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Posts Tagged ‘LaTeX’:
LaTeX templates
Some of the most popular pages on this site are my LaTeX templates: for a curriculum vitae, a beamer poster, a beamer talk, a Monash University working paper and a Monash University thesis. Almost all new LaTeX users begin with templates, so it is surprising that there aren’t more good templates around to get people started. Now there is a great new website for LaTeX templates: www.latextemplates.com. There are some nice templates for letters, lab reports, calendars, theses, assignments, essays, and CVs. The templates are well-structured with lots of comments to make it easy to understand how they work, and to make modifications. Even experienced LaTeXers will probably learn some new tricks and new packages from browsing the templates.
XeLaTeX with TeXstudio
XeLaTeX is a replacement for pdfLaTeX that allows you to use the fonts on your computer (rather than only those fonts that come with your tex system). However, TeXstudio is not set up to use XeLaTeX yet. Fortunately, it is not difficult. Go to Options/Commands where all the commands used by TeXstudio are specified. You probably don’t need standard LaTeX these days, so replace the LaTeX command with the following. xelatex –interaction=nonstopmode %.tex Then click OK. Now the LaTeX button at the top of the screen is mapped to XeLaTeX rather than standard LaTeX. You can still access pdfLaTeX via its button for your non-XeLaTeX files. Before anyone comments that you need standard LaTeX for when eps graphics are used, see Converting eps to pdf.
Some useful extensions for Gmail
Gmail can be even more awesome with a few extensions (for either Chrome or Firefox).
Using TeXstudio with SumatraPDF
SumatraPDF is my favourite pdf reader and TeXstudio is my favourite LaTeX editor. Here’s how to get them to work nicely together.
Use Mendeley to manage your references
Every researcher collects large numbers of papers, references, and notes, and it is important to have a good system to keep them all organized. For many years I had several thousand papers all numbered and stored in filing cabinets, with a JabRef database providing an index to them. These days, it’s much easier to have everything stored electronically, and so I have accumulated many pdfs (about 1300 so far) of published articles. But the problem of being able to find something fast is still important. Mendeley is a free software tool for managing your reference database. It actually solves many problems simultanéously and is likely to become an important part of how I work.
I’m switching to TeXstudio
I’ve happily used WinEdt for all my LaTeX editing for about 15 years and I’ve encouraged my whole research team to use it. But I’m tired of problems with WinEdt that take up my time.
A LaTeX template for a CV
Every researcher needs a Curriculum Vitae (Latin for “course of life”) or CV. You will need it for job applications, for annual performance appraisal, and just for keeping track of your publications. A CV typically contains lists of achievements including qualifications, publications, presentations, awards, plus teaching experience. I’ve created a LaTeX style for a CV to make it easy to produce something that looks good and is easy to maintain. You will need an up-to-date implementation of LaTeX because I’m using the wonderful biblatex package (more on that in another post) which has only just become available as part of MikTeX and TeXLive. The preamble of your CV should look something like this: \documentclass[a4paper,11pt]{article} \usepackage{cv} \name{Rob J Hyndman} \info{Address: & Department of Econometrics \& Business Statistics, Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia.\\ Phone: & +61 3 9905 2358\\ Email: & Rob.Hyndman@monash.edu\\ WWW: & robjhyndman.com} \bibliography{rjhpubs} \addtocategory{books}{MWH3,ITSM91,ITSM94,expsmooth08} \addtocategory{papers}{BHG91,BH92,YW93,Hyndman94,HDRF95} \addtocategory{papers}{HDR96,HBG96,HF96,GHH97,HW97,LFSH97,GH98} Include your name in the \name command. The \info command contains information to go in the header box on the first page. This is structured as for a tabular environment. You can include any information you like in the \info command including additional rows. Some people include their date of birth, citizenship, family details, etc. All your
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Getting started with XeLaTeX
By now, most LaTeX users have probably heard of XeLaTeX, if only because it is an option in the latest versions of the standard LaTeX editors such as TeXnicCenter, WinEdt and TeXWorks. But most LaTeXers have probably not yet become XeLaTeXers. Why should you? XeLaTeX is essentially a replacement for pdfLaTeX. It was primarily developed to enable better font handling, especially non-Roman scripts. If you want to write in Telugu, then XeLaTeX is going to make your life much easier. For English writers, the main benefit of XeLaTeX is the ability to use the fonts on your computer, just as you can with other software. If you’ve grown to love using Georgia in MS-Word and always wanted to write a LaTeX document in Georgia, now you can. Here is a very simple example: \documentclass{article} \usepackage{fontspec,lipsum} \defaultfontfeatures{Ligatures=TeX} \usepackage[small,sf,bf]{titlesec} \setromanfont{Georgia} \setsansfont{Tahoma} \begin{document} \section{Introduction} \lipsum[1] \section{Nonsense} \lipsum[2–4] \end{document} Note the following features: The fontspec package is almost always necessary with XeLaTeX and contains commands to load the required fonts. You usually need the command \defaultfontfeatures{Ligatures=TeX}. This is so the new fonts behave in the way we’ve come to expect with LaTeX, such as allowing an em-dash to be written as —. The
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Animated plots in R and LaTeX
I like to use animated plots in my talks on functional time series, partly because it is the only way to really see what is going on with changes in the shapes of curves over time, and also because audiences love them! Here is how it is done.
Rob J Hyndman