Some of the available classes of documents in LaTeX are well known and widely used, such as the article
and beamer
classes, while others are not so well known, such as the standalone
class.
I found this figure (edit: transcribed)
article
for articles in scientific journals, presentations, short reports, program documentation, invitations, ...
proc
a class for proceedings based on the article class.
minimal
is as small as it can get. It only sets a page size and a base font. It is mainly used for debugging purposes.
report
for longer reports containing several chapters, small books, thesis, ...
book
for real books
slides
for slides. The class uses big sans serif letters.
memoir
for changing sensibly the output of the document. It is based on thebook
class, but you can create any kind of document with it (1)
letter
For writing letters.
beamer
For writing presentations (see LaTeX/Presentations).
which lists the main classes and is a good starting point, but the description is too short and still leaves one wondering when it would be more suitable to choose one class over the other and what the characteristics of each class is. Furthermore, the list is not exhaustive I think, given that I know at least one more document class that is not there (the standalone
class, as I mentioned).
So my question is: what are the available classes of documents in LaTeX, and could you provide a brief description of the class and the situations where it would be recommended?
Please give only one class per answer.
standalone
class actually simply loads a real class but uses thepreview
package to reduce the page size to the content. It is supposed to be used for subfiles holding only picture or similar code which are then included into a main document. Thestandalone
class and package allow this files to be compiled standalone or as part of the main document without adjusting the file.