Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with latex

Linus said git was a file system!

jeffburdges — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 07:33:14 -0800

Anybody have opinions on abstraction vs. commuting patchs (git, mercurial, darcs) for handling short form letters in latex? I usually write form letters by first building a framework with various variables holding various bits that might change, and then tweaking the bits for individual letters. I found this "abstraction" approach was fairly efficient for very repetitive form letter, but I've encountered some situations requiring more flexible forum letters recently.

Does anyone have any comments about using distributed version control systems like git, mercurial, or darcs for forum letters? I'd imagine the main issue will be the enormous number of branches, so being able push a patch through to all branches simultaneously might become annoying.

I'd usually use git for version control, but maybe darcs is worth it here?

p.s. Anybody have other approaches for resolving this question?

Latex on windows

medusa — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:38:30 -0800

What is the best way to use latex on windows? I use latex on a windows machine. For about 6 years I have been doing this using xemacs as an editor, miktex, ghostscript & ghostview, and yap (for viewing dvi files) or a pdf viewer (for pdf files).

Is there a better way? Should I switch to one of the newer programs like latex editor (led), texniccenter, or winedt? I would appreciate learning about the pros and cons of these new packages.

(I understand that related questions have been asked before, but they are either a couple years old or don't have much detail on the different software.)

Using spirit gum to attach a prosthetic near my real hair

Riki tiki — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:04:36 -0800

Tell me about using spirit gum near my actual hair. My Halloween costume has a prosthetic that I intend to attach to the top of my head. The prosthetic came with a tube of spirit gum as an adhesive. I've never used spirit gum before... is it okay to use it near hair? Will it stick? Will I be able to remove it afterwards? Is there a better alternative?

(this is the prosthetic... it's a latex bolt-looking thing with a thin flower of flesh-colored latex as the base)

How to get our weather balloon floating again? How to get it taking pictures?

Tufa — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:00:56 -0800

How to repair a weather balloon, in the context of aerial photography? How to do aerial photography at all? dmd and I recently thought we might try some aerial photography.

We thought we would use a weather balloon, one which was big enough to carry the payload of a Canon PowerShot camera.

Our ambition led us to purchase this weather balloon. It is made of latex. Hopes (and voices) borne high on helium, we launched the balloon on a windy day, in the high desert of central Arizona, a setting which (O! woe) led to the balloon's quick extinction. Shortly, the balloon was pushed by downdrafts into a bush of catclaw acacia. Catclaw acacia is named for its small, sharp, catching THORNS which resemble the claws of a cat. Reader, it popped.

I don't want to give up the investment of this balloon, or give up our vision of high-flying photography. My question is, is there a way to patch a hole in latex?

Would a leather or vinyl patch kit, or tire puncture kit, or some sort of plastic bond, work for this, do you think? Do you think using some Fix-A-Flat might work, if it was released into the balloon while it was inflated in some makeshift way to its full airborne size? I imagine this might stiffen the balloon and put a limit on how high it could go, but it would be good enough for me, as a salvaging situation.

And, do you have any tips for launching weather balloons, or for aerial photography in general?

Consider proximity of cactus and thorns when launching, is my best tip.

LaTeX + pdf = employment fail?

geos — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 09:30:37 -0800

LaTeX + pdf = employment fail? I am looking for a job and have been using LaTeX to generate my resume and cover-letter. At a recent job interview I was told that they weren't able to print my resume. It looked fine on their computer but when they printed it, it was as if most of the document had been whited-out: a couple of phrases appeared approximately where they should but, most of it was just missing. Are all of the resumes I've emailed screwed up or special unix snowflakes? I have been using texlive on ubunutu to generate a dvi of my resume and cover letter and then dvipdf to create the pdf. The laser printer they were using didn't appear to support postscript, and by clicking on the 'print as image' box in windows I was able to get the resume to print out fine...

No glove...awww, sad, no love...

nakedcodemonkey — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:31:55 -0800

Can you hook a gal up? I'm looking for recommendations for a good latex-free, powder-free disposable exam glove for safe and very tactile sex. I understand nitrile is strongest, and slides on well. But does does such a smooth fit make your hand extra sweaty? I have mild eczema, so potentially that's a problem. And how does vinyl compare in your opinion?

Most options available in either material seem to assume that one is a lab tech wanting to restore fine motor control via added fingertip texture. For my purposes, this is less than ideal. I'd rather find something with a completely smooth glide. I've contacted a few manufacturers whose product details are ambiguous on this front, but so far they've been slow to reply.

Finally, it's unclear to me which size to get. Nitrile gloves in particular apparently run small. For dishwashing gloves, medium is a quite loose though comfortable fit; while small runs slightly short in the fingertips. Can you help me translate this into good sizing for an exam glove?

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.

Catsuit: how/where to buy?

Anonymous — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:03:15 -0800

Catsuit: how/where to buy? I'm looking to buy a latex or pvc catsuit for my wife. It'll be a surprise (sort of), but I'm pretty sure she'll be into it. I found at least one website that purports to sell such items, but how do I size such a thing? Is this the sort of garment that has to be tried on to find a good fit, or is it a one-size-fits-many sort of thing (and honestly, I can't tell). Which material is best? Other accoutrements I should get?

Also, any fun things to do with it? Mostly I plan to admire her beauty and take photos for our sekrit album, but I confess I'm not really a fetishist and naïve about these types of things, so, suggestions welcome.

An old-fashioned girl

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:46:18 -0800

The last time I was single and dating, Ronald Reagan was president. Have recommended (and practical) safe sex practices changed in the last 25 years? I am back on the dating scene after a marriage of nearly 20 years and a year of intentional celibacy. The last time I was having relatively casual sex was in the mid-late 80s when I was in college and hanging out at the women's center with its safe sex classes. This was the "no glove, no love," "wrap that rascal," and dental dams/non-microwaveable plastic wrap era. Fluid exchange was pretty much the promise-ring of my social circle, granted only after six months of monogamous latexed sex and a second round of testing (OK, we were kids who followed rules, but that was how it was).

That being the case, I could use some help on current expectations and practices. I can handle the "getting dates" part, but what supplies does the modern woman carry? What about getting tested & asking about a prospective partner's status - is this still a reasonable topic of conversation? Personal anecdotes welcome, along with links, etc.

Possibly relevant: I'm female, mid-40s, interested in both men and women in a wide age range, not insistent on monogamy, and kinky (no intentional bloodplay/piercing, and I'm hypercareful with unintentional blood). I'm in the US but travel a lot, so info on what's expected elsewhere is also good - particularly Europe and Aus/NZ.

Thanks in advance. Throwaway email: metafilteranon@gmail.com.

unfill my hbox

Westringia F. — Sun, 24 May 2009 16:31:09 -0800

LaTeX/BibTeX-filter: How can I keep long citations from overruning the line when the references are by names and year (apalike)? I'm preparing a document which needs to use citations like the ones that apalike produces (but I am not married to apalike.bst specifically if another .bst'll do it), and I'm running into HELLA FRUSTRATING overfull hbox issues when I have long/multiple citations (in the text, not in the bibliography). It looks like ass: not acceptable.

I've gotten rid of the nonbreaking space (~) before the cite; I've tried compiling multiple times post-bibtex to give it a chance to sort itself out, I've tried apasoft.bst... all with the same results. It's not willing to break the line mid-reference.

Is there a way I can tell it that it's ok to break the line mid-reference?

Help.

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!

We have always had weird in-laws

tmcw — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:17:19 -0800

I've been tasked (by myself and others) with compiling an extensive history of my extended family on one side. More than a family tree, we're compiling stories, photos, everything we can gather about my weirdo relatives. What tools should I use to compile it? I'm a computer geek / developer / cs major, so I'm very familiar with LaTeX, etc, and willing to deal with arcane systems, write code to make things work, etc. But I'd like to do the best practice route for whatever this is. At this stage (just combining data from multiple people), Google Docs might be the way to go, since all formatting will be lost / redone in whatever system I want to use. Is there something like LaTeX which gives you a bit of ability to make things meaningful (labels, footnotes, etc) and separate presentation from data, but possibly better-tuned for long english documents than Knuth-style math?

The final output will probably be a webpage & PDF, which leads me strongly towards LaTeX because of its great filters, but I'm just wary of moving to such a tricky tool when I might want to pass editorship onto another relative, or something like that, in the future?

So, any ideas from anyone who has done this before (and yeah, I'm kind of an open-source dork, so extra points for things that are free and cross-platform)

Thanks!

How can I fix my walls?

alice ayres — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:02:55 -0800

DIY home repair - I would like to re-paint the walls in my apartment by myself. I live in a studio apartment (about 515 sq ft). The walls currently have several layers of oil-based paint on them.

I would like to re-paint. I guess, first, I would need to strip (I'm not sure if this is the right word or term) the walls, so that the surface is smooth. I would also like to use latex paint when re-painting the walls. Of course, I have no idea how to do any of this or what the optimal solution is.

The foyer is painted red, the dressing area is burgundy, and the rest of the walls are some off white color. I believe that there are at most 2 layers of the darker paint colors, but I am not certain how many layers of paint there are beneath those.

My load at work has decreased, and I am only working half days, so I think this would be a good project to do while I am at home. I'm pleased that I may be able to apply some of my project management skills to this DIY job.

Please tell me (VERY SLOWLY) what I need to do to get awesome, smooth walls, including:

-what tools I might need to buy and their costs;
-best practices and tips for this sort of procedure;
-applicable terms (like, is it stripping?) so that I may speak intelligently about this when buying things at Home Depot;
-what would be an approximate timeline based on my beginner's skill level; and
-any advice (i.e. don't switch to latex, hire a contractor instead)?

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.

Who's really under that face?

apetpsychic — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:16:26 -0800

The other day my roommate asked me "What's the name of the tv show where they're always taking off realistic masks to reveal they're someone else? Is it Mission: Impossible?" I told him it might be the movie, but the effect is probably too advanced for the show. He also admitted he might be thinking of the Charlies Angels movie. So that got me wondering...What are some other examples of the effects driven crime-movie trope? Thanks!

Best method for summarizing papers?

painquale — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:56:21 -0800

My approach to academic papers is to read through once, then go back and type up notes on it. The problem is that my notes serve two functions: summary and commentary. What's the best software for making synopses of academic papers with personal annotated notes? Most of what I what I write is done in the original author's voice. It's a summary of the author's key points, arguments, data, and citations to other works. But occasionally I break into my own voice and add some of my own observations or arguments. I want some way to delineate the two (and preferably, be able to easily print the file with or without my personal commentary). I've tried around with a few potential solutions in Word -- making my comments in a different color, putting them in footnotes, using the commenting feature -- but none them seem adequate. I tried hacking something up in LaTeX, but unless there's a really cool package out there I haven't seen, it doesn't seem to be made for this sort of thing. It strikes me that there should be some software out there that is tailor-made for this, or there's some method that I'm not seeing. Does anyone have any ideas? What do other people here do?

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?

TexShop/Latex Templates for the Law

R_Nebblesworth — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:09:11 -0800

TexShop and Me: templates for law students? Pretty much what it says. Are there TexShop templates out there for law students writing law review articles, i.e. with BlueBook style formatting for bibliography entries/citation (guess I am talking about BibTex now) and such? Thanks. P.S. I am obviously a LaTex/TexShop newbie so please school me if this question don't make no sense.

Latex filter, no, the other kind of latex

jonesor — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 07:36:51 -0800

Latex filter (not that sort). I'm using Latex (with TexShop and Bibdesk) and I need to format a bibliography in a particular way. Please help! I need to format the bibliography so that each reference simply follows on from the one before, without a carriage return.

i.e. like this:

1. Bloggs, F. 2000 Working can be fun. Journal of Work Science 10:30-45. 2. Doe, J. 1999 Camels for beginners. Camel Racing Press 34:56-76. 3. Giles, F. 1987 Sheep are woolly. Farmers Weekly. 4:67-90.

Rather than this:

1. Bloggs, F. 2000 Working can be fun. Journal of Work Science 10:30-45.

2. Doe, J. 1999 Camels for beginners. Camel Racing Press 34:56-76.

3. Giles, F. 1987 Sheep are woolly. Farmers Weekly. 4:67-90.

Are there any style files out there that accomplish this? Or ones that can be easily edited to do it?

I'm a total beginner at this...

Picture a Venn diagram with 3 circles: LaTeX, Emacs, Mac. I'd like to live in the intersection.

gleuschk — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 11:08:47 -0800

Mac users who write LaTeX documents in Emacs (with or without AucTeX), please tell me about your workflow. My wife and I both recently switched (back) to Macs from Windows machines. We're mathematicians, and we both live -- or used to live -- pretty much completely inside an Emacs buffer, writing LaTeX. We've had a terrible time approximating our Windows setups on the new Macs. What Emacs version do you people use? (I've tried Aquamacs and Carbon Emacs.) What PDF previewer? (Skim, Preview, something else?) Most importantly: how is everything tied together, in your .emacs or elsewhere?

Finally, please help me understand what the point of AucTeX is. Both the emacs versions I've tried come with it pre-installed. So far, all I can see is that it adds unnecesary keystrokes when I want to typeset something, and destroys all my useful muscle-memory. Do you use it? Does it make your life better/easier?

Is dirty latex safe?

pokeedog — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:30:57 -0800

Compost & painted wood walls, is it a good mix? I have a number of narrow louvered doors from a remodel, that I think would be great to use as walls for a compost pile. I would configure it myself, such as something similar to this. The doors I would like to use are covered in latex paint. I'm positive there is no lead paint on them. Do you think the latex paint covered doors would contaminate my compost pile? I would imagine in a few months the paint would start to flake.

Fixing sticky latex paint

Foam Pants — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:59:49 -0800

A latex-painted dresser's drawers are sticking closed. Is there any hope? I received an old dresser and I wanted to paint its ratty face red. Under advice from a local paint retailer, and against my better judgement, I painted it with latex paint. Now the gummy surfaces of the drawers and frame are sticking together so violently that pieces of wood are actually coming off! The drawer-faces are made to sit inside of the frame so it is doubly bad. Taking all of the paint off is not an option. The frame is in such bad shape that, without the paint, it looks like hell. I have no designated workspace, so any really nasty chemicals are out. Is there anything that I can do to salvage this dresser?

Seeking great examples of book design in LaTeX

tomwheeler — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:24:56 -0800

I am teaching myself typesetting with LaTeX. I learn best by example and so I'm looking for some great examples to follow — especially if they're based on the Memoir class. Ideally, I'd love to find some (public domain) classic literature that stands out as a great study in syntax, style and design. What do you recommend?

UnWord Me

tmcw — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:53:32 -0800

Escaping M$ Word, but getting the same formatting... So, I'll need to type a few papers this semester. I'm using a Mac. I have Office installed, actually, but I hate it: I would rather write in LaTeX, Bean, etc. But my professors will definitely be looking for 12px Times New Roman double spaced, standard margins, etc. Are there any LaTeX templates for this, or is the typesetting engine way too different. And OpenOffice seems to be one of the least native apps I've used on my mac (even Inkscape is a lot better), so I'd rather not go that route.

Any tips on escaping this big M?