Advanced LATEX

Tim Love

September 4, 1994

This document follows on from the Word processing using LATEX handout.
It describes the features of LATEX 2" that people at CUED are most likely
to use. Further information is in the online handouts and in the books
available for loan from the operators in the DPO. The Local LATEX handout
is a companion to this one. It describes some features especially suited
to writing theses (bibliography and index compilation, for example) and
includes a list of available packages.
Comments and bug reports to Tim Love ([email protected]).

Contents
1 LATEX Concepts 2
1.1 Environments and commands : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 2
1.2 Classes and packages : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 3
1.3 Errors : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 3
1.4 Files created : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 4
1.5 How to use LATEX : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 4

2 Document organisation and structuring 5

2.1 Counters and Length parameters : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 5
2.2 Document and page organisation : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 6
2.3 Pagebreaks, footnotes, etc : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 7

3 Color and Fonts 8

3.1 Colored text : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 8
3.2 Special characters : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 9
3.3 Font Sizes : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 10
3.4 Font Types : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 10
3.5 Postscript Fonts : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 11
3.6 Font attributes : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 11
3.7 Selection commands : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 12

Copyright c 1994 by T.P. Love. This document may be copied freely for the pur-
poses of education and non-commercial research. Cambridge University Engineer-
ing Department, Cambridge CB2 1PZ, England.

1
1 LATEX CONCEPTS

4 Environments 13
4.1 Alignments : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 13
4.2 Listing Items : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 13
4.3 Tabular : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 15
4.4 Array : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 15
4.5 Pictures : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 16
4.6 Maths : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 16
4.7 Figures : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 17
4.8 Tabbing : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 17
4.9 Verbatim : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 18
4.10 Quote, abstract : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 18
4.11 Letter : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 18

5 Customising 18
5.1 Macros : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 18
5.2 New Commands : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 19
5.3 Packages : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 19
5.4 An Example : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 19

6 More Information 20

1 LATEX Concepts
1.1 Environments and commands
LATEX is a macro-package for TEX which has many preset environments where much
of the setting up that TEX users have to do explicitly is done for you. An environ-
ment has the form
\begin{environment name}
.
\end{environment name}
LATEX also has commands which affect the formatting of the document. Their
arguments are given in braces. For example,

\textit{This is much more important} than this.

produces as output This is much more important than this.

The related \itshape command doesn’t take an argument. It affects all the fol-
lowing text in the environment it’s use in.
LATEX tries to enforce the idea that the visual appearance of the document (use
of fonts, indentation, etc) should derive from the logical structure of the document
(i.e. rather than manually putting the section titles into bold, you should let the
\section command do it). Resisting this philosophy can lead to extra, usually
unnecessary work.

2
1 LATEX CONCEPTS 1.2 Classes and packages

LATEX is expandable. Many macros can be loaded in to provide added featues.

You can also create your own commands and environments. Commands can take
arguments that modify their action

 Some commands have a *-form, a variant on the standard command that

you get by adding a * to the command name.
 Mandatory arguments are enclosed in {} braces
 Optional arguments are enclosed in [ ] brackets.
1.2 Classes and packages
At the top of your file you will have a line something like

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

which determines the font size and document class – the type of document you’re
writing. Each class has an associated *.cls file in the directory /export/latex2e/inputs/
which is read in at start-up time. Other options accepted by article include 10pt,
11pt and twocolumn.
Then you’ll probably need to load in extra macros. This is done using the \usepackage
command. Each package has an associated *.sty file in /export/latex2e/inputs/.
The packages inherit the options from the \documentclass line and can be given
others of their own. E.g.

\usepackage[dvips]{graphics}
\usepackage[dvips]{color}

tells LATEX that you want to use the extra graphics and color macros, and that
you are going to use dvips to convert the resulting file to postscript. You can shorten
this to

\usepackage[dvips]{graphics,color}

or even

\documentclass[dvips]{article}
\usepackage{graphics,color}

1.3 Errors
Errors can be reported either from the LATEX phase (in which case it is reported as
such) or the lower level TEX phase. Don’t be too put off by the half-digested text dis-
played. A line number is reported which usually helps to detect the error. Typing
‘h’ sometimes produces helpful diagnostics. The most common errors reported
are

 a command misspelt
 a mismatched brace
 improper use of special characters
3
1 LATEX CONCEPTS 1.4 Files created

 forgetting to have the appropriate \usepackage{...} lines.

 a error like this
Overfull \hbox (15.42563pt too wide) in paragraph at lines 285--288
\OT1/ppl/m/n/10 You can cre-ate ver-tical space between lines or
ho-ri-zontal space between

means that lines 285 to 288 are producing a text line about 15 pts (about 5cm)
too wide. \OT1/ppl/m/n/10 is the specification of the font used. When TEX
does right and left alignment, it works out how much space it needs to leave
between words and where to hypenate words if necessary. But the amount of
space it’s prepared to leave has to fall within a certain range and it will only
split words in certain places (shown in the error message by a hyphen). If
these restrictions mean that LATEX can’t produce a satisfactory line, it will pro-
duce as much of the line as it can. A re-phrasing of the offending sentence
will usually solve the problem. Another thing you might try is to control the
way a troublesome word is hyphenated using something like

\hypenation{furthermore fur-ther-more}

at the top of your file. If all else fails, use {\sloppy...} to enclose the of-
fending text.
 LTEX issues a *.
A

This means LATEX needs more input. It probably means you’ve missed out an
\end{document}, but if not you may be able to get LATEX to continue pro-
cessing as best it can by typing <Return>.
 ! Argument of \label has an extra }
If you’re sure you haven’t left out a left brace, then maybe you need to protect
the inmost (fragile) command. For example, \label is fragile which causes a
problem in \caption{Picture\label{margin}}, so the safer construc-
tion \caption{Picture\protect\label{margin}} has to be used.

1.4 Files created

More than just the .dvi file may be produced. Don’t worry about them – except
perhaps for the log file you won’t need to look at them.

 .aux cross references, etc

 .toc created by \tableofcontents
 .lof created by \listoffigures
 .lot created by \listoftables
 .log a copy of the diagnostic output that usually comes out on the screen.
Some common errors can be found using the lacheck program on the LATEX
file.

4
2 DOCUMENT ORGANISATION AND STRUCTURING 1.5 How to use L
AT X
E

1.5 How to use LATEX

From the command line – After running latex at least twice, you should be able
to preview your *.dvi document using xdvi and print it using plotview,
but if postscript is implicated at all (if you load in graphics, use postscript
fonts, scale, use color, or rotate) then you should convert your *.dvi doc-
ument to postscript. A typical sequence of commands to process doc.tex
would be

latex doc
latex doc
dvips -t a4 doc.dvi -o doc.ps
ghostview doc.ps
lp -dljmr1 -opostscript doc.ps

Using xlatex – xlatex has buttons to process, preview and print your document
(or selected pages of it), and convert it to postscript. Just type latex filename.

Writing a LATEX document is rather like writing a program. This makes using
LATEX more difficult in some respects than using a word processor, but there are ad-
vantages too. For instance creating a table of contents is trivial. Beginners often use
unnecessary ‘\\’ sequences and write ‘{\large \textbf{2.1 Method}}\\’ when
‘\subsection{Method}’would be much better. Users who think they know more
about typesetting than LATEX (those who, for example, like underlining) will waste
a lot of time too.
Avoid repeating constructions. Instead, write your own macros and commands,
and familiarise yourself with the packages described in the Local LATEX guide.

2 Document organisation and structuring

2.1 Counters and Length parameters
 Counters :- LTEX maintains many counter variables (e.g. page, part, equation,
A

footnote, chapter, paragraph, section, subsection, subsubsection,

enumi etc). You can set these counters yourself. Some examples:-

\setcounter{page}{0}
\addtocounter{chapter}{2}

 Length Parameters :- LTEX accepts the following units of length: in, cm,
A
mm, pt (there are 72.27 pts to an inch), em (width of an M), ex (height of an x).
These units can be used to set the values of length variables using \setlength.
For example,

\setlength{\parindent}{0in}

sets to zero the amount by which the first line of a paragraph is indented.
Other useful variables are:-
parskip:- determines the gap between paragraphs.

5
2 DOCUMENT ORGANISATION AND STRUCTURING
2.2 Document and page organisation

baselineskip:- determines the usual distance from the bottom of one line
to the bottom of the next. You can adjust this to produce double spa-
cing, but a better way, which takes a stretch factor as argument is to use
baselinestretch. For instance after \begin{document} you can
do
\renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{1.2}
but note: it won’t take effect until a font change so you might need to do
something like \small \normalsize.

2.2 Document and page organisation

 Document classes: Choose from article, book, letter, report, slides.
Except for slides, the differences between these are minor. A book can have
chapters. In a report sections begin at 0 whereas in an article they begin
at 1. Just about all the handouts are articles.
 Big Documents :- It’s best to split your document into smaller files and have
a master file looking like this

\documentclass[dvips,12pt]{book}
\usepackage{a4,color,graphics,palatino,fancyheadings}
\begin{document}
\pagestyle{empty}
\tableofcontents
\listoffigures
\pagestyle{fancy}
\include{chapter1}
\include{chapter2}
\include{fig2}
\include{chapter3}
\include{chapter4}
\end{document}

on which you can run latex just as if the master file contained all the text
of chapter1.tex etc. The advantage of this is that once you have a chapter
correct, you can comment out the corresponding ‘include’ line and avoid un-
necessary processing. Remember to take out the \begin{document} and
\end{document} lines from the component files.
 Page Size :- The default a4 style has wide margins. The a4 local version
uses more of the page. You can choose the margin sizes yourself by changing
the following dimensions before the \begin{document} line.

\setlength{\topmargin}{-0.4in}
\setlength{\topskip}{0.3in} % between header and text
\setlength{\textheight}{9.5in} % height of main text
\setlength{\textwidth}{6in}
\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{0.75in}
\setlength{\evensidemargin}{0.75in}

To see the current values of these dimensions, use the layout package, which
defines a \layout command.

6
2 DOCUMENT ORGANISATION AND STRUCTURING
2.3 Pagebreaks, footnotes, etc

 Title Pages :- The title page of this document was created by the following
LATEX commands.

\title{Advanced \LaTeX}
\author{Tim Love}
\date{\today}
\maketitle

 Contents :- Use \tableofcontents to create a contents list at that point in

the document. LATEX will pick out the sections, subsections etc for you. You’ll
have to run LATEX at least twice though.
 Page numbers and Headings :- These are determined by the argument given
in pagestyle{}.

plain :- the page numbers are put at the bottom of the page. The top of the
page is empty. This is the default mode.
empty :- this suppresses page numbering altogether.
headings :- this puts the page numbers at the top and adds a header whose
contents depend on the document style.

fancyheadings is a popular package that adds useful page headers when

\pagestyle{fancy} is used. This handout uses it.
 Sectioning :- To start a chapter called Life in a book, just use \chapter{Life}.
Similar commands to start a part, section or subsection also exist in
most document classes (articles don’t have chapters or parts though).
If you use the *-form of the command then the sections will not be numbered,
neither will it appear in the table of contents.
A title will only be numbered if its ’depth’ isn’t more than the value of secnumdepth
and will only appear in the contents page if the ’depth’ isn’t more than the
value of tocdepth. So, for example, doing

\setcounter{tocdepth}{2}
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{3}

will cause section 1.4.3 to be numbered, but it won’t appear in the contents.

2.3 Pagebreaks, footnotes, etc

 Page Breaks :- you can force a page break using \newpage.
 Preventing line breaks :- If there’s a word that you don’t want broken, put it
in an mbox. Eg,

One shouldn’t try to break up \mbox\emph{relationships}

 Space :-
You can create vertical space \vspace{.5cm} between lines
or horizontal space \hspace{1.5cm} between words.
The arguments to these commands can be negative.

7
3 COLOR AND FONTS

You can create vertical space between lines or horizontal space between

words. The arguments to these commands can be negative.

 Footnotes :-
Do them like this\footnote{I told you so.}

Do them like this1 The footnotes are numbered by default. If you want to use
symbols (stars, daggers etc) then you need to redefine how the footnote
counter is displayed.

\def\thefootnote{\fnsymbol{footnote}}

 Margin notes :-
These are easy too. Do them like this\marginpar{margin note}

These are easy too. Do them like this margin note

 Cross References :- At the end of this source file is the line
\label{THE_END}

\pageref{THE_END} will refer to the final page by number, and \ref{THE_END}

will refer to it by section number. The last page (page 21) is in section 6. You’ll
have to run LATEX at least twice to pick up forward references like these.
 Boxed Text :- For short pieces of text, use \fbox
Help. I’m \fbox{trapped}

Help. I’m trapped

 Comments :- Anything to the right of a % character is ignored by LTEX .

A

3 Color and Fonts

3.1 Colored text
LATEX 2" introduce some commands to control foreground and background colors.
To use them you need

\usepackage[dvips]{color}

after the \documentclass line but before \begin{document}.

 \textcolor{colorname}{text} writes text in a color which can be specified

by name (black, white, red, green, blue or a color name you’ve defined),
RGB components, or grayscale.
 \colorbox{colorname}{text} writes text in a box with a colored background.
1 I told you so.

8
3 COLOR AND FONTS 3.2 Special characters

 \fcolorbox{colorname}{text} writes text in a colored frame.

 \pagecolor{colorname} sets the color of the page’s background.
 \definecolor{colorname}{color specification} lets you define new color names.
\definecolor{gold}{rgb}{0.85,.66, 0}
This is in \textcolor{red}{red} and this box is \colorbox{gold}{gold}.
Text color can be set using RGB values
(\textcolor[rgb]{0, 0.5, 0}{like so}), or \textcolor[gray]{0.2}{shades}
\textcolor[gray]{0.5}{of} \textcolor[gray]{0.8}{grey}.

produces This is in red and this box is gold . Text color can be set using RGB values
(like so), or shades of grey.

3.2 Special characters

y z x {
is created by \dag, by \ddag, by \S, by \P, £ by \pounds, ö by \"{o}.
Many others are available in the math environment, including all the lower case
greek letters and most of the upper case ones. If you only want to use a few char-
acters you can bracket the symbols using $ and $ rather than \begin{math} and
\end{math}. You can put a slash through any of these characters by prefacing
them with \not

+
p p
i \sqrt{i} 5 x iy \sqrt[5]{x+iy} ::: \ldots
.. ..
 \cdots . \vdots . \ddots
 \alpha  \beta  \gamma
 \delta ! \omega ; \Gamma
 \Theta  \Omega  \pm
 \mp  \times  \div
 \ast ? \star  \circ
T \bullet  \cdot S
\ \cap
\bigcap U \cup \bigcup
] \uplus F \biguplus u \sqcap
W
t \sqcup
\bigvee ^
\bigsqcup
\wedge
V
_ \vee
\bigwedge
n \setminus o \wr  \diamond
4 \bigtriangleup 5 \bigtriangledown / \triangleleft
L
. \triangleright  \oplus
N \bigoplus  \ominus  \otimes
J \bigotimes
\bigodot



\oslash
\bigcirc


q
\odot
\amalg
 \leq  \prec  \preceq
 \ll  \subset  \subseteq
2 \in ` \vdash
\geq ! \succ " \succeq
# \gg $ \supset % \supseteq
w \sqsupseteq 3 \ni a \dashv
' \equiv ( \sim ' \simeq
* \asymp + \approx =
( \cong
=
6 \neq =
:
\doteq / \propto
=
j \models ? \perp j \mid
k \parallel ./ \bowtie ^ \smile
_ \frown / \leftarrow ( \Leftarrow
! \rightarrow ) \Rightarrow $ \leftrightarrow
, \Leftrightarrow 7! \mapsto /- \hookleftarrow

9
3 COLOR AND FONTS 3.3 Font Sizes

( \leftharpoonup ) \leftharpoondown *
) \rightleftharpoons
/; \longleftarrow ( = \Longleftarrow ;! \longrightarrow
= ) \Longrightarrow /! \longleftrightarrow () \Longleftrightarrow
7;! \longmapsto ,! \hookrightarrow * \rightharpoonup
+ \rightharpoondown " \uparrow * \Uparrow
# \downarrow + \Downarrow l \updownarrow
% \nearrow & \searrow . \swarrow
- \nwarrow @ \aleph 
h \hbar
{ \imath | \jmath ` \ell
} \wp < \Re = \Im
0 \prime \empty r \nabla
p
\surd > \top ? \bot
k \| 6

\angle 8 \forall
9 \exists : \neg  \flat
\ \natural ] \sharp n \backslash
@ \partial 1 \infty 4 \triangle
| \clubsuit P
} \diamondsuit Q
~ \heartsuit
`
K \spadesuit
\coprod
R \sum
\int
H \prod
\oint

One locally produced font with only one character is called crest.

A
\font\crest=crest
‘‘This is the {\crest A} CUED crest’’

produces “This is the CUED crest”

3.3 Font Sizes

These are the available sizes.
tiny scriptsize footnotesize small normalsize

large Large LARGE huge Huge

If, for example, you want to use the smallest size, do

{\tiny ... }

If Huge isn’t big enough for you, you can scale a postscript font up using the
commands designed for graphics. \resizebox{!}{5cm}{BIG} produces

10
3 COLOR AND FONTS 3.4 Font Types

3.4
BIGFont Types
Independent of size, these font types are at your disposal :- \textrm (roman), textit(italic),
\textsc ( SMALL CAPS ), \emph (emphasis, but note that if you use emph within em-
phasized text, you will get roman text), \textsl (slanting), \texttt (teletype),
\textbf (boldface), \textsf (sans serif). As long as there’s no conflict, these
commands can be combined so that, for instance, this is bold sans serif can be
produced by \textsf{\textbf{this is bold sans serif}}.

3.5 Postscript Fonts

It is easy to write a document that has postscript fonts. We have package support
for helvetica (helvetic), utopia, times, optima, newcentury (newcentu), palatino
and courier. To use palatino, all you need to do is add

\usepackage{palatino}

to your file. The pifont package has special commands for using the Zapf Ding-
bats font. \dingfill{40} completes the line with the specified symbol ✈ ✈
and \dingline{36} draws a whole line of symbols.
✄ ✄ ✄ ✄ ✄ ✄ ✄ ✄ ✄ ✄ ✄ ✄ ✄ ✄ ✄ ✄ ✄ ✄ ✄
It’s a good idea to use a font that’s installed in the printer you intend to use. See
the table on page 11 for information about the teaching system’s ljmr1 printer.

3.6 Font attributes

The commands above should give you sufficient control over fonts. If you don’t want to
know more at the moment then turn to section 4
Every text font in LATEX has five attributes:

encoding This specifies the order that characters appear in the font. The most com-
mon values for the font encoding is OT1.
family The name for a collection of fonts, usually grouped under a common name
by the font foundry. For example, ‘Adobe Times’ and Knuth’s ‘Computer Mod-
ern Roman’ are font families. There are far too many font families to list them
all, but some common ones are:

11
3 COLOR AND FONTS 3.7 Selection commands

Internal fontname Fontname In ljmr1?

cmr Computer Modern Roman No
cmss Computer Modern Sans No
cmtt Computer Modern Typewriter No
cmm Computer Modern Math Italic No
cmsy Computer Modern Math Symbols No
cmex Computer Modern Math Extensions No
ptm Adobe Times Yes
phv Adobe Helvetica Yes
pcr Adobe Courier Yes
pun Univers No
ppl Palatino Yes
pagk AvantGarde-Book Yes
pagd AvantGarde-Demi Yes
pbk Bookman Yes
put Utopia No
pop Optima No
pnc New Century Schoolbook Yes
pzd ZapfDingbats Yes
rpad Garamond No

series How heavy or expanded a font is. For example, ‘medium weight’, ‘narrow’
and ‘bold extended’ are all series. The most common values for the font series
are:

m Medium
b Bold
bx Bold extended
sb Semi-bold
c Condensed

shape The form of the letters within a font family. For example, ‘italic’, ‘oblique’
and ‘upright’ are all font shapes. The most common values for the font shape
are:

n Normal (that is ‘upright’ or ‘roman’)

it Italic
sl Slanted (or ‘oblique’)
sc Caps and small caps

size The design size of the font, for example ‘10pt’.

These five parameters specify every LATEX font, for example:

LATEX specification Font

OT1 cmr m n 10pt Computer Modern Roman 10pt
OT1 cmss m sl 12pt Computer Modern Sans Oblique 12pt
OML cmm m it 10pt Computer Modern Math Italic 10pt
T1 ptm b it 18pt Adobe Times Bold Italic 18pt

3.7 Selection commands

There are commands to set attributes one at a time:

12
4 ENVIRONMENTS

Command Attribute Value in article class, 10pt

\textrm{..} or \rmfamily family cmr
\textsf{..} or \sffamily family cmss
\texttt{..} or \ttfamily family cmtt
\textmd{..} or \mdseries series m
\textbf{..} or \bfseries series bx
\textup{..} or \upshape shape n
\textit{..} or \itshape shape it
\textsl{..} or \slshape shape sl
\textsc{..} or \scshape shape sc
\tiny size 5pt
\scriptsize size 7pt
\footnotesize size 8pt
\small size 9pt
\normalsize size 10pt
\large size 12pt
\Large size 14.4pt
\LARGE size 17.28pt
\huge size 20.74pt
\Huge size 24.88pt

The low-level commands used to change font attributes are as follows.

\fontencoding{encoding}
\fontfamily{family}
\fontseries{series}
\fontshape{shape}
\fontsize{size}{baselineskip}
Each of these commands sets one of the font attributes; \fontsize also sets
\baselineskip. The actual font in use is not altered by these commands, but the
current attributes are used to determine which font to use after the next \selectfont
command.
\selectfont selects a text font, based on the current values of the font attrib-
utes. There must be a \selectfont command immediately after any settings of
the font parameters by (some of) the five \font<parameter> commands, before
any following text. For example, it is legal to say:

\fontfamily{ptm}\fontseries{b}\selectfont Some text.

to select bold Times Roman, but it is not legal to say:

\fontfamily{ptm} Some \fontseries{b}\selectfont text.

\usefont{encoding}{family}{series}{shape}
is short hand for the equivalent \font: : : commands followed by a call to \selectfont.

4 Environments
Some examples of how to use environments are given here.

4.1 Alignments
In these environments \\ starts a new line.

13
4 ENVIRONMENTS 4.2 Listing Items

\begin{flushleft}
Some people like to stay firmly\\ on the left whereas others
\end{flushleft}
\begin{flushright}
feel much more at home\\ on the right.\\
\end{flushright}
\begin{center}
but most of us prefer to stay\\ dead in the center.
\end{center}

Some people like to stay firmly

on the left whereas others

feel much more at home

on the right.

but most of us prefer to stay

dead in the center.

4.2 Listing Items

The items can be marked in one of three way:

\begin{itemize}
\item just by a bullet, using \texttt{itemize}

\item numbered, using \texttt{enumerate}

\begin{enumerate}
\item one
\item two
\item three
\end{enumerate}

\item or with a label, using \texttt{description}

\begin{description}
\item[itemize] bullets
\item[enumerate] automatic numbering
\item[description] labelling
\end{description}

\end{itemize}

 just by a bullet
 numbered
1. one
2. two
3. three

14
4 ENVIRONMENTS 4.3 Tabular

 or with a label
itemize bullets
enumerate automatic numbering
description labelling

The pifont package includes a variant of the itemize command that will re-
place the usual ’bullet’ by a Zapf Dingbat symbol of your choice

\begin{dinglist}{43}
\item First
\item Second
\end{dinglist}

☞ First
☞ Second

and a variant of the enumerate command that given an initial Zapf Dingbat
symbol will increment the symbol for each item.

\begin{dingautolist}{172}
\item First
\item Second
\end{dingautolist}

① First
② Second

4.3 Tabular
Tabular output is supported. When you create the environment you specify how
many columns to have and how the contents are to be aligned (use l, c or r to
represent each column with either left, center or right alignment) and where you
want vertical lines (use |). The contents of the columns are separated by a ‘&’ and
rows by \\. To draw a full horizontal line, use \hline otherwise draw a line across
selected columns using \cline. The \multicolumn command allows items to
span columns. It takes as its first argument the number of columns to span. The
following, rather complicated example shows how to use most of these facilities.

\begin{tabular}{||l|lr||} \hline
\textbf{Veg} & \multicolumn{2}{|c||}{\textbf{Detail}}\\\hline
carrots & per pound & \pounds 0.75 \\ \cline{2-3}
& each & 20p \\ \hline
mushrooms & dozen & 86p \\ \cline{1-1} \cline{3-3}
toadstools & pick your own & free \\ \hline
\end{tabular}

Veg Detail
carrots per pound £0.75
each 20p
mushrooms dozen 86p
toadstools pick your own free

15
4 ENVIRONMENTS 4.4 Array

Tables won’t continue on the next page if they’re too long. The longtable
commands are needed to do this. Type handout latex2e_longtable for de-
tails and examples.
If the text in a column is too wide for the page, LATEX won’t automatically text-
wrap. Using p{5cm} instead of c, l or r in the tabular line will wrap-around the
text in a 5 cm wide column.
There are various packages to assist with table creation. The array package
adds some helpful features, including the ability to add formatting commands that
control a whole column at a time, like so

\begin{tabular}{>{\ttfamily}l>{\scshape}c>{\Large}r}
Text & More Text & Large Text\\
Left & Centred & Right
\end{tabular}

Text M ORE T EXT Large Text

Left C ENTRED Right
The rotating package is useful if you have a wide table that you want to dis-
play in landscape mode. You need to put your table inside \begin{sideways}
and \end{sideways}.

4.4 Array
The array environment is similar to the tabular but must be within a math en-
vironment. This

\begin{math}
\left(
\begin{array}{clrr}
a+b+c & uv & x-y & 27 \\
x+y & w & +z & 363
\end{array}
\right)
\end{math}
 a+b+c uv x ;y 27

x+y +z 363
produces
w

4.5 Pictures
LATEX has some graphics capabilities. It’s much better to use xfig. See the appro-
priate document (LATEX Maths and Graphics) for more details.

\newcounter{cms}
\setlength{\unitlength}{1mm}
\begin{picture}(50,39)
\put(0,7){\makebox(0,0)[bl]{cm}}
\multiput(10,7)(10,0){5}{\addtocounter
{cms}{1}\makebox(0,0)[b]{\arabic{cms}}}
\put(15,20){\circle{6}}
\put(30,20){\circle{6}}
\put(15,20){\circle*{2}}

16
4 ENVIRONMENTS 4.6 Maths

\put(30,20){\circle*{2}}
\put(10,24){\framebox(25,8){a box}}
\put(10,32){\vector(-2,1){10}}
\multiput(1,0)(1,0){49}{\line(0,1){2,5}}
\multiput(5,0)(10,0){5}{\line(0,1){3,5}}
\thicklines
\put(0,0){\line(1,0){50}}
\multiput(0,0)(10,0){6}{\line(0,1){5}}
\end{picture}

YHHH

u  
u
a box

cm 1 2 3 4 5

4.6 Maths
Maths is dealt with in a separate handout (LATEX maths and graphics). Here are some
examples

\begin{math}
\lim_{n \rightarrow \infty}x = 0 \\
xˆ{2y} \\
x_{2y} \\
xˆ{2y}_{1} \\
\frac{x+y}{1 + \frac{1}{n+1}} \\
\end{math}

produces limn!1 x = 0
x2y
x2y
2y
x1
x+y
1
1+ n+1

4.7 Figures
To leave a space for graphics, use the figure environment. The arguments to fig-
ure specify where the space will be made, preferentially
h here
t top of page
b bottom of page
p on a page with no text

\begin{figure}[htbp]
\vspace{1cm}
\caption{1 cm of space}
\end{figure}

17
4 ENVIRONMENTS 4.8 Tabbing

Figure 1: 1 cm of space

If you have a label defined in the caption, LATEX is likely to give an error message.
\label is a fragile command (see the LATEX book for details) so you’ll need to do
something like

...
\caption{1 cm of space\protect\label{EMPTY}}

or simply put the \label command after the caption. Note that if you put the
\label before the caption, the resulting reference will be the section number and
not the figure number.

4.8 Tabbing
Within this environment tabs can be set by \= and the next tab moved to by using
\>.

\begin{tabbing}
if \= it’s raining\\ % set tab here, after the ’if’
\> get an umbrella \=\\ % go to the defined tab and set a new one
else\\
\> get wet \> * next tab is here\\
endif
\end{tabbing}

if it’s raining
get an umbrella
else
get wet * next tab is here
endif

4.9 Verbatim
Within this environment things come out unformatted. It’s useful for showing ex-
amples of typed input and provides a way of printing characters that have a special
meaning for LATEX.
\begin{verbatim}
caret is ˆ, tilde is ˜ and backslash is \
\end{verbatim}
produces

caret is ˆ, tilde is ˜ and backslash is \

If you just want to quote a few characters, use \verb|quoted text|. The characters
delimiting the quote can be anything as long as they are the same.

18
5 CUSTOMISING 4.10 Quote, abstract

4.10 Quote, abstract

These widen the margins and change the font. The abstract environment also
adds a title.

4.11 Letter
See letter.tex in /export/Examples/LaTeX2e

5 Customising
5.1 Macros
At the top of the source of this file is

\def\xdt{$\cal X\!\!$\texttt{.desktop}}

X
which defines \xdt to be .desktop. Using such constructions can make your
document much tidier, and saves on typing.

5.2 New Commands

A new command can be created using
\newcommand{\ commandname[number of arguments]{ command text, using #1,
#2 etc to denote arguments}
For example,

\newcommand{\ve}[1]{\(#1_1 ... #1_n\)}

\ve{x}

produces as output x1 :::xn

A problem with this example is that it should change to math mode if LATEX is
already in that mode. A better try would be

\newcommand{\ve}[1]{\ensuremath{#1_1 ... #1_n}}

which will only change to math mode if it’s necessary.

A new environment is just as easily created. The following provides a variant
of the itemize command.

\newenvironment{emlist}{\begin{itemize} \em}{\end{itemize}}
\begin{emlist}
\item first comment
\item second comment
\end{emlist}
The end of the environment ends the scope of the emphasis.

 first comment
 second comment
The end of the environment ends the scope of the emphasis.

19
5 CUSTOMISING 5.3 Packages

5.3 Packages
There are many features and options not mentioned in this handout. See the Local
LATEX Guide for more details. You can often find out what you want by looking at
the files in /export/latex2e/inputs. If your file begins

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

then various macro files are read when you run latex, namely (article.cls,
art12.sty and latex.tex). Some of these files are well-enough commented to
be useful documentation.

5.4 An Example
The following example uses features mentioned in latex.tex.
minipage creates a miniature page complete with its own footnotes etc. It can
be created of any set width. Footnotes within a minipage use a different counter to
other footnotes 2. This example ensures that all the numbers follow on in sequence.
The footnotes in minipages are marked by letters rather than numbers, so here the
type is changed to arabic.

\begin{minipage}{\textwidth}
% Set the minipage footnote counter
\setcounter{mpfootnote}{\value{footnote}}
% Redefine the command that produces the footnote number
\renewcommand{\thempfootnote}{\arabic{mpfootnote}}
\begin{tabular}{|ll|}\hline
one & two\footnote{A minipage footnote}\\\hline
\end{tabular}
\setcounter{footnote}{\value{mpfootnote}}
\end{minipage}

one two3
3 A minipage footnote

You might find this trick useful if you want footnotes in tables. They don’t come
out otherwise.4
Here’s an example of using a package. The multicol file lets one change the
number of columns easily. To switch into 3-column text use

\begin{multicols}{3}{
Put the text here. Maths, tables, pictures etc are all ok, but not
figures. But you have to remember to load in the \texttt{multicol}
package at the top of your document.
}
\end{multicols}

Put the text here. ures. But you have to top of your document.
Maths, tables, pictures remember to load in the
etc are all ok, but not fig- multicol package at the

2 like this one

4 Not for me anyway

20
6 MORE INFORMATION

LATEX uses the value of the environmental variable TEXINPUTS to decide where to
look for sty files. If you create a directory called (say) inputs, copy a system
*.sty file into it and do

export TEXINPUTS=inputs:/export/latex2e/inputs

then your copy will be read in preference to the system one and you can customise
easily.

6 More Information
 See the uk.tex newsgroup.
 Use the TEX Archive ftp.tex.ac.uk
 Use gopher on club to access a database of TEX info. Select Services to
find the option. Suppose we wanted to find out how to put italian into LATEX.
Type latex italian in reply to the search prompt and relevant files will
be presented to you for viewing or copying.
 The LTEX 2" handouts (with source) are online. Just type ‘handouts LaTeX2e’.
A

 See the examples in /export/Examples/LaTeX2e.

 Borrow a LTEX manual from the machine room.
A

 Look at the files in /export/latex2e/inputs, especially, latex.tex.

21