LaTeX Templates
April 8th, 2012 by Stefan Kottwitz
Velimir just published an article about LaTeX templates on LaTeX-Community.org. In this article, he explains benefits of using templates, and he introduces his site www.LaTeXTemplates.com, which collects templates and publishes it under a Creative Commons license.
Some benefits of using templates:
- Rapid document development
- Based on tried, tested and proven pre-defined layout
- Documented methods for customization
Of course, this requires templates which are of high quality and up-to-date. It might be a good idea to additional classify templates by development date and review date. A simple line “Reviewed 2012 by …” can create confidence in a template.
LaTeX3 will introduce a template concept. This is a similar idea, but it will go further and shall separate the design (template) from the author interface (document) and the underlying source (classes and packages). With LaTeX2e templates, design and interface are still mixed, though it can already be a good way for authors. And I think, when LaTeX3 comes out, good existing LaTeX2e templates will benefit and will be designed to become LaTeX3 templates.
This entry was posted on Sonntag, April 8th, 2012 at 15:37 and is filed under Online Ressources, Layout, LaTeX General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 8th, 2012 at 18:33
Nice post. Templates have made my life easier. Can you elaborate on LaTeX3’s template concept?
April 8th, 2012 at 19:06
Have a look at texdoc.net/pkg/xtemplate and LaTeX3 News 3 2010 for a short introduction to xtemplate. I think there’s good explanation in those documents. The concept is pretty sophisticated compared to a template file for filling in.
April 9th, 2012 at 07:30
[…] local central repository of templates (and maybe their revisions as Stefan Kottwitz suggested in his post), and when ever template.tex is needed copy it to a new directory dedicated to the new document. […]