PSTricks package update: pst-fun
Today an update of the PSTricks related package pst-fun was released. pst-fun is aimed at drawing funny objects like bird, fish, ant, kangaroo, dog and faces, of course with different size, rotation etc. It may be useful for testing other PSTricks macros and could be more entertaining than simple dots or geometrical shapes. I’ve made a simple compilable example for testing:
\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article} \usepackage[margin=3.5cm]{geometry} \usepackage{pst-fun} \begin{document} \begin{pspicture}[showgrid=true](0,-1.5)(13,4) \put(1,1){\psBill} \put(3,2){\psBird[Branch]} \end{pspicture} \end{document} |
And here’s a screenshot of the output:
If you want to see it in vector graphics quality you can find the corresponding pdf output here.
In the documentation to pst-fun you will find more explanation accompanied by examples.
TeXnicCenter 1 Beta 7.50 released
Today version 1 Beta 7.50 of TeXnicCenter has been released.
Major new features of this release are
- enhancement of autocompletion,
- the possibility to create a new file from selected text for inclusion by input{} or include{} ore user defined,
- the column for word wrapping can be defined by the user.
More information regarding the features and bugfixes can be read on the TeXnicCenter Homepage.
See also the short review of LaTeX IDEs in Mathematics Diary by jimcp.
Hyphenation patterns in UTF-8 released
The package hyph-utf8 has been released today. It contains hyphenation patterns that have been converted into UTF-8, addressing the need for appropriate patterns by native UTF-8 engines such as XeTeX.
For more information see the README file on its location on CTAN and tug.org/tex-hyphen.
Update of the UK TeX FAQ to v3.18
The version 3.18 of the english TeX Frequently Asked Questions has been released. New subjects are:
- Adobe Reader messing with print size
- Prebuilt installation files on the archive
- Installing using preformatted ZIP files
- Getting the right paper geometry from (La)TeX
- Preparing a Type 1 font
Several topics have been revised.
For more information visit the UK TeX FAQ Homepage.
Modifying plain page style
In documents using the book or report class the first page of a chapter will have the page style plain, the page number will appear at the bottom of the page. If you want to remove the number you could write \thispagestyle{empty} on each of those pages, or you could force the plain page style to be empty:
\makeatletter \let\ps@plain\ps@empty \makeatother |
If you use the headings or fancy pagestyle and you want that pagestyle for opening pages of chapters too, you can write similar for instance
\let\ps@plain\ps@fancy |
and all plain pages will look like the fancy style.
This topic was discussed in the LaTeX Community Forum on mrunix.de and on CQF.info.
New TikZ package: tikz-inet
The today released package tikz-inet extends TikZ with commands for drawing interaction nets. At least Version 2.0 of pgf/TikZ is required.
For imformation about interaction nets see “Interaction Nets” by Y.Lafont, in POPL’90, 95-108 or for example the Diploma of Simon Gay, 1991.
Here is a small code example similar to one given in the documentation:
\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article} \usepackage[fancy]{tikz-inet} \renewcommand*\inetcolor{blue!25} \begin{document} \begin{tikzpicture} \inetcell{A} \inetprombox{(A)}(pa) \inetcell[at=(bpa.east),right=5pt]{B} \inetwire(B.middle pax)(A.middle pax) \inetprombox{(bpa)(pa)(B)}(p) \inetwire(A.pal)(pa.middle pax) \inetwirefree(pa.pal) \inetwirefree(p.pal) \inetwire(B.pal)(p.middle pax) \end{tikzpicture} \end{document} |
A screenshot of the output:
Hack: change starred command into unstarred
Some packages like nomencl, glossary and environments like thebibliography in standard LaTeX classes use the starred sectioning forms \chapter* and \section*. Even if they provide an option to let them added to the table of contents it may be required to use numbered sectioning. In that case you could look at the corresponding source code (article.cls, nomencl.sty, glossary.sty, …) and redefine thebibliography by \renewenvironment or redefine thenomenclature of the nomencl package etc.
Here I will show a way without redefining certain internal environments. I will use the TeX commands \def and \let to temporarily change the meaning of \section:
\let\stdsection\section \def\section*#1{\stdsection{#1}} \printnomenclature % \printglossary \let\section\stdsection |
If you are interested in testing it by yourself you can find complete examples here.
This topic was discussed on mrunix.de and in the LaTeX Community Forum.
Character tables of fonts
If you are looking for a certain symbol or its number and you already know the font name, the fonttable package prints its character table for you. You could compile this small example, printing the table of the psyr font:
\documentclass{article} \usepackage{fonttable} \begin{document} \fonttable{psyr} \end{document} |
You will find the pdf output here.
Here is a part of the screenshot for a quick demonstration:
This topic was discussed on mrunix.de and on Matheplanet.
Special LaTeX characters
Besides the common upper- and lowercase letters, digits and punctuation characters, that can simply by typed with the editor, some characters are reserved for LaTeX commands. They cannot be used directly in the source. Usually they can be printed if preceded by a backslash:
\documentclass{article} \usepackage{array} \usepackage{booktabs} \begin{document} \begin{tabular}{ll} \toprule \multicolumn{2}{c}{\textbf{Special \LaTeX\ characters}}\\ \midrule Number sign: & \# \\ Dollar sign: & \$ \\ Percent sign: & \% \\ Underscore: & \_ \\ Ampersand: & \& \\ Braces: & \{ \} \\ Circumflex: & \^{} \\ \bottomrule \end{tabular} \end{document} |
Output:
Some characters might not appear as expected. Try:
\documentclass{article} \begin{document} Pipe sign: | Less than: < Greater than: > \end{document} |
Output:
Just adding one line to the preamble specifying T1 fontencoding helps:
\documentclass{article} \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} \begin{document} Pipe sign: | Less than: < Greater than: > \end{document} |
Output:
New webservice: mathurl.com
On June 13 2008 jtin informed in the LaTeX Community Forum that he started a new webservice: mathurl.com. This site turns standard LaTeX input with amsmath extensions into png images that can be embedded other websites. Permanent links to LaTeX expression and output bitmap are created and can be used inside emails or on websites for the exchange of formulas.
Starting chapters on even-numbered pages
In documents using the book class chapters start by default on a right-hand, odd-numbered page (recto page), corresponding to option openright. This may be changed by specifying the option openany to use the next available page, which is set default in the case of the report class.
But the LaTeX standard classes don’t provide an openleft option. The memoir class accepts openleft and enables chapters to start on left-hand pages (verso pages).
The book and report class use \cleardoublepage (defined in latex.ltx) to ensure that chapters start on odd-numbered pages. The opposite could be specified by redefining the \cleardoublepage command:
\makeatletter \renewcommand*\cleardoublepage{\clearpage\if@twoside \ifodd\c@page \hbox{}\newpage\if@twocolumn\hbox{}% \newpage\fi\fi\fi} \makeatother |
This topic was discussed on mrunix.de.
Prevent floating of figures or tables
Often images are embedded using the figure environment, they can get a caption, a label for reference and they will get numbered and appear in the list of figures. Figure environments are intended to float, but sometimes it is needed to place an image exactly at a specific position, still wanting to benefit from the other mentioned features of the figure environment. A similar problem is the exact placement of tables where usually the table environment is used.
One possibility that may not always prevent floating is to set more positioning parameter:
\begin{figure}[!htbp] \includegraphics{filename}% \caption{text}% \end{figure} |
This may work well, but not in all cases.
To prevent floating at all we must not use the figure environment. The caption package gives a way to get all the other features. It provides the command \captionof that takes a counter (figure or table) as argument and of course the caption text, for example:
\usepackage{caption} ... \begin{center} \includegraphics{filename}% \captionof{figure}{text}\label{labelname}% \end{center} |
The figure counter is used for numbering and the image will be listed by the \listoffigures command.
The caption package is very recommendable, it has a lot of features and is very well documented. But if you don’t want to use it there’s still the alternative package capt-of that provides \captionof too. It is very small, actually beside comments it contains just one line of code:
\newcommand\captionof[1]{\def\@captype{#1}\caption} |
The float package provides another very easy alternative for preventing floating: just use the H positioning parameter:
\usepackage{float} ... \begin{figure}[H] ... \end{figure} |
If the other features of float are not needed then I would recommend to use caption instead. Of course this works with tables too, just use tabular etc. together with \captionof{table}{…} and perhaps \center or \centering.
This topic was discussed in the LaTeX Community Forum and on the MatheBoard.
