Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with TeX

Unnumbered thebibliography in LaTeX?

limon — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:40:03 -0800

In LaTeX, how do I get \thebibliography{} to not number items? I just want them listed plainly, with a hanging indent if they spill over a single line. I don't want to use BibTeX. It's an old paper written by someone else that I'm typesetting in LaTeX, so I want to preserve some of the idiosyncrasies in the citation rather than have BibTeX do it "properly". That's why I'm using thebibliography instead.

Best way to do graphs in LaTex?

mai — Thu, 21 May 2009 11:38:54 -0800

What the best way to put two-coordinate graphs in a LaTex document? I am keeping a set of course notes for a math class. I am using LaTex (TexMaker on a Mac) for this. I need to create and insert some two-coordinate graphs (linear functions, quadratic functions, etc.) into the notes.

As an undergraduate I did all my math with pencil and paper - I have not done anything like this on the computer since high school. I am a total novice at this and I am figuring it out as a go. What's the best (simplest, least likely to fail) method to do this? Thanks!

How can I get a smooth nice math font in LaTeX?

molecicco — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 03:24:06 -0800

Why are LaTeX math fonts so terrible? Or am I missing something? I want to get some nice titles on a legend for a Matlab figure, and I have to use the LaTeX interpreter for some accents, but when I import the figure into Word the resulting font is very pixelated and just plain garbage. How do I get smooth and clear math fonts out of LaTeX? I am bound to using the LaTeX interpreter and $$ delimiters in order to get a dot above a Q, ie: $\dot{Q}$. But the default, italicized font is blurry and pixelated. Even when I use, say $\mathrm{\dot{Q}}$ its still pixelated. And \mathtt gets rid of the dot.

I'm printing the figure to BMP and inserting into the Word document... I have to use Word even though I'd rather be using LaTeX. Any suggestions are appreciated!

Construct a dotted-tilde relation in TeX

Wolfdog — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 09:12:50 -0800

TeXperts: how can I construct a \Dotsim relation that will look like a \sim with dots above and below it (the same way that \Doteq gives an equals sign with dots above and below)?

What typographical knowledge from LaTeX can I apply in Word?

philosophygeek — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 20:23:04 -0800

What typographical knowledge from LaTeX can I apply in Word? My professional field insists upon Word documents, so LaTeX is not an option, and results from LaTeX to Word converters have not been satisfactory. So, what can I teach Word, to make it a better typesetter? I'm already familiar with the basics of styles and logical formatting. What I want to know is what typographical principles LaTex (or just TeX) uses, so I can replicate that behavior when designing my styles. Some things that TeX knows can't be (easily) replicated in Word (e.g., Knuth-Plass linebreaking), but I'm sure there are other bits of typographical wisdom buried within Tex and LaTeX that would be helpful to know. How much space should one have after a heading, before body text? How much larger should headings be compared to body text? I'm curious how LaTeX decides on these kinds of formatting questions, so I can use that knowledge in my style design.

I realize that there are not unanimous conclusions on these issues; I mention LaTeX because it seems to consider these questions in a fairly intelligent way, and it seems like a good starting point for my own typographical education.

Yes book does mean TeX

jeffburdges — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:34:13 -0800

How should one present books online? I'd say the main constraint is that the original source are latex & tex expressing mathematics and using hyperref for hyperlinks. So we've easily got the whole book available in one pdf as also as separate pdfs for each chapter, which requires modifying hyperref or editing the embedded links. But what about lower bandwidth options?

Are there any open source web app that downloads pages when needed ala books.google.com? Can any browsers render pdfs inside the page? Or must all such apps use images?

PDFtoHTML can produce beautiful output, but doesn't support pdf's produced from LaTeX. Any idea if this can be fixed easily?

DVI2html merely produces images files for each page. LaTeX2html seems sublimely ridiculous (for example, theorem environments are converted to images). HyperLaTeX seems workable for minor projects, but too restrictive for books. TTH seems like the best converter by far, even producing MathML, but their pages often require reconfiguration of the browser. Btw, I've noticed that wikipedia doesn't use MathML directly themselves, but typesets the equations using amstex.

Can one produce html output any more easily from ConTeXt?

How do I make LaTeX PDF presentations that don't look like cheap PowerPoint?

Anything — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 08:00:19 -0800

How do I make LaTeX PDF presentations that don't look like cheap PowerPoint? I have just begun studying the basics of LaTeX. There seem to be many good docs and packages for creating nice no-nonsense layouts for papers, but I would also like to use LaTeX for on-screen presentations. The problem is that all the presentation packages I've looked at (beamer, prosper, pdfscreen) seem to be founded on the idea that presentations need to have these fancy colorful blocks and bubbles that serve no functional purpose. What I want is a presentation that looks just as simple as any academic paper, but with a layout that's designed for a big screen in front of an audience. How do I do this?

LaTeX

Aloysius Bear — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 10:09:55 -0800

Help me with lists in LaTeX! And I'd like some general advice about whether LaTeX and LyX are worth the hassle. I'm using LyX on Windows XP. I want to make a list that looks something like this:



A.1) a) i) Text here.

        ii) Text here.

        iii) Text here.

     b) Some text here.



B.3) Some text here.



B.6) Some text here.

Is this possible in LyX? If not, how easy is it to do in LaTeX itself?

More importantly: I get the impression that the answer to this question might not be trivial. I may need to do this kind of non-standard formatting quite often. Given that, is it worth sticking with LaTeX? I know I could hack together a list that looked OK in Word without so much hassle, so I'm wondering if LaTeX/LyX etc are worth the effort.

I'm writing a number of essays and short answers per week (a few of which contain equations and tables of statistics), and later in the year will start my undergraduate dissertation in the social sciences. I'm pretty competent with software in general, but my aim is to find a word-processing setup which lets me get on with writing, rather than one which has maximum geek-points.

Help me get wrapped up in LaTeX

JMOZ — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 09:13:15 -0800

Can anyone recommend a good LaTeX editor for Windows for writing my dissertation? So it's time to write my dissertation and graduate. In fact, it's a bit past time since I am planning on accepting a faculty job which will start in the Fall.

All this means, of course, that I need to write fairly quickly. Nonetheless, I have decided to learn/use LaTeX instead of Word. (I really can't stomach wrestling with Word for figure references, etc).

Can anyone suggest a particularly good/friendly/straightforward editor that works on Windows? I would like to end up with a PDF. Do I use miktek or something else? I currently have a lot of references in Endnote. Is there a particular bibtek editor/program/something or other that will work nicely?

Obviously, I don't really know what I'm doing here, so if you have other suggestions, I'd very much welcome them. I think I'm pretty set on LaTeX, and I have a good class file and templete which have the University of California format (and the weird UCSB additional requirements), but I am open to other thoughts and ideas you might have. Thanks!

TeX ⊂ LaTeX?

king walnut — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 22:05:34 -0800

What is the relationship between TeX and LaTeX? I thought LaTeX was a set of macros built upon TeX, making LaTeX a superset of TeX. But I've found, for example, that \eqalign does not exist when I run my TeX file through LaTeX (I'm using MiKTeX).

So much for the superset theory. Is there a succinct way of stating the relationship between TeX and LaTeX?

e^i.pi+1=0

Mapes — Wed, 31 May 2006 16:15:37 -0800

Most convenient way to insert equations into web pages? I'd like to add equations to a few web pages, as shown here. The way I do this now is to use Wikipedia's markup language to generate a .png file on a Wikipedia page, then I save the file to my hard drive and call the image in HTML.

I know this can't be how the cool people do it. But I've never used Tex or Latex, and I'm pretty baffled as to which of the many editors would be best. My experience is limited to MS Word. I don't mind learning a new markup language, but the shallower the learning curve, the better.

Any suggestions for generating a good-looking page with good-looking equations?

Give me TeX or give me Death!

onalark — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 15:04:10 -0800

In an effort to increase productivity, I've been trying to escape my all-too-familiar laptop with all its enticing shortcuts and bookmarks and start using my school's sexy G5 workstations. How can I install teTeX or some other LaTeX package on these babies without root? My general plan so far has been to copy applications to my iPod or an sftp site I manage, then pull them out as needed. Unfortunately, I've hit a roadblock installing teTeX, it looks like I'm going to need to manually build the libraries and binaries then port those over.

I'm a bit lost on the manual installation for a G5, anybody done this before? I can do a ./configure, make, make install, but it seems like it's going to be a real pain with all the package dependencies. Anybody know of a teTeX/laTeX disk image I can just copy over, or a way to install Fink locally that won't explode?

As a last resort, I'm happy to take advantage of anybody's configuration instructions or pre-built binaries for a G5 on OS X.4.

Help formatting a BibTeX style file (*.bst)

EmuBite — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 11:35:18 -0800

Calling all BibTeX gurus! Can anyone help me format a BibTeX style file (*.bst)? I'm a LaTeX/BibTeX newbie. The scientific journal I work for accepts papers in MS Word and LaTeX. Over the past few weeks, I've come to love working in TeX (using TeXShop on the Mac). I'm cutting my teeth at the moment, and thanks to excellent online references I haven't had a hair-pulling moment yet (knock on silicon...!).

There is one problem I have involving BibTeX. The journal requires a certain bibliographic style that many journal authors don't follow. It's up to me to edit the References section to conform to the journal's requirements. While the journal has a custom BibTeX style file (*.bst) to ensure that references are stylized correctly, the file dates from 1993. Needless to say, the journal has updated its bibliographic requirements since then.

Here's an example of the old versus new style:

Old:

Smith, A. B., Jones, C. D., Baker, E. F, and Johnson, G. H., 2006, A pithy title for a journal article: J. of Sci. and Prog., 54, 100-150.

New:

Smith, A. B., C. D. Jones, E. F. Baker, and G. H. Johnson, 2006, A pithy title for a journal article: Journal of Science and Progress, 54, 100-150.

As you can see, the new style requires the authors' initials to appear before the last names (except for the first author -- this stays the same). We also no longer use abbreviations for journals, and the volume number (54 in this case) appears in bold type. (FYI, this is basically the Chicago Manual of Style form of citation with a few added constraints.)

For reference, here is a copy of the current BibTeX style file the journal is using (via Filecloud):

http://emubite.filecloud.com/files/file.php?user_file_id=110549

If anyone can point me in the right direction (what needs editing in the .bst file, a good Internet or print resource, etc.), I would be much obliged.

Thanks in advance for any information you can supply.

BibTeX help wanted

kenko — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 12:20:09 -0800

Any BibTeX gurus around here? I'd like recommendations for software, running on Linux, that will help me develop and manage a bibliographical database, and for BibTeX styles/packages/whatever-they're-calleds developed for with humanities, as opposed to science or math, types in mind. I'm told jurabib is good on the latter score, but it seems to be primarily developed for German law formats, with Chicago/MLA styles in development for American anglophones. And if jurabib defines new fields, or defines them differently, does that mean that software for managing bibliographies wouldn't add them right? (There is such software, yes? People don't really write them out by hand?)

Any tips & tricks greatly appreciated.

XP, emacs, and tex-mode with MikTeX / YAP.

Wolfdog — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 06:34:17 -0800

XP, emacs, and tex-mode with MikTeX / YAP. (On someone else's XP machine, at their request) I've installed emacs 21.3 and need to get it playing nicely with MikTeX. For the most part, things work as they should: C-C C-F invokes TeX or LaTeX appropriately. But C-C C-V does not start the previewer. It issues the right command (I had to patch the tex-mode.el code just a smidge to keep it from appending a unix-style &), but yap either (a) just won't start or (b) starts, hangs for a long time, and then issues an "error reading the file" message.
If I issue the same command to launch yap manually from the command line (yap hello.dvi) it loads fine.
Also, the very same setup works fine on my Win98 laptop. Anyone successfully TeX-ing and YAP-ing from emacs on XP? Got any ideas?