# How to set up European/French style long division in TeX?

How exactly can one achieve French Style Long Division?

Is line drawing/table/array formatting my only way here? I'm really new into TeX/LaTeX trying to find my way around it for elementary math, but some things leave me puzzled.

I found out there's a package called polynom to use polynomial division, but which only achieves American style long division. An array solution got closer, and xlop solution was the closest, yet issue with xlop is that you can't use subtitutional/polynomial values like AB/C (or so it seems?). MathML seems to achieve all these elementary math stuff except, well, MathML isn't as much supported yet. So until then, maybe TeX is not my solution at all, even, if so, what would I use?

Update:

Trying to define my own command in arrays I've come as close as this, though since I don't know how positioning works yet in arrays:

\documentclass{article}
\newcommand\frdiv[5]{%
$\renewcommand\arraystretch{1.5} \begin{array}{l| l} #1 & #2 \\ \cline{2-2} #3 & #4 \\ \cline{1-1} #5 & \\ \end{array}$
}

\begin{document}

\frdiv{ABC}{AB}{XY}{D}{R}

\end{document}


• And this here does not help you: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/149975/… May 19 '18 at 20:36
• xlop only helps as much as "numbers" are used, and inline division isn't what I'm looking for, so no. May 19 '18 at 21:02

you have to use Xlop package (http://ctan.mines-albi.fr/macros/generic/xlop/doc/xlop-doc-fr.pdf)

\documentclass[A4paper,french]{article}
\usepackage[french]{babel}
\usepackage{xlop}

\begin{document}

\opdiv[decimalsepsymbol={,},displayintermediary=all,voperation=top]
{198}{12}

\end{document}


• Xlop doesn't print the decimal separator according to french rule, for instance it prints 16.5 instead of 16,5. How to fix that? May 20 '18 at 2:57
• Call with the option decimalsepsymbol={,} see above the solution May 20 '18 at 6:37
• Trying to achieve showing polynomials and/or placeholder letters as well. May 20 '18 at 23:18

You can probably use TikZ, to create your own division like this:

\documentclass[tikz,border=2mm]{standalone}
\usetikzlibrary{matrix}
\usepackage[english]{babel}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
\matrix (a) [matrix of math nodes, column sep=0pt]
{
A     & X     & Y   & Z   &  & E \\
& B     &      &   &  &  \\
&        & C   &      &   &    \\
&        &      &  D  &   &   \\
&       &       &      &    & U  \\
};
\draw (a-1-6.north west) |- (a-1-6.south east);
\draw (a-1-6.south west) |- (a-5-6.south west);

\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}


It will require a bit of tuning to adapt it to your specific example.

Hope that helps.

Romain