Latex tips and tricks

To view on-line go to https://gborghesan.github.io/latex_notes

In-line enumeration

To save space, it is useful to make an enumerated list in the form of i) , ii), etc. To do so, I define the following environment:

% packages for inline lists
\usepackage{paralist}
\newenvironment{inparlist}{\begin{inparaenum}[\itshape i)]}{\end{inparaenum}}

The use is the same as the itemize environment.

Inclusion of figures (“The Easy Way”)

This is for figures that have been made in Inkscape; there are 2 options:

One option is to save directly from Inkscape as tex (LaTeX with PSTricks extensions) and include the files.

Another option is to save it as a pdf, with the text saved as latex, as shown in the following figure.

PDF + Latex

Inclusion of figures (“Complex and Automatic”)

I use mainly two types of figures

svg files made in Inkscape
eps files made in Matlab

for both, I use psfrag commands to have all the text in the figure uniform. psfrag is a command that allows to substitute a string in an EPS figure with another one. THe main advantage is the it is possible to control the type of character and size will not scale by scaling the figure. In addition, math formulas can be inserted in the figure. See psfrag documentation for more info.

Preamble

in the preamble, I add the following:

%\newcommand{\REFRESHFIGURES}{} % uncomment this to regenerate the figures
\ifdefined\REFRESHFIGURES
\usepackage{auto-pst-pdf} %this one is for eps 
\newcommand{\executeiffilenewer}[3]{
 \ifnum\pdfstrcmp{\pdffilemoddate{#1}}
 {\pdffilemoddate{#2}}>0
 {\immediate\write18{#3}}\fi
}

\newcommand{\includesvg}[1]{
 \executeiffilenewer{images/#1.svg}{images/#1.pdf}
 {inkscape -z -D --file=images/#1.svg 
 --export-area-page 
 --export-pdf=images/#1.pdf --export-latex}
 \input{images/#1.pdf_tex}
}
\else
\usepackage[off]{auto-pst-pdf}

\newcommand{\includesvg}[1]{
 \input{images/#1.pdf_tex}
 } 
\fi

The figures are generated only if the \REFRESHFIGURES is defined. The EPS files must be in images sub-deirectory This code is largely taken from InkscapePDFLaTeX. Also, check in such document how to make the svgs.

important

Tested in Ubuntu
pdflatex is used for compiling
pdflatex needs to call Inkscape so
- Inkscape must be installed
- pdflatex must be called with the -shell-escape flag, e.g.:
```
pdflatex -shell-escape main.tex
```

Adding an svg figure

in the text, to add a figure, the following code can be used

\begin{figure}\centering
  	\def\svgwidth{\columnwidth}
  	\includesvg{figure_file}
\caption{\label{fig:figure1} A nice caption.}
\end{figure}

additionals psfrag commands can be used, before the includesvg command.

Adding an eps figure

this I do mainly for Matlab-generated graphs, but can be useful also for schemes generated with Dia

Following examples insert two subfigures (and needs also \usepackage{subfig} in the preamble)

\begin{figure}
\centering
\include{macro_psfrag}
\subfloat[caption of subfig 1 \label{fig:fig1_subfig1}]{
  \psfragfig[width=0.3892\columnwidth]{filename_subfig1}
}
\hfill
\subfloat[caption of subfig 2 \label{fig:fig1_subfig2}]{
   \psfragfig[width= 0.56 \columnwidth]{filename_subfig2}
}
\caption{Main caption of the figure \label{fig:main_figure}}
\end{figure}

The command \psfragfig is part of the pstool package. it automatically generates a pdf files that contains all the images, with the text already in there. is quite handy also for figure reuse.

Have a look to the main1.tex file fo a minimally working example.

References

Instead of putting the type of reference before the \ref command, e.g. Fig.~\ref{fig:myfig}, I use the package cleveref. This package gives the command \cref{}, which automatically recognises the type of reference by adding the type. In case the reference need to have the first letter capitalised, the command \Cref is also available. If the default behaviour is not of (e.g. you what Fig. 1 in place of Figure 1 in the text)it is possible to define the behaviour.

\usepackage{cleveref}
\crefformat{equation}{(#2#1#3)}
\crefformat{section}{Sec.~#2#1#3}
\crefformat{figure}{Fig.~#2#1#3}
\crefformat{paragraph}{par.~#2#1#3}
\crefformat{lstlisting}{Listing~#2#1#3}
\crefmultiformat{lstlisting}{Listings~#2#1#3}%
{ and~#2#1#3}{, #2#1#3}{ and~#2#1#3} 

the last line specify what to do two or more listings (will be on that in a moment) are present. look at the package documentation, sincethe package has many more options.

Source Code and other code snippets

To snippets of code in latex, I use the package listings it has already some syntax highlight done for some languages. If you need to define your language (syntax highlighting) and the way it is presented (listing style), this is possible in the preamble:

\usepackage{listings}
\usepackage{textcomp}
\definecolor{dkgreen}{rgb}{0,0.6,0}
\definecolor{gray}{rgb}{0.5,0.5,0.5}
\definecolor{mauve}{rgb}{0.58,0,0.82}
\lstdefinelanguage{lua}
  {morekeywords={and,break,do,else,elseif,end,false,for,function,if,in,local,
     nil,not,or,repeat,return,then,true,until,while},
     sensitive=true,
   morecomment=[l]{--},
   morecomment=[s]{--[[}{]]--},
   morestring=[b]",
   morestring=[d]'
  }
\lstdefinestyle{luastyle}
{
	numbers=left,
	stepnumber=5,    
	firstnumber=1,
	keywordstyle=\color{blue},
	numberfirstline=true,
	numbersep=2pt, % how far the line-numbers are from the code 
	numberstyle=\tiny\color{gray}, % the style that is used for the line-numbers
	xleftmargin=5pt,%framexleftmargin=5mm,
	language=lua,
	inputencoding=utf8x,
	backgroundcolor=\color[rgb]{0.95,0.95,0.95},
	tabsize=2,
	rulecolor=,
	basicstyle=\footnotesize \ttfamily,
	upquote=true,
	aboveskip={1.0\baselineskip},
	columns=fixed,
	showstringspaces=false,
	extendedchars=true,
	breaklines=true,
	prebreak = \raisebox{0ex}[0ex][0ex]{\ensuremath{\hookleftarrow}},
	frame=lines,
	showtabs=false,
	showspaces=false,
	showstringspaces=false,
	identifierstyle=\ttfamily,
	commentstyle=\color[rgb]{0.133,0.545,0.133},
	stringstyle=\color[rgb]{0.627,0.126,0.941},
	captionpos=b,
}  

\lstnewenvironment{luaenv}[1][]{ 
	\lstset{ 
		label=#1,
 		style=luastyle}}{}

The code above is in a file (listing_def.tex) that is included in the preamble.

Then, add a snippet of code in the tex document from a separate lua file:

\lstinputlisting[style=luastyle,float,caption={caption of the listing},label=listing: point]{file.lua}

The result looks like this:

listings

The package has many possible options, to be checked in the documentation.

Gantt charts

Practically the only way I found to make this kind of charts, is to use the pgfgantt package. An example is in the main_gantt.tex

to generate an image from the tex, I have a bash script with the following

lualatex main_gantt.tex
pdfcrop --margins 10 main_gantt.pdf main_gantt_crop.pdf
convert -geometry 1600x1600 -density 800x800 -quality 100 main_gantt_crop.pdf main_gantt.png

lualatex is needed if the extra font is used.

the result looks like the following

Gantt chart

Define new commands for words that are used often

The xspace commands taks care that a space is added after a word, only if it is not a comma or a point. in the preamble:

\usepackage{xspace}
\newcommand{\eg}{\textit{e.g.}\xspace}

Make a pdf with track changes, w.r.t. the last commit in git

To see which are the latest changes in a latex document, sometimes work the command latexdiff for example, to see the changes of the latest commit and build with latexmk, use:

git latexdiff HEAD~1 --latexmk

To see the changes that are not committed vs. the latest commit:

git latexdiff HEAD --