Changing the layout with LATEX

EDV-Zentrum der TU Wien, Abt. Digitalrechenanlage

Hubert Partl
1988-10-04
English translation by
Axel Kielhorn∗
1999-03-20
H27.0 — Version 1

Abstract

This document describes the capabilities of the refart and refrep

classes for LATEX 2ε . These classes do not work with LATEX 2.09.
They contain some improvements over the original refman style
which may result in different output and minor incompatibilities,
but make refman work with paper sizes other than ISO A4, which
I consider an improvement.

This manual is an addition to chapter 5 (“Designing It Yourself”) of the

LATEX-manual by Leslie Lamport. It was originally written in 1988 by
Hubert Partl and updated by me during the development of refman 2.0.
The translation into English was done in summer 1998, almost 10 years
after the initial release in German.

Contents

1 Introduction 3
1.1 Author, Layout Designer and Compositor . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Changing the Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2 The Art of Layout-Design 3

2.1 Common Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2 Special note for technical descriptions . . . . . . . . . . . 4

3 How to change a LATEX layout? 5

3.1 Advantages and Disadvantages of the text processing sys-
tem LATEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2 Input files and class files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.3 Class files and Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.4 Changing the layout, step by step . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
∗ [email protected]
 3.5 A simple example (Equation numbers) . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.6 A more complex example (Reference Manual) . . . . . . . 9

I Mathematics 11

4 Complex Analysis 11
4.1 Complex Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.2 Analytic Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2 Changing the layout with LATEX

1 Introduction
1.1 Author, Layout Designer and Compositor

Every piece of writing – from a short handwritten note to a printed book

– consists of two components: contents and design. In most cases the
design is only a means to allow the reader to understand the contents
more easily.
Author: The contents will be written by the author of the document. She usu-
ally is supported by the publisher, who issues guidelines about how the
document should be written and conducts proofreading.
When using LATEX the contents appears in the main part of the docu-
ment – between \begin{document} and \end{document} – with some
additional LATEX-commands that describe the meaning of the different
parts.
Designer: The design of a printed document is usually defined by the publisher
who employs designers for this purpose.
The layout is defined in so-called class files. When writing a document
you have to specify the class you want to use with the \documentclass
command.
The document classes distributed with LATEX have been designed by
American layout designers according to the conventions used in the USA.
The “Koma-Script” classes have been adapted to European taste and
contain many small improvements.
Compositor: The compositor takes the contents from the author and formats it ac-
cording to the layout the designer specified.
When using LATEX, this job is done by the TEX program and the printing
is done by a device driver.

1.2 Changing the Layout

If you want to use a layout different from the ones distributed with LATEX,
you have to take the following steps:

1. The layout has to be defined. This is usually a job for a professional

designer.
→ Chapter 2 You can find detailed information about how change the design in
chapter 2.
2. The layout has to be programmed in LATEX. This can either result
in a “package” that changes the behaviour of a standard class, or in
the definition of a new “class”. Refman used to be a package that
changed the definition of the article class but is now a class of its
own. When writing a new class, you will have more work, but as a
result more freedom to change things.
→ Chapter 3 Chapter 3 contains more information about the new layout.

2 The Art of Layout-Design

2.1 Common Rules

There are almost no common rules because every kind of document has
different requirements and needs a specific layout. This layout should

Changing the layout with LATEX 3

 consider who will read the document, and how.
An important criteria is if the reader will read the document from start
to end like a detective novel (linear reading) or if he wants to find certain
information as in a telephone directory or a reference manual.
In addition to that, the layout has to consider certain conventions, like
the habits of the reader or “Corporate Design” rules that distinguish
publications from different publishers. 1
! → The main purpose of a layout is to make sure the reader finds the in-
formation he wants and is able to read and understand it easily. The
structure, readability, and consistency of a document is more important
than it’s “beauty”.2
The following “rules of thumb” will be valid for most applications:

Line spacing : The spacing between two lines should be larger than the spacing
between two words to guide the eyes of the reader.
Line length : The length of a line – or when using multicolumn layout of a column
– should be about 60 characters. When lines get longer they are
more difficult to read and it is easier to go to the wrong line after
finishing the current one. Increasing the linespacing may help a
little. When lines get to short it is difficult to set them justified,
and you will get lots of hyphenated words.
Page layout : Normal text pages should look the same throughout the document.
Figures, tables and special pages like the index need not appear in
the same layout but should take as much space as needed.
Margin notes : Margin notes are often more suitable than footnotes because they
appear right next to the text they refer to. Special margin notes
are the “attention sign” or the “dangerous bend” that guide the
user to important parts of the text.
Headings and Footings : Headings and footings should make it easier for the reader to orient
himself in the document. If you expect readers to copy single pages
from the document they should contain information about the pa-
per as a whole, just in case you need more information or want to
cite the whole paper.
If you expect the document to change often (like software manuals),
each page should contain a version information or at least a date.

2.2 Special note for technical descriptions

Let us compare three different layouts and check if they are usable for
technical descriptions, user’s guides and reference manuals. 3

Plain TEX : The standard format use by plain TEX has the great disadvantage
that the lines are much to long, which reduces the readability.
Standard-LATEX : The format used by LATEXs standard classes isn’t ideal. The line
length is correct, but that leaves us with a wide unused margin.
The font used for section headings is too large. The Koma-Script
classes improve this and offer many ways to configure the fonts.
1 Compare the layout of different daily papers or magazines like “page” or “invers”.
2 This is not always true for adverts that usually contain no information at all and,
picture magazines where the beauty of the picture is the contents.
3 This hint came from Paul Stiff, who teaches layout design at the University of

Reading.

4 Changing the layout with LATEX

 This is a good design for a paper one usually reads from start to
end.
Reference Manual Style : A new design that appeared some years ago and is used in recent
reference manuals, is much more suited for our purpose. 4
• The text is printed in rather short lines in the right part of
the page. This part is used for continuous reading.
• The wide left margin is used for headings and margin notes.
Since you now have a wide margin it is easier to use long
margin notes to supply additional information and to lead the
reader to important parts of the documents. Please note that
the margin is always on the left side thus two-sided printing
does not look symmetrical. This is done on purpose, because
the reader will always start reading at the left side, and with
this layout section headers really “stand out”. In a symmetri-
cal layout, half the headers would be buried in the text.
• Figures and tables are either inside the text column, inside the
margin or, if necessary, fill the whole page.
→ Section 3.6 Section 3.6 describes how to implement such a layout in LATEX.

3 How to change a LATEX layout?

3.1 Advantages and Disadvantages of the text processing system LATEX

Advantages: The big advantage of LATEX is, that it implements a “generic” or “logical”
design. This means that the author has to specify the meaning of special
parts of the text like: headings, citations, lists, literature references, and
so on. These logical definitions will be processed by the system and
printed in the “correct” way. The meaning of correct is defined in the
document class and additional packages.
The opposite of this is the “visual” design that most text processors use.
Here the author has to know the correct way to set certain parts of the
text and take care of the correct printing.
The logical design makes it easier for the author to write consistent docu-
ments (i. e., same font and fontsize for section headings of the same level,
same layout for lists and enumerations, . . . ).
Disadvantages: The main disadvantage of LATEX is that the author has only limited means
to change the layout and that she has only four classes to choose from.
This has changed a great deal with the appearance of the Script classes
for LATEX 2.09 in 1992, which in turn have been replaced by the even
more improved Koma-Script classes for LATEX 2ε .
Another disadvantage is that LATEX seems to be tied to the “Computer
modern” font family. This is simply not true, at least not when you have
a PostScript printer. Setting up different fonts isn’t an easy task, but
once they are installed they are as easy to use as the standard fonts.
But LATEX is much more powerful and flexible: you can define an arbitrary
design by changing the definitions in the class files or overwrite them by
packages. This is easier than you may think and happens more often
than you think. Many universities and publishers have their own LATEX
class but do not distribute it to the world.5
4 The “PostScript Reference Manual” is one document that uses such a design.
5 You can find a generic elsevier.cls on CTAN which you can use to prepare arti-

Changing the layout with LATEX 5

3.2 Input files and class files

According to the principle of separation of content and design, there are

two kind of files:

• The content and the logical structure of a document are defined in

the LATEX input file.
• The design (layout) is defined in the class files and packages.

Which class and packages files a document will use is defined at the
beginning of the input file. The \documentclass command selects the
class and the \usepackage command specifies additional packages.
To generate a paper you need at least two files, the input file and a class
file.
These two files represent the work of the author and designer as explained
in the introduction. Even if the author and the designer are the same
person, this has some advantages:

• Similar documents (that appear in a series) have the same layout

because the layout is defined in a file of its own and not part of the
document.
• You can print the same contents without much work in different
layouts, e. g.. as an article for a magazine and as a chapter for a
dissertation.

3.3 Class files and Packages

LATEX supports a hierarchy of layout definitions.

• The first file processed is the class file that is specified inside the
curly braces of the \documentclass command. This defines the
kind of document you want to write.
• The optional argument of the \documentclass command inside
the square brackets defines class options which select variants of
the basic layout,such as different font sizes.
• The last step is reading the packages specified by the \usepackage
command. This command again takes options to select the layout.
• You can change layout parameters in the input file, but this is
discouraged because it violates the principle of separation of content
and design.
There are some important differences between class and package files and
“normal” input files:
• Class and package files should only contain definitions. They must
not output text.
• The “at”-sign @ is treated as a letter and therefore may appear in
command names. Most internal commands of LATEX contain an @
to prevent the author from using them accidentally.
• The extension of the file is .cls, .clo or .sty instead of .tex.

cle before submission. This will be replaced by the magazine-specific class at the
publisher.

6 Changing the layout with LATEX

3.4 Changing the layout, step by step

It is usually easier to change existing class files instead of writing a new

one from scratch. In many cases it is even sufficient so replace some
definitions and put them into a package instead of creating a new class.

Please note that you are not allowed to change the standard classes dis-
tributed with LATEX. You have to change the name when you want to
make changes. That is another reason to put small changes in packages.

3.4.1 Defining the differences between the desired and the available layout

The first step is to define the difference between the layout you have and
the layout you want.

3.4.2 Finding the original definition

The next step is to find out where the original layout is defined. It is
best to search the files in the following order:6

1. the LATEX manual by Leslie Lamport,

2. the LATEX documentations files *.dtx for the classes or packages

3. the LATEX documentations files *.dtx for the kernel,

4. the TEXbook by Donald E. Knuth.

The files are usually documented quite well so you should be able to
change things even if you don’t understand everything.

3.4.3 Writing a new package file

The third step is to create a new package. You choose an appropriate

name for the package (like mysty) and create a filename by adding the
extension .sty.

This file will only contain the definitions you want to change or the new
commands you want to define.

If you want to change definitions or certain parameters, the best way is

to copy them from the original file and modify them according to your
liking.

Defining new commands is easier when you find similar commands in the
original files which you can change.

It is always a good idea to include the reason you wrote the package, the
changes it makes and the new commands it defines in the file. You should
include the date of the last change and the LATEX version it works with,
just in case some internal LATEX commands you use will change.

When writing larger packages, it is an even better idea to use the

docstrip program which is used to document the LATEX 2ε files. Thus
you have your code and documentation in one file and it’s easier to keep
them from going out of sync.
6 This hint came from Sue Brooks, who held a workshop for “LATEX-Hacker” at the
1988 TEX-conference in Exeter.

Changing the layout with LATEX 7

3.4.4 Using the new package

To use the new package, you call it with the \usepackage command.
This command executes the code of your package and changes the layout
as desired.
Example:

\documentclass[11pt,twoside,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{mysty} %<- This calls the package "mysty"

You shouldn’t need to change anything else in your input file, unless you
defined new commands or environments that are not available in standard
LATEX.
! → When you copy your input file to a different computer you have to include
your new packages as well. Otherwise the document can’t be processed.

3.5 A simple example (Equation numbers)

Let’s assume that you want to write an article where the equations are
numbered separately in every section. In the LATEX manual you find a
notice that the report class does something similar for every chapter.
Looking into the file report.cls you will find the following commands
that deal with equation numbers:
\@addtoreset{equation}{chapter}
\def\theequation{\thechapter .\arabic{equation}}
% or in LaTeX2e since 1995/06/01:
\renewcommand\theequation{
\thechapter.\@arabic\c@equation
}
You don’t necessarily need to understand these two commands in detail.
Now you create an new file with the name eqpersec.sty7 and copy the
commands above into that file. After that you replace every occurrence
of chapter with section and add some comments.
% This is equation_per_section.sty
% Short name: eqpersec.sty
% Original file by Hubert Partl 1988
% Modified by Axel Kielhorn 1996/01/01
% to support LaTeX 1995/06/01 and later
%
% reset the equation counter at the start
% of a new section
%
\@addtoreset{equation}{section}
% Equationnumber = sectionnummer.equationnummer
% Use only one of the below
% depending on you LaTeX version
%
%\def\theequation{\thesection .\arabic{equation}}
% or in more recent versions of LaTeX
\renewcommand\theequation{
7 Depending on the computer you are using the name may be different like
EQPERSEC STY on a CYBER running NOS/VE. But note that you must not use
spaces in the filename.

8 Changing the layout with LATEX

 \thesection.\@arabic\c@equation
}
Whenever you use a \usepacakge{eqpersec} command as in
\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{eqpersec}
you will get equations numbered according to your conventions.

3.6 A more complex example (Reference Manual)

We want to create a layout similar to the one used in the PostScript

Reference Manual, with a wide left margin for headings and margin notes
and a small margin at the right and bottom.

3.6.1 Page layout

To define the new layout we use the commands described in the LATEX
manual. For full details see the file refman.dtx.
Horizontal: First we define two new names for length that we will use often:
\fullwidth is the width of the whole page minus a margin of 1 inch on
every side.
fullwidth = paperwidth − 2 inch
From this the width of the text is calculated.

textwidth = fullwidth × textfraction

\leftmarginwidth is the width of the left margin that will be used for
headings and margin notes.

leftmarginwidth = fullwidth − textwidth

This is a little more difficult in reality because the lengths have to be

rounded to full points and a possible two column layout – as used in the
index – must be taken into consideration.
Vertical: The vertical layout is a little more difficult because you have to deal with
the page header and footer.

textheight = paperheight − 2.5 inch

The result of this calculation is rounded to full lines. Depending on the

page style – headings or footings – it is shifted up or down by one line.

3.6.2 Section headings

The headings have to be modified to make them extend into the left
margin.
In file classes.dtx we find the \@startsection command that defines
the layout of the headings. Only parameters 4 to 6 are relevant for us:
parameter 4 is the space above and parameter 5 the space below the
section. The 6th parameter does the actual formatting.
This is the original definition:

Changing the layout with LATEX 9

 \newcommand\section{\@startsection
{section}{1}{\z@}%
{-3.5ex plus -1ex minus -.2ex}%
{2.3ex plus .2ex}%
{\normalfont\Large\bfseries}}
The commands for sub- and subsubsections are similar. Note that the
measures are all in ex, thus depending on the font size used.
We define a new command \secshape to format the headings. This
command uses the whole width of the page for the heading. To discourage
hyphenation of the heading we give it a high penalty. This still allows
hyphenation when absolutely necessary.

\newcommand\secshape{%
\leftskip=-\leftmarginwidth%
\rightskip=\@flushglue%
\hyphenpenalty=2000}

This command is inserted into the 6th parameter of \@startsection.

Since the headings now extend into the left margin, we can use a smaller
font and reduce the space between the text and the heading. The new
definition looks like the following:
\newcommand\section{\@startsection
{section}{1}{\z@}%
{-2ex plus -1ex minus -.2ex}%
{0.5ex plus .2ex}%
{\secshape\normalfont\large\bfseries}}

3.6.3 Setting the margin notes

The margin notes should always appear on the left side of the text. The
normal layout puts them into the outer margin in twoside layout.
The file latex.dtx contains the definition of the \@addmarginpar com-
mand which is responsible for the margin notes. We don’t have to un-
derstand the whole definition; the important part is the internal variable
\@tempcnta that is either \@ne (1) when the note should appear on the
right side of the text or \m@ne (−1) when it should appear on the left
side.
This is done by the following lines:
\@tempcnta\@ne
\if@twocolumn
\if@firstcolumn \@tempcnta\m@ne \fi
\else
\if@mparswitch
\ifodd\c@page \else\@tempcnta\m@ne \fi
\fi
\if@reversemargin \@tempcnta -\@tempcnta \fi
\fi
which we simply replace by:
\@tempcnta\m@ne
The remaining lines that handle the setting of the margin note depending
on the parameter \@tempcnta are left unchanged.

10 Changing the layout with LATEX

3.6.4 Extensions

The definitions described above are sufficient for simple applications but
→ Appendix ?? in practical use one may want some additional commands. You will find
the description for the whole new class in the appendix ??.

I. Mathematics

4 Complex Analysis
4.1 Complex Numbers

4.1.1 Introduction

Def. Complex Number A complex number is any number of the form z = a + ib where a and b
are real numbers and i is the imaginary unit. The real number a is called
the real part of z, and the real number b is called the imaginary part of
the complex number z.
Complex numbers z1 = a1 + ib1 and z2 = a2 + ib2 are equal iff a1 = a2
and b1 = b2 .
Complex numbers satisfy all of the axioms of a number field.
Def. Conjugate The complex conjugate of z = a + ib is z ∗ = a − ib. The following
Theo. For algebraic operations including addition, multiplication, division and
exponentiation, consider a sequence of algebraic operations over the n
complex numbers z1 , . . . , zn with the result w. If the same actions are
applied in the same order to z1∗ , . . . , zn∗ , then the result will be w∗ . For
example z1∗ z2∗ = (z1 z2 )∗
The roots of a polynomial with real-valued coefficients of arbitrary order
occur in complex conjugate pairs.
Def. Modulus The modulus of a complex number z = x + iy is the real number
√ p
|z| = zz ∗ = x2 + y 2

The modulus has the following property:

|z1 z2 | = |z1 ||z2 |

Theo. Triangle inequality |z1 | − |z2 | ≤ |z1 + z2 | ≤ |z1 | + |z2 |

4.1.2 Polar Form

Def. Polar form Using x = r cos θ and y = r sin θ, we can write

z = r(cos θ + i sin θ)

We take r to be the modulus of z, |z|. The angle θ is called an argument

of z.

11
4.2 Analytic Functions

Theo. Cauchy–Riemann The function f (z) = u(x, y) + iv(x, y) is differentiable at z = x + iy if

Conditions ux , uy , vx , vy are continuous and ux = vy and uy = −vx in a neighborhood
of a.
Def. Analyticity A function f (z) is called analytical at a point a, if it is differentiable in
a neighborhood of a.

12
Index
author, 3

changing the layout, step by step, 7

Complex conjugate, 11
Complex number, 11
compositor, 3
corporate desing, 4

design, generic, 5
design, logical, 5
design, visual, 5
designer, 3

footings, 4

headings, 4

layout design, 3
line length, 4
line spacing, 4

manual, 4
margin notes, 4
Modulus, 11

page layout, 4
Polar form, 11

rules, 3
rules of thumb, 4

telephone directory, 4
Triangle inequality, 11

13