How to scale entire document including Maths symbols?

Question

I'm trying to make a cheat-sheet for my Math class. I wonder is there a way to scale the entire document so that I can fit more formulas and theorems into it. It doesn't need to be super tiny though. I tried tiny font, but it still waste too much space. Have anyone done it before could share me some experiences? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The best way to create some space in your document is to use a combination of geometry (for setting/removing margin dimensions) and some standard documentclass font settings:

\documentclass[10pt]{article}% default is 10pt font

However, in terms of creating a cheat-sheet that should condense a number of pages on (say) a two-sided single piece of stock, I would suggest creating a document as per usual and then creating a second document that includes the pages of the first in "n-up" style, depending on your page count. Let me explain...

Consider your original straight-forward document that has a bunch of content in it, including formulas and nifty how-to's:

cheat-material.tex

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[margin=1cm]{geometry}% http://ctan.org/pkg/geometry
\usepackage{blindtext}% http://ctan.org/pkg/blindtext
\usepackage[english]{babel}% http://ctan.org/pkg/babel
\begin{document}
\Blinddocument% Creates a 8-page document in the current style
\end{document}

The above is just a mock-up of your document using the blindtext package. It creates 8 pages of wholesome cheat-sheet material.

Now I create my second document using the pdfpages package to insert output of cheat-material.tex in n-up style (I chose 4-up, since 8 is divisible by 4):

cheat-sheet.tex

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pdfpages}% http://ctan.org/pkg/pdfpages
\begin{document}
\includepdf[nup=4,pages=-,frame]{cheat-material}
\end{document}

pages=- includes all pages of cheat-material.pdf, and frame adds a page border around each included page.

This way you're not bound as much by trying to modify things - you're merely creating a document (cheat-material) and squeezing it as needed into a specific shape (cheat-sheet). This is especially helpful if you have multiple pages that you want to condense, as seems to be the case for you.