define TikZ styles?

The PGF/TikZ manual states in section 12.4 Using Graphic Options, page 120 (v2.10), that TikZ styles can be set using: \tikzset{my style/.style={<tikz options>},...} However, in several ...
58k views

### Using \footnote in a figure's \caption

Maybe this is an easy one, but I struggled with this now too long :) I want to have a footnote in a caption of a figure, see the example. \begin{figure}[!ht] \caption{a figure ...