A problem with thmtools and cleveref

Question

I am trying to use thmtools and cleveref and I am getting a quite peculiar error. Here's a minimal example.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{thmtools}
\usepackage{cleveref}

\declaretheorem[name=Lemma,Refname={Lemma,Lemmas}]{lem}
\declaretheorem[name=Proposition,Refname={Proposition,Proposition}]{prop}
\declaretheorem[name=Theorem,Refname={Theorem,Theorems}]{thr}

\begin{document}

  \begin{lem}\label{lem1}
    A lemma.
  \end{lem}

  \begin{prop}\label{prop1}
    A proposition.
  \end{prop}

  \begin{thr}\label{thr1}
    A theorem.
  \end{thr}

  \Cref{lem1}, \Cref{prop1} and \Cref{thr1}.

\end{document}

When I run pdflatex (using a fresh default installation of TeXLive 2011) I receive a message:

LaTeX Warning: Cref  reference format for label type `prop' undefined on input line 24.

and the final sentence is rendered in the pdf file as "Lemma 1, ?? 1 and Theorem 1." The weird thing is that if I use only two \declaretheorem definitions, then everything is fine. If I change the order of definitions, then it is always the second one that yields a warning.

Any ideas about what is happening here and how to fix it?

Answer 1

There is a bug in thm-autoref.sty. Part of the set-up for cleverefs magic is left to the start of the document. So cleveref maintains a list of all the label types that it has been told about so that when it gets to the \begin{document} hook, it can iterate through them and finish the necessary configuration.

Examining this list for your document (well, my slightly extended version) reveals that it is:

\thmt@envname ,\thmt@envname ,\thmt@envname ,\thmt@envname ,thr,equation,\@nil

That doesn't look right! \thmt@envname is getting processed four times here. In my code, then \thmt@envname is prop which happens to be the last one in my list of \declaretheorems (for your code it would be thr - I experimented with permutations a bit). So something isn't being expanded when it should. After playing a bit of Ultimate Code Frisbee (chasing definitions from one place to another), I tracked it down to a definition in thm-autoref.sty, specifically the definition of \thmt@refnamewithcomma. It reads:

\def\thmt@refnamewithcomma #1#2#3,#4,#5\@nil{%
  \@xa\def\csname\thmt@envname #1utorefname\endcsname{#3}%
  \ifcsname #2refname\endcsname
    \csname #2refname\endcsname{\thmt@envname}{#3}{#4}%
  \fi
}

Clearly, we need to expand the \thmt@envname. One way to do this is with two \expandafters:

\def\thmt@refnamewithcomma #1#2#3,#4,#5\@nil{%
  \@xa\def\csname\thmt@envname #1utorefname\endcsname{#3}%
  \ifcsname #2refname\endcsname
    \csname #2refname\expandafter\endcsname\expandafter{\thmt@envname}{#3}{#4}%
  \fi
}

So if you put that at the top of your document (within \makeatletter ... \makeatother) it will fix this problem. Warning The same command is used for autoref, I don't know if this will break that (though it really aught not to do so).

Here's a full example:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{cleveref}
\usepackage{thmtools}

\makeatletter
\def\thmt@refnamewithcomma #1#2#3,#4,#5\@nil{%
  \@xa\def\csname\thmt@envname #1utorefname\endcsname{#3}%
  \ifcsname #2refname\endcsname
    \csname #2refname\expandafter\endcsname\expandafter{\thmt@envname}{#3}{#4}%
  \fi
}
\makeatother

\declaretheorem[name=Theorem,Refname={Theorem,Theorems}]{thr}
\declaretheorem[name=Lemma,Refname={Lemma,Lemmas}]{lem}
\declaretheorem[name=Corollary,Refname={Corollary,Corollaries}]{cor}
\declaretheorem[name=Proposition,Refname={Proposition,Proposition}]{prop}
\begin{document}

  \begin{lem}\label{lem1}
    A lemma.
  \end{lem}

  \begin{prop}\label{prop1}
    A proposition.
  \end{prop}

  \begin{thr}\label{thr1}
    A theorem.
  \end{thr}

  \begin{cor}\label{cor1}
    A Corollary.
  \end{cor}

  \Cref{lem1}, \Cref{prop1}, \Cref{thr1}, and \Cref{cor1}.

\end{document}

Result:

(Oh - something doesn't like standalone. Oh dear, back to more traditional tools.)

Answer 2

The first presented bugfix works for me. I have written to Toby Cubitt, the maintainer of the cleveref package. He agrees, that it is a bug, claims it,however, to be a bug in the thmtools package, which is why I reported the issue to Ulrich M. Schwarz, the maintainer of thmtools, providing the link to this thread. We'll see if there is an update for the thmtools package soon =). In his mail, Toby criticized that way too often people posted bugs and problems in forums like this one (which is great), but seldomly reported bugs directly to the developer him-/herself. So please everyone, if you think you found a bug and you are pretty confident about it, report it to the developer.

Cheers everyone I'll keep you posted.

Hey everyone. Ulrich Schwarz answered. He told me to change line 48 in thm-autoref.sty so that it reads

\csname #2refname\@xa\endcsname\@xa{\thmt@envname}{#3}{#4}%

(two aditional \@xa)

Don't forget to update your TeX database running texhash or mktexlsr or texconfig[-sys] rehash in a terminal, or the change won't be effective. (If you don't know where to find thm-autoref.sty, run locate thm-autoref.sty in a terminal. If you use Windows, I don't know how you update your TeX database, sorry). cheers, hope it helps. David

Answer 3

Not a proper fix, but a workaround, largely taken from this Google search:

Add commands like

\crefname{thr}{theorem}{theorems}
\Crefname{thr}{Theorem}{Theorems}

for each of your interior theorem types, after all your \declaretheorem commands. And totally unrelated to the original question, but you may want to use the \cref command for lowercase references when you're in the middle of a sentence. The cleveref manual uses that notation, at least.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{thmtools}
\usepackage{cleveref}

\declaretheorem[name=Lemma,Refname={Lemma,Lemmas}]{lem}
\declaretheorem[name=Theorem,Refname={Theorem,Theorems}]{thr}
\declaretheorem[name=Thing,Refname={Thing,Things}]{thing}
\declaretheorem[name=Proposition,Refname={Proposition,Propositions}]{prop}
\crefname{thr}{theorem}{theorems}
\Crefname{thr}{Theorem}{Theorems}
\crefname{thing}{thing}{things}
\Crefname{thing}{Thing}{Things}

\begin{document}

  \begin{lem}\label{lem1}
    A lemma.
  \end{lem}

  \begin{thr}\label{thr1}
    A theorem.
  \end{thr}

  \begin{prop}\label{prop1}
    A proposition.
  \end{prop}

  \begin{thing}\label{thing1}
    A thing.
  \end{thing}

  \Cref{lem1}, \cref{prop1}, \cref{thing1} and \cref{thr1}.

\end{document}

This isn't fixed with the latest version of cleveref, but I'm not entirely up to date on all my other packages. Will see if this persists with today's packages, and will wait on a better answer or acknowledgment of a real bug in cleveref.

Answer 4

An immediate fix to the problem with three cross-references is to replace {prop} with {proposition} throughout your document. I have no explanation for why this fix seems to work.

Please also see @AndrewStacey's detailed answer in which he (i) reports that he's found a bug in the file thm-autoref.sty (part of the thmtools bundle) and (ii) provides a patch for that bug.

However, given that your MWE does not seem to employ the thmtools package's capabilities other than for specifying the singular and plural forms of the respective environments, you might as well just use the stable and well-debugged ntheorem package instead of thmtools. If needed, you can give instructions to cleveref for handling plural forms of the environments (as I do in the MWE below).

\documentclass{article}
%\usepackage{thmtools} -- use ntheorem instead
\usepackage{ntheorem}
\newtheorem{lem}{Lemma} 
\newtheorem{prop}{Proposition} % NOTE: no need to write {proposition}
\newtheorem{thr}{Theorem}

\usepackage{cleveref}    
\crefname{lem}{Lemmas}{Lemmas}
\crefname{prop}{Proposition}{Propositions}
\crefname{thr}{Theorem}{Theorems}

\begin{document}
\begin{lem}\label{lem1} A lemma. \end{lem}
\begin{prop}\label{prop1} A proposition. \end{prop}
\begin{lem}\label{lem2} Another lemma. \end{lem} 
\begin{prop}\label{prop2} Another proposition. \end{prop} 
\begin{thr}\label{thr1} A theorem. \end{thr}

As we stated in \cref{lem1,prop1,thr1,prop2,lem2}, \ldots  
\end{document}