## Top new questions this week:

### Plot Dini's surface

According to Wikipedia, the Dini's surface is described by the following parametric equations: x = a \cos u \sin v y = a \sin u \sin v z = a (\cos v + \ln\tan v/2) + bu So, I'd like to plot the ...

pgfplots pstricks plot tikz-3dplot

### Why does the hyperref documentation suggest using gather instead of equation?

On p39 of the hyperref documentation, there is a rather cryptic suggestion to use gather instead of equation. "the situation for equation is unclear, because nobody is interested in ...

hyperref

### A sad duck with TikZ (or TikZducks?)

I am working on my homework, which includes a little website. I like the tikzducks package very much, so I decided to add some illustrations there using the svg files generated from \duck command. ...

tikz-pgf tikzducks tikzlings

### Is there a way to draw a simple circle or square in plain TeX/LaTeX, without relying on graphics packages?

I need to draw some bullets for a custom list, but what I have now is pgf code. I figured, why load entire pgf package to draw a mere circle (or square) when there must be (don't tell me otherwise, ...

circles shapes bullets

### How come the catcode of ' is 12 while ' is let to be a macro?

' is defined in latex.ltx as follows \def\active@math@prime{^\bgroup\prim@s} {\catcode`\'=\active \global\let'\active@math@prime} \def\prim@s{% \prime\futurelet\@let@token\pr@m@s} \def\pr@m@s{% ...

math-mode macros tex-core

### ConTeXt: specify a path to font in \definefontfamily

I'm very new to ConTeXt, so please excuse the newbie question. I'm trying to load a font from a file. The .otf files are stored in a directory named fonts/ which is in the directory of the .tex file ...

fonts context

### Custom hatched pattern imitating hand drawing

Following this great question, I have been drawing a picture that simulates hand drawing. I want to fill some solids with a simple hatch pattern, however I don't know how to apply the path decorator ...

tikz-pgf pattern

## Greatest hits from previous weeks:

### Column and row padding in tables

How do you guys go about controlling column padding in tables? Update To clarify, I'm looking for a way to control both vertical and horizontal padding. So, if I had a simple table like in the ...

tables spacing columns

### What is the difference between \dfrac and \frac?

The title says it all, both \dfrac{a}{b} and \frac{a}{b} make fractions, so what is the difference between the two?

math-mode amsmath

### 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 ...

floats footnotes captions

### Change line spacing inside the document

This is my code \documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{book} \renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{1.5} \begin{document} \include{Chapter1} \end{document} I have please a question: I would change the line ...

line-spacing

### Scale image to page width?

I use \inclugraphics[scale=TRYING TO GUESS THE NUMBER FOR PAGE WIDTH]{...} but I find this errorsome, is there some ready flag to set the image to page width? I usually use PNG and JPG photos.

graphics scaling

### 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 ...

fonts math-mode symbols bold

### Align equation left

Here is my split equation: \documentclass{article} \usepackage{amsmath} \begin{document} \begin{split} a_{ijk} =& \frac {Pr(M_{I} =2 \& M_J=1 \& M_K =1 | I=i , J=j , ...

equations align

## Can you answer these questions?

### How to debug token positions in petri nets in TikZ?

Following an example given in How to make this TikZ picture more idiomatic? (environment diagram) I tried to use the pre-defined "pic" to place more "function definition icons" on the canvas using ...

tikz-pgf tikz-pic

### Beamer class identifies table as figure when using subcaption

The Tex Version in my office was recently updated and I am having trouble getting everything back in order. Specifically, I want to use the subcaption package, which seems to mark tables as figures. ...

beamer cleveref