# All Questions

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### How can I get rid of indentation after an equation?

I'm a total newbie to LaTeX and I get very annoyed about this. Every time I write an equation, the text following the equation has some indentation but I don't want it to be there! Look at the ...
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10k views

### Is there a \show for lengths?

The \show command is extremely useful for figuring out what's going on with a particular macro. Similarly, using \the can tell me the value of a counter. I'd like to know if there's something ...
• 146k
59k views

### How should I type author names in a bib file?

Can someone please explain in a clear and concise way how am I supposed to enter the names of authors in a BibTeX file? I have entries with something like @article{someid, author = {Juan A. ...
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92k views

### What packages do people load by default in LaTeX?

I'm getting the impression from reading the answers written by some of the real experts here that there are quite a few little packages that just tweak LaTeX2e's default behaviour a little to make it ...
30k views

### How to best debug LaTeX?

..and I don't mean finding out why it doesn't compile, I mean serious debugging: breakpoints, figuring out value of variables at a given moment during run/compile, stepping, examining a stack (is ...
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6k views

### Is there a simple way to use the gentium font in latex?

I'd like to use the gentium font in a LaTeX document, and the instructions I found at this site make it look rather difficult. Is there a simple package that is now available that would allow me to ...
• 9,754
416k views

### Is there any way to do a correct word count of a LaTeX document?

Often assignments (or even papers) have a word count limit. That is not a big deal when using Word, but I don't know how to do that using LaTeX. My solution has been so far to compile the document and ...
• 25.6k
248k views

### What is the best way to use quotation mark glyphs?

There are several types of quotation marks in the English language (and in other languages there are even more). There are also several ways in LaTeX to represent these. I have seen editors, that are ...
• 3,203
78k views

### Style/class tutorials

What are some good tutorials on writing custom styles (classes) that clearly explain commands used and some of the features that TeX has to offer in the way of styles?
430 views

### Is there an incompatibility between eulervm and fourier packages?

In the following minimal document \documentclass{article} \usepackage{fourier,eulervm} \begin{document} $1 < 2$ \end{document} the output is missing the < symbol. On the other hand, if I load ...
179k views

### Best way to typeset micrometers?

It seems to be generally well accepted that the correct way to typeset a value with units is to separate the number from the units by a space, and write the units in an upright font. For example, ...
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48k views

### Does it matter if I use \textit or \it, \bfseries or \bf, etc

I typically use \textit{Some italicized text} while some of my colleagues use {\it Some other text} Should I bother changing one or the other, or does it matter? Related: Is there any reason ...
• 3,218
293 views

### Template for a talk with a column to hold abridged content

I'm looking for either a template (or some pointers to generate one) for using to give talks. What I'm looking for is something that will allow a column for the 'full' talk, and then a second for ...
• 183
78k views

### Are $$and$$ preferable to dollar signs for math mode?

Along the lines of Why is $...$ preferable to $$...$$?, what reasons are there (if any) to favor $$...$$ over $...$?
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203k views

### Why is $...$ preferable to $$...$$?

I've heard that you should use $...$ for displayed equations instead of $$...$$, but why is that? I'd assumed that it's so that you can more easily tell which are starting and which are ending ...
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4k views

### Proper punctuation after cases environment

I know that when writing a displayed equation, it's correct to write punctuation before the closing \] as follows: This proves $x^2 = 3,$ and it follows that $x = \pm\sqrt{3}.$ If I'm using ...
• 14.3k
406k views

### \mid, | (vertical bar), \vert, \lvert, \rvert, \divides

What's the difference between the different vertical bars? $S = \{\, x \mid x \not= 17 \,\}$ $a \vert b$ implies $a \leq b$ when $b \ne 0$ $a|b$ implies $a \leq b$ when $b \ne 0$ $\lvert x \rvert$ is ...
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4k views

### What is wrong with the line spacing of my lists of figures and tables?

Since a good picture is better than a long text, here is the problem: And here is most of my Latex file up to this point: \documentclass[12pt,a4paper,oneside]{book} \usepackage{setspace} \usepackage[...
• 1,277
13k views

### How to reference equations using letters and numbers

Sometimes it is convenient to refer to a group of equations by a letter and a number. For example: 2+1 (A1) 2+4 (A2) x^4 (B3) x^e (B4) Placing \tag{A\theequation}\label{eqn:thisone}\...
• 1,431
590 views

### Where to find nitty-gritty details about TeX and friends' font handling systems?

The current guides online and in texdoc that I could find did not deal with the problem I have. How to generate font metrics for system installed TrueType and OpenType fonts? How to generate font ...
• 12k
90k views

### Blackboard bold characters

The blackboard bold font in the AMSFonts package only has capital letters. I sometimes wish to use a blackboard bold "1", for which I can use \usepackage{bbold}. But this changes the entire ...
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3k views

### Glyph insertion

I use Linux and have available to me the "compose" key, and thus can type characters like '°', 'ß', 'ï', 'į', 'ḯ', etc. Is it inherently "bad" to use the compose key to insert the characters, should ...
• 3,047
150k views

### How to break a line in a table [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: How to add a forced line break inside a table cell In a table I would like to have a line break in the text inside a cell. Is there an easy way to do so, or do I have to ...
• 1,277
94k views

### Lowercase \mathcal

The standard font used for \mathcal does not include any lowercase characters. The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbols List suggests redefining \mathcal to use Zapf Chancery. However I do not particularly ...
• 85.1k
21k views

### What, if anything, is the advantage of \bigskip and friends over \vspace?

What are the advantages to using \bigskip, \medskip, and \smallskip instead of just using \vspace{somelength}?
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17k views

### How can I have two or more distinct indexes?

I often want to have more than one index in a longer LaTeX document. For instance, I might want a general concept index, an index of named persons, and an index of symbolism. How can I have two or ...
• 28.8k
25k views

### What is the best package out there to typeset proof trees?

So, I want to typeset some proof trees, i.e. trees of inference rules like those in natural deduction (see diagram below). Which are the best packages that you have found that allow you to do this, ...
• 57.7k
261 views

### Aligning marginal notes with center of line rather than baseline

I would like to have all references in my document (to equations, figures, lemmas, random locations in text, etc.) be numbered in the same series, and I would like these numbers to appear in the ...
• 393
3k views

### Graphing sine function in MetaPost

I'm trying to reconstruct this picture in MetaPost: So far came up with this: draw (-1cm,0)--(3cm,0); draw (0,1cm)--(0,-1cm); draw fullcircle scaled 1.8cm; label(btex $y$ etex,(0,1.2cm)); label(btex ...
31k views

### How can I create a pdf document exactly as big as my tikz picture?

I often create pictures in tikz that I want to either send to someone, or include in an email. The problem with that is that there is a big white space around and and especially below my pictures. To ...
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59k views

### When to use \edef, \noexpand, and \expandafter?

I'm quite happy hacking TeX macros and cobbling together bits and pieces from different style files to suit my own ends, but I have a suspicion that my resulting hacks are not quite as elegant as they ...
• 146k
9k views

### How can I change the colour of my document's section numbering?

I know how to change the colour of a section name using for example \section{\color{Red} Foobar} but that still leaves the section number in black. Is there any way to change the colour of the ...
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24k views

### How to automatically resize the vertical bar in a set comprehension?

I have a simple command which I use to write set comprehensions so that the braces automatically resize with respect to size of the enclosed arguments, e.g. \usepackage{amsmath} \newcommand{\set}[1]{\...
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2k views

### How to "stamp" the same text on each page of a document

I want to have drafting information appear on each page of document. I have seen something similar in the Kluwer document class where it defines \@oddfoot and \@evenfoot for a lot of possibilities. ...
• 1,431
897 views

### How to test whether next token on input stream is catcode 10

Why doesn't the following code work? From a failed, now fixed, SO answer of mine: \documentclass{article} \usepackage{expl3} \ExplSyntaxOn \newcommand\latinabbrev[1]{ \peek_meaning:NTF . {% Same ...
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20k views

### Line breaking (or hyphenation?) of references in apalike

This is a problem I encountered some time ago and I never could solve it: how can you achieve correct line-breaking or hyphenation when citing references with the apalike style? Here is an example: \...
• 5,739
19k views

### Vertically center text and image in one line

I need to place an icon and text behind each other on one line. The icon is higher than a single text line, and would like to have the icon and text center aligned. How do I do that?
• 1,045
287 views

### Can super/sub-scripts bind more tightly than macro expansion?

By "bind more tightly" I refer to the order in which operations are carried out by default. Experimenting shows that if \ab is ab and \cd is cd then \ab^\cd is ab^cd. I would like it to be {ab}^{...
• 146k
72k views

I sometimes have to present on other people's equipment, such as machines running stripped down Linux distributions, presentation servers with a bare-bones PDF viewer running in a virtual machine, or ...
34k views

### How do I repeat a theorem number?

Often in my papers I want to mention theorems in the introduction that are introduced in more detail and proved in a later section. I'd like to include the statement of these theorems twice over, ...
• 7,273
4k views

### What's the absolute largest paper size permissible with pdflatex?

I've had occasion to typeset extraordinarily large matrices, which I didn't seriously expect anyone to expect in detail (without a computer) or print, but I needed it to be obvious that they were ...
• 7,273
18k views

### How to set up inverse search with Okular and Kile

The title pretty much sums it up. I use the package srcltx in my documents. I am running Ubuntu with Kile 2.1 and Okular 0.8.2 as a viewer. I am pretty sure that inverse search should work, but I ...
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8k views

### How to split all BibTeX referenced entries from a big BibTeX database to a copy? [duplicate]

I have a BibTeX database with some big number of references which I use for work. When I need to send a document prepared using that database to somone I have two options: either send a full copy of ...
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11k views

### What is a good way to draw Dynkin diagrams in LaTeX?

I'm about to start writing something up which includes a fair number of Dynkin diagrams, and I can think of several ways of going about it: Just draw the darn things in, e.g., InkScape, and include ...
• 1,380
679 views

### What are some of the less-well-known TeX-like formats?

ConTeXt and LaTeX are well-known and I'm aware of different engines to process those, e.g., XeTeX, pdfTeX, or LuaTeX. But on this meta question discussion came up about TeX, plain-TeX, initex. Can ...
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### What new bits have already been implemented in LaTeX3? Will my current documents (with many packages) still compile with LaTeX3?

I do know that LaTeX3 is a long term project, but I'm interested to find out what's new in LaTeX3 and have there already been any big advancements and backwards incompatible changes.
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732 views

### Does LaTeX support the sarcmark?

Does LaTeX have an escape sequence for the open source sarcmark?
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9k views

### Best documentclass for class notes

Is there a documentclass specificaly for taking notes in a class? If not, what does the community see as things which should be included in such a class (which I'd be happy to write)? Edit: This was ...
15k views

### How to perform advanced spell checking of latex documents?

I'm looking for a way to integrate something like After the Deadline or a similarly sophisticated spell checking tool into writing LaTeX documents. I don't mind it hitting the network each time. I ...
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