LaTeX Tips

A general grab-bag of tips for using LaTeX, from the days when I still used it a lot:

• To add nice headers and footers to each page use the fancyhdr package.

• Use glosstex for most acronym and glossary needs.

• Use the hyphenat package if you need monospace text (such as that set by the \texttt command) to wrap correctly, with hyphenation marks.

• The varioref package provides easy-to-use cross referencing with automatic phrases such as ‘on the following page…’ etc.

• To include EPS easily in both latex and pdflatex documents, use the following magic incantation in the document preamble:

\newif\ifpdf
\ifx\pdfoutput\undefined
    \pdffalse
\else
    \pdfoutput=1
    \pdftrue
\fi

\ifpdf
   \usepackage{hyperref}
   \usepackage[pdftex]{graphicx}
   \DeclareGraphicsExtensions{.pdf,.png,.jpg}
\else
   \usepackage{graphicx}
   \DeclareGraphicsExtensions{.eps}
\fi

Then refer to graphics files, when including them, without an extension. Use epstopdf to convert all EPS files to PDF for inclusion in the pdflatex version of the document.

• Use the custom-bib package to easily create custom BiBTeX style files.

• The following command produces a new environment which gives a nice way of having an introductory paragraph for each new chapter:

\newenvironment{intro}{\sffamily}
{\vspace*{2ex minus 1.5ex}}