# All Questions

5k views

### How was TeX output visualised on screen, back in the day?

I've been using LaTeX for about two years; I'm only learning TeX now, to get a better understanding of the foundations. In Chapter 6 : Running TeX of his TeXbook (more specifically, on page 23), ...
46k views

### How to typeset $:=$ correctly?

I like to use $:=$ for "is defined to be equal to", but this is never typeset with the symmetry one would like, as the colon is always too low relatively to the equals sign. Is there any way of ...
8k views

### Consistent typography

When working with large documents, or even across multiple (smaller) documents, I often find that I forget which typographical consistencies I should stick to. With TeX being inherently consistent in ...
19k views

### Comprehensive list of tools that simplify the generation of LaTeX tables

Manually hacking tables in LaTeX is one of the less funny things when preparing a document. Naturally, there are quite a few tools that promise to simplify this. In fact, I have somewhat lost track of ...
10k views

### Why is LaTeX so complicated? [closed]

I have been using LaTeX professionally almost every day for almost 10 years, so I think I can say that, by now, I more or less know what I'm doing. I also do a lot of ordinary computer programming, in ...
213k views

### How do I change the enumerate list format to use letters instead of the default Arabic numerals?

I've seen documentation whereby an \alph command is put around the \begin{enumerate} somewhere, but I'm not entirely sure how that operates...
159k views

### Omitting the date when using \maketitle

I'm using the \author and \title commands to produce a title with \maketitle. I also know that there is a \date command to specify the date of my work. However, if I omit \date, \maketitle will ...
42k 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 ...
70k views

### Correctly scaling a tikzpicture

I was wondering which is the correct way to scale a tikzpicture. I tried with \begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.50] but what I obtain is that distances between elements are scaled but not their sizes or ...
23k 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.
35k views

### \pagebreak vs \newpage

What's the difference? I know that \pagebreak can take an optional argument that specifies how much a page break is desired, but is there any difference if the optional argument is not used?
44k views

### Totally sweet horizontal rules in LaTeX

I have been trying to find a way to easily drop a nice horizontal rule into a LaTeX document. \hline just makes a line across the page. It would seem that some package must provide something that is ...
48k views

### How can I add “page # of ##” on my document?

I want to add a footer to my document displaying the current number out of total number of pages. How do I do that?
18k views

### Tools for automating document compilation

A lot of people write makefiles that say something like paper.pdf: paper.tex pdflatex paper bibtex paper pdflatex paper pdflatex paper To handle re-running TeX to ...
9k views

### How productive are you with TikZ?

First, I must say I have very limited knowledge about PGF/TikZ. Most things I do are blind copy-pastes of examples I find on the Internet with lots of trial-and-error and googling around. After ...
180k views

### eqnarray vs align

Motivation 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. Question What is the difference ...
23k 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 ...
8k views

### Best practice on organising your preamble

I am putting together a large document and my preamble is unwieldly and disorganised. What order does it make sense to load packages. Obviously, hyperref goes last, apart from things that have to go ...
10k views

### LaTeX3 versus pure Lua

Reading this site for the last nearly two years I've learned a lot about LaTeX3 (which I had previously understood to be a defunct pipe dream) and LuaTeX (of which I was previously totally unaware). ...
29k 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 ...
18k views

### What is the most bizarre thing you have seen done with TeX

I think the questions says it all! :) By TeX, I mean any derivative of TeX as long as the code is clearly a derivative of TeX, i.e. that it could belong on TeX.SX (and not pure Lua for example). ...
10k 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 ...
442k views

### LaTeX figures side by side [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Two figures side by side I want to place 2 images side by side in LaTeX. I have 2 .png files and I don't understand how to do it in LaTeX. I have tried many ways but could ...
129k views

### When should we use \begin{center} instead of \centering?

After reading this question Should I use center or centering for figures?, I want to know the answer of the following. When should we use \begin{center} instead of \centering? For example, should we ...
55k 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 ...
41k 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?
58k 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 ...
31k 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 ...
30k 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 ...
12k views

### Simulating hand-drawn lines

I am working on a project that will have some vector graphics, perhaps using TikZ (or a similar package). All of the graphics consists of lines, in shades of gray. However, the lines from TikZ appear ...
63k views

### Good way to make \textcircled numbers?

I'm trying to make some good-looking numbers in a circle, using the simple command: \textcircled{1} However, the circle is misaligned vertically with the number, and look a bit sloppy: Any ...
33k 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?
70k views

### How to add todo notes?

Is there a simple way to add todo notes to LaTeX documents ? I would like to have these notes in red in the generated pdf and a simple syntax to write them.
93k 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 ...
13k views

### Suppress “In:” biblatex

How do I suppress the "In: " before the journaltitle? Like so: In: Journal of Applied Physics
38k views

### How do I ensure that figures appear in the section they're associated with?

Often floats may land quite a bit later in the document than the point they are created, sometimes after a section break. Is there a way to force a new section to start on a new page, after any ...
6k views

### How to prolong compilation time while engaging in leisure activities?

I thought of that old joke today, where a programmer can make an undeniable excuse for his leisure activities while in work on the basis that he is just waiting for his code to compile. Although I ...
58k views

### Forcing linebreaks in \url

I wish to typeset some relatively long URLs in a piece of text, and when I use \url{..}, the resulting text does not respect the margin boundaries that govern the main text body, instead going all the ...
48k views

### Showcase of beautiful title page done in TeX

The book is mostly meets by the Title Page. Default TeX \maketitle are simple and minimalistic. I'm looking for examples of Title Pages: complex - have different formatting; beautiful and awesome; ...
19k 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 ...
241k views

### How can I split an equation over two lines

I am having the following equation: Q(\lambda,\hat{\lambda}) = -\frac{1}{2} P(O \mid \lambda ) \sum_s \sum_m \sum_t \gamma_m^{(s)} (t) \left( n \log(2 \pi ) + \log \left| C_m^{(s)} ...
57k 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 ...
40k views

### How to change the name of document elements like “Figure”, “Contents”, “Bibliography”, “Appendix”, etc.?

I'd like to modify the names used to typeset some of my document elements. For example, the caption of figure floats should change from "Figure" to "Fig.", and my \tableofcontents sectioning heading ...
141k views

### Strikethrough text

I am writing an article in LaTeX 2e. Part of the article describes the Sieve of Eratosthenes, and I want to show examples of how multiples of a prime are removed from the sieve by showing them in a ...
282k views

### Absolute Value Symbols

What is the "best LaTeX practices" for writing absolute value symbols? Are there any packages which provide good methods? Some options include |x| and \mid x \mid, but I'm not sure which is best...
43k 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 ...
13k 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 ...
66k views

### BibTeX loses capitals when creating .bbl file

Titles of articles I'm about to cite contain upper case letters and when using BibTeX it converts them in lower case ones. This happens only in title and only first letter conserves it's case. For ...