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Rob J Hyndman: Research tips: Controlling figure and table placement in LaTeX

It can be frustrating trying to get your figures and tables to appear where you want them in a LaTeX document. Sometimes, they just seem to float off onto another page of their own accord. Here is a collection of tools and ideas that help you get control of those pesky floats. Use the placement options: [...]

TeXblog: TeX Live 2009 released

After development and many weeks of testing, final bug fixing and translations the new TeX Live 2009 has been released today.

TeXblog: TeX Live 2009 erschienen

Nach Entwicklung und vielen Wochen Tests, letzten Fehlerbehebungen und Übersetzungen ist heute TeX Live 2009 veröffentlicht worden.

Some TeX Developments: TeX Live 2009 released

A quick note to say that TeX Live 2009 has been released. The MacTeX web pages will probably get updated over the next few days, and I’d expect we’ll also hear about the DVD. Testing TeX Live 2009, everything has worked very well, so I’d not expect any problems.

Some TeX Developments: Windows TeX Users: MiKTeX or TeX Live

I was talking to someone at work recently, and the topic of whether to choose MiKTeX or TeX Live on Windows came up. With MiKTeX 2.8 released and TeX Live 2009 due out any day, I thought I’d make a few comments. First, both systems are very capable, so there is not really a “wrong” decision. [...]

Malaysian LaTeX User Group: Fancy Chapter Headings

This is the 3rd post in the bookdesign series. Previous posts in this series:

If you look at my post that started this series, you might notice that the first page of every chapter in the Grid Computing Cluster report is rather fancy. I've initially got my inspirations from Stefan Kottwitz's post on 'Fancy chapter headings with TikZ'.

Here are the samples of how the chapter pages would look like:

(Download links of the .tex source files are at the end of this post)

The chapter number and title are rendered with TikZ, similar to what's described in Stefan Kottwitz's post. I threw in a background image across the top of the page, and another one at the lower corner, using the wallpaper package.

Just so we can choose a different image for every chapter, I defined a new command that holds the image filename (\newcommand\chapterillustration{}) and re-define it at each chapter (\renewcommand\chapterillustration{cherry-tomatos}).

Notice that the positioning of the chapter title and the fern leaf background image is different depending on whether the chapter starts on an odd or even page. The memoir document class provides the commands \checkoddpage and \ifoddpage...\else\...\fi, so that you can define what to do in each case. Don't worry if you're not using the memoir document class, these commands are also available via the changepage package.

Now to actually implement these definitions. The memoir document class lets you define chapter styles (e.g. \makechapterstyle{FancyChap}{\def\printchaptertitle##1{...}} see the manual on "Chapter Headings" for more details) in the preamble, which you would activate in the document body with \chapterstyle{FancyChap}.

On the other hand, if you're not using the memoir document class, use the \titleformat and \titlespacing commands from the titlesec package instead.

Sorry I'm too tired to even post relevant snippets; here are the links to the .tex sources to produce the sample pages above. I've incorporated the code for Changing page size and sizes, too. (By the way I used the lipsum package to generate the dummy text. You know, Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...)

The sample public domain images are from here (cherry tomatos), here (computer chips) and here (fern leaf).

UK-TUG: AGM and Speaker Meeting, 14th November 2009, UCL, London

The AGM of the UK TeX Users Group will take place on Saturday 14th November at 2pm at: Physics and Astronomy, Room E7 University College London London (walking distance from Euston) http://www.ucl.ac.uk/silva/phys/find The entrance to the room is inside the main quadrangle of UCL. Enter from Gower Street, and the entrance to the building is in the far left corner. We will put [...]

UK-TUG: AGM Information: reports 2

Further to the last post, we are pleased to make available: Chair’s Report 2009 Baskerville Editor’s Report 2009

Some TeX Developments: Understanding macro expansion

I get the occasional e-mail asking me to explain who some complex macro works. I usually answer by trying to show how I go about understanding things. There are a few simple steps: Start from the definition of the first macro you want to understand. From the definition, work out what arguments it will take (easy if [...]

Got Emacs?: A quick way of looking up colours in LaTeX

While making beamer presentations, I generally use dvipsnames or svgnames as an option to beamer. This allows me to use named colours instead of giving some RGB numbers to get the colour I want.

Well, sort of.

I mean you still have to figure out what HoneyDew looks like. I used to google it up and check how the colours actually looked. Now, I've got a simpler way to do it. Just do, M-x list-colors-display in Emacs and it shows about the same list as that of svgnam.def with the visual colours. Saves you a few keystrokes and clickies.

You of course, are using Emacs and AucTeX aren't you? :-)

Malaysian LaTeX User Group: Using Colours in LaTeX

A brief departure from the bookdesign series, as some of my future posts within and outside the series will be dealing with the use of colours, so I might as well get it out of the way first. Summarily, we'll take a look at how to use colours in LaTeX with the xcolor package. This will work with all outputs, i.e. .dvi, .ps and .pdf.

The most useful commands for applying colours made available by xcolor are:

\color{color} (applies color to the text in the currrent group)
\textcolor{color}{text} (applies color to the specified text only)
\pagecolor{color} (colors the entire page to be color)
\colorbox{color}{text} (creates a box containing the specified text, with color as the background)
\fcolorbox{frame color}{bg color}{text} (same as above, but with a coloured border around the box)

See Section 2.6 of the xcolor manual for full list and more details of commands for colour application. Alternatively, if you're using emacs, you can look it up with M-x list-colors-display.

The xcolor package has quite a collection of pre-defined colours; they are listed in Section 4 Colors by Name in the manual. Apart from the 19 "base" colours that are always available, you can also access more pre-defined colours via the dvipsnames, svgnames and x11names options. Here's a quick example:

\documentclass[a6paper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage[x11names]{xcolor}

\begin{document}

% 'LemonChiffon1' from x11names
\pagecolor{LemonChiffon1}

% 'magenta' is a base colour
\textcolor{magenta}{Hello World!}

% 'CadeBlue1', 'Firebrick2' and 'Goldenrod1'
% are available via x11names
What a \colorbox{CadetBlue1}{wonderful}
\fcolorbox{Firebrick2}{Goldenrod1}{world}.
\end{document}

You can mix up your own colours, too. \color{LemonChiffon1!80} means 80% LemonChiffon1 and 20% white, while \color{lime!30!yellow!60!Mahogany} would be 30% lime, 60% yellow, and 10% Mahogany. You can also give names to the colours you concoct, so that you can reuse them at various points in your document. For example:

\definecolor[named]{CoolBlack}{cmyk}{.3,0,0,1} defines the CMYK 'Cool Black' (useful if your printer asks for CMYK black instead of 'rich black')
\definecolor[named]{AquaBlue2}{rgb}{.553,.769,.98} defines 'AquaBlue2' with decimal RGB values (range [0,1])
\definecolor[named]{Hazelnut}{HTML}{BDA59B} defines 'Hazelnut' with HTML RGB values. Useful if you're re-using colour definitions from CSS styesheets.

If you're like me i.e. you just can't hit the right figures to get a colour just right, head over to COLOURlovers for lotsa inspirations and colour schemes. I got almost all my colours for the Grid Computing Cluster report from this website.

Have fun and happy LaTeXing!

UK-TUG: AGM Information: reports

As reported earlier, the UK-TUG AGM will take place on the 14th of November at UCL. As part of the AGM, there will be reports from various members of the outgoing Committee. The following written information is available for reading now: Accounts 2008–09 Treasurer’s report Combined Membership Secretary’s and Webmaster’s report The Committee hope these are useful.

Some TeX Developments: achemso and rsc: empty first entry in bibliography

I’ve had a few e-mails recently from users of my achemso and rsc packages, complaining that they get an empty first entry in the bibliography. Some of the users have noticed that it seems to be linked to the special control citation that both packages use. However, this is not a bug in either bundle, [...]

Some TeX Developments: TUG Interview

The TeX Users Group have been running a series of interviews for some time, with questions to prominent people in the TeX world. I’ve obviously been doing something right, as I’ve just completed an interview for them. I do hope it’s enlightening.

TeXblog: Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” released

Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop, Server and Netbook editions have been released today.

Malaysian LaTeX User Group: Setting page size and margins

There's quite a bit of interest in the .tex code behind the Grid Computing Cluster report, but I think posting the raw code in its entirety would be a bit too overwhelming to quickly glean useful tips from it. (Also to avoid getting into any issues with my university... etc...)

So instead, I'll be doing a series of short posts on how I achieved certain effects and book design, starting with this one. It's probably faster for people to "zero-in" on what they need. ;-) Posts in this series will be tagged "book design". But before you implement your next major book project with LaTeX, do check with your printing company about the printing process used. If you'll be using on-demand laser printing, everything should go fine since the RGB colour model of your PDF should be adequate. However, if you're going with offset printing, your printing company will most likely prefer CMYK colour model to be used instead, and I haven't quite figured out how to tweak that perfectly with (pdf)LaTeX. In our case, only the book cover was printed with offset printing, and the effect was acceptable — so that ended well...

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: I am NOT a graphics designer, so my choice of colours/illustrations/etc probably sucks. Don't shoot me. :-)

Now there are multiple ways to achieve the same effect in LaTeX (that's FOSS for you). For this report, I've decided to use the memoir document class, which incorporates the functionalities of many other packages. (Do take some time to browse or search through the excellent manual with texdoc or mthelp.)

The flowfram package looks like a very interesting solution for designing dynamic layout, but I didn't find out about it until too late into my own project. Do find some time to look at it yourself. If you want to go with the standard document classes (report, book) or the koma-script classes, I'll indicate what extra packages you'll need where relevant.

In this first post we'll just look at how (custom) page sizes and margins can be specified. Basically my page design is:

Stock paper size is 303mm x 216mm. The stock paper is the raw original paper that a commercial printer will print the page on, which will be trimmed down to the page size
Page size is A4 i.e. 297mm x 210mm.
The printer advised us to leave a good 10mm from the page edges around any printed text.
I decided the main typeblock will be 20mm from the top, bottom and spine (inner) edge of the page, and 15mm from the outer edge.
Also, the running header should occupy the height of a line of text, 7mm from the top edge of the typeblock. Whereas the baseline of the running footer is 7mm from the bottom edge of the typeblock.

These are not necessarily good measurements for an aesthetically-pleasing book design, but more because I was trying to strike a balance between aesthetics and to fit everything in (Lesson: Get in touch with the printing company early to check with their printing specifications per minimum page margins, etc!)

These can be implemented using commands from the memoir class. (The notion of 'stock', although a common concept in publishing and printing industries, is only available in memoir, not in the standard document classes.)

\documentclass[twoside]{memoir}

%% The stock paper size
\setstocksize{303mm}{216mm}

%% The 'real' page size
\settrimmedsize{297mm}{210mm}{*}

%% The stock paper will be trimmed 3mm from the top edge
%% and 3mm from the left edge
\settrims{3mm}{3mm}

%% Spine and trim page margins from main typeblock
\setlrmarginsandblock{20mm}{15mm}{*}

%% Top and bottom page margins from main typeblock
\setulmarginsandblock{20mm}{20mm}{*}

%% Header occupies height of a single line;
%% Bottom edge of footer is 7mm from bottom edge of typeblock
\setheadfoot{\baselineskip}{7mm}

%% Bottom edge of header is 7mm from top edge of typeblock
\setlength\headsep{7mm}

%% Apply and enforce layout
\checkandfixthelayout

In my case, due to some later issues with colouring the 3mm bleeding edges too (as per our printing company's request), I decided to make the trimmed page size the same as my stock size and increased the page margins instead:

\documentclass[twoside]{memoir}

%% Custom stock paper and page size
\setstocksize{303mm}{216mm}
\settrimmedsize{\stockwidth}{\stockheight}{*}

%% Adjust margins accordingly to achieve same previous layout
\setlrmarginsandblock{23mm}{18mm}{*}
\setulmarginsandblock{23mm}{23mm}{*}

\setheadfoot{\baselineskip}{7mm}
\setlength\headsep{7mm}

\checkandfixthelayout

If you just need to print on exactly A4-sized paper, you can forget about setting the stock and trimmed size explicitly and just do

\documentclass[a4paper,twoside]{memoir}

\setlrmarginsandblock...
\setulmarginsandblock...
...
\checkandfixthelayout

One last thing: if you're not using the memoir class, you can still change the page margins via a high-level interface with the geometry package:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{
   paperwidth=216mm, paperheight=303mm,
   left=23mm, %% or inner=23mm
   right=18mm, %% or outer=18mm
   top=23mm, bottom=23mm,
   headheight=\baselineskip,
   headsep=7mm,
   footskip=7mm
}

Again, if you're just going to print on A4 (or letter) paper, you can just do

\usepackage[a4paper]{geometry}
\geometry{
   left=20mm, %% or inner=20mm
   right=15mm, %% or outer=15mm
   top=20mm, bottom=20mm,
   headheight=\baselineskip,
   headsep=7mm,
   footskip=7mm
}

i.e. just pass the a4 option to the geometry package; there's then no need to set the paper height and width explicitly.

TeXblog: Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” Release Party

Karmic Koala is coming, its release is scheduled for tomorrow, Ubuntu user groups all around the world will celebrate the release with parties, so we will do in Berlin.

Malaysian LaTeX User Group: Unfolding vim-latex fold

I don't know about you guys but I found it is very annoying to have my sections and subsections to be folded in vim/gvim , since somehow I mistakenly put "i" since I want to change to insert mode to unfold (although it should be :za) .

So now, the cruelest method is by

:set foldlevel = 5

usually I put 10 heh.

(since section,subsection and subsubsection may =3 .. so play safe with above that level).

But so far I did not managed to get it work by putting in in $HOME/.vimrc . Any hints?

River Valley TV: Processing “Computed” Texts

Jean-Michel Hufflen Université de Franche-Comté Play (41min) Download: FLV | mp3

River Valley TV: Il respawn di Infomedia (LaTeX-based)

Emmanuele Somma Infomedia Play (30min) Download: FLV | mp3

River Valley TV: Una estensione di luatex: luatex lunatic

Luigi Scarso Logo S.r.l. Play (42min) Download: FLV | mp3

TeXblog: TexmakerX 1.9.2 published

The new version TexmakerX 1.9.2 has been released today. This version brings several new features and fixes some bugs.

River Valley TV: Combelow: abbasso i segni diacritici di serie B

Gianluca Pignalberi Free Software Magazine Play (20min) Download: FLV | mp3

River Valley TV: Detexify: un servizio online per il riconoscimento automatico dei simboli

Lapo Mori Univeristà di Pisa Play (3min) Download: FLV | mp3

Malaysian LaTeX User Group: My first presentation with LaTeX

I spent my precious nites doing these stuffs. Everything went well except I didn't compiled my *.tex twice so that my Tikz arrows drawn perfectly.

Next 6th Nov I'll be going to present another talk.. I hope I can avoid such problem again.

Tex Source
My Presentation Slides [HTML]
My Slides [PDF, 70 slides since I did some overlays]

You can refer my .tex file and do whatever changes that you want... but I'll be happy if you tell me where will you present your talk using my so called *masterpiece* :D

By the way, I converted those Beamer PDFs using external command, that is gs

I tweak some recommendations here

So, what I did was;

gs -dNOPAUSE -g1024x768 -r205 -sDEVICE=pngalpha -sOutputFile=./temp/slide_%02d.png -dBATCH beamer-foss-my-09.pdf cd temp/new/

//02d since this will correctly numbers your slides sequence from 00,01,10,11.. otherwise it will assume 1,11,10 is within the same order(as you can see, in the link that I gave before it doesn't stated that... so "man gs" did helped :)

for i in *.png; do convert -resize 600 $i temp/new/$i ; done

//you need to install ImageMagick package to do this.. "convert" command will resize the initially generated PNG from gs to smaller size. I did tried to set smaller size in gs command but seems it just bring partial of the slides into smaller pieces...

igal2 -r *.png -xy 300 -w 4
//this will create HTML galleries, initially the tool named "igal"

Some components of my *.tex file were adapted from texample.net ...

River Valley TV: LaTeX e CSV

Massimiliano Dominici Play (34min) Download: FLV | mp3

River Valley TV: L’arte di gestire la bibliografia con biblatex

Lorenzo Pantieri Play (32min) Download: FLV | mp3

River Valley TV: La composizione di tabelle con larghezza specificata

Claudio Beccari Play (22min) Download: FLV | mp3

River Valley TV: TeX as an ebook reader

Kaveh Bazargan River Valley Technologies Play (23min) Download: FLV | mp3

Some TeX Developments: PCTeX: Helpful people

I had a bug report for siunitx recently, concerning handling of the ohm symbol when the MathTime Pro package has made \Omega slanted. As many of you will know, MathTime Pro is commercial, and so I was not totally sure I’d be able to sort the issue out. I dropped the suppliers, PCTeX, a quick [...]

Some TeX Developments: TeXworks: Automatic LaTeX message detection

The latest builds of TeXworks include support for scripting. There are not a lot of scripts just yet, but one that already looks good is LaTeX error message highlighting. This already seems to work pretty well, and it’s one of the few things I miss from my previous editor of choice (WinEdt). It can already jump [...]

UK-TUG: AGM 2009: 14th November, UCL, London

This is to give you formal notice of the 2009 Annual General Meeting of the UK TeX Users Group, and to tell you about submitting motions and standing for the Committee. Information about the Speaker Meeting taking place at the same time is will be posted here shortly, and will also be circulated separately. We will be [...]

TeXblog: TeXnicCenter 2.0 alpha 1 released

The first Alpha version of the upcoming TeXnicCenter 2.0 has been released today. It is a development version, not stable, just released for testing, but it shows that the development is in progress and it gives an impression of the new version.

River Valley TV: Simboli matematici in TeX e LaTeX

Enrico Gregorio Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Verona Play (27min) Download: FLV | mp3

Some TeX Developments: Automating releases to CTAN

I’ve talked in recent posts about various aspects of creating LaTeX packages, focussing on the dtx format. One thing I’ve been promising to cover is automating the release of material to CTAN. Even for a basic package, there are a few files to sort out (the source, a readme file, the documentation and an ins [...]

Random Determinism: Creating a style file in ConTeXt

This blog post explains how to create a style file in ConTeXt. I have an eink reader, IRex digital reader DR1000, and I occasionally use it read novels from Project Gutenberg. (Most of the time, I use it to read research papers, something that DR1000 is perfect for). Most novels are available as plain text [...]

Got Emacs?: JTikZ: A Java library that produces TikZ code

From an email to the pgf mailing list, Evan Sultanik has written a Java Library to create TikZ code. If you code in Java, then it might be useful even if the code is in early stages of development. The library can be found here.

Instructions on using the Library can be found in the email.

Malaysian LaTeX User Group: Following Curutari

I spent nites on beamer (with yesterday's nite mistakenly "rsync"ed my new .tex with the old one.. badly need my own SVN repo, sigh) . I seems to like "beamerthemestree" so much.

Malaysian LaTeX User Group: KDE Beamer Themes

FOSS.my is this Friday, and even though I can't attend, perhaps there are some presenters who'd be interested to use Beamer to prepare their presentations, and perhaps using KDE themes: you can download the theme packages (.sty and .png files) from that link there. Once downloaded, put them in your TEXMF tree (~/texmf/tex/latex on TeXLive and MikTeX, ~/Library/texmf/tex/latex on MacTeX), and refresh it (use the MikTeX control panel; or run texhash if you're using TeXLive. If using MacTeX, you won't need to manually run texhash or anything).

By the way, you'll find templates for OOImpress and KPresenter via that link, too.

To use the Oxygen-style theme:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usetheme{oxygen}

\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
...
\end{frame}
...
\end{document}

Sample output:

To use the Air theme and the output:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usetheme{air}
...

There's also a PNG image which can be used as background for presentations at the link above (desenho.png). To use this with the default beamer theme, do:

\documentclass{beamer}
\setbeamertemplate{background}{\includegraphics[width=\paperwidth,height=\paperheight]{desenho}}
...

Happy LaTeXing!

Malaysian LaTeX User Group: Background images

I'm sure every LaTeX user tried this code at least once to add a "background image" on a page:

\includegraphics[width=\pagewidth,height=\textwidth]{wallpaper_filename}

But the included graphics, even though it looks the right size, would refuse to budge beyond the page margins, leaving a white border all round it. And you'd probably have problem placing any text at all on the graphics, thus defeating the purpose of a "background" image.

The wallpaper package offers an easy way to add background images or wallpapers in LaTeX, including tiling. The following commands are available:

\CenterWallPaper{<scaling>}{<filename>} where <scaling> is a value between 0 and 1, for specifying the fraction of paper width or height. The aspect ratio of the graphics will not be changed, i.e. you won't get a "stretched" wallpaper as you would with your desktop wallpapers.

\ULCornerWallPaper{<scaling>}{<filename>}
\LLCornerWallPaper{<scaling>}{<filename>}
\URCornerWallPaper{<scaling>}{<filename>}
\LRCornerWallPaper{<scaling>}{<filename>}

The above four commands take the same arguments as \CenterWallPaper, but puts the image at the Upper Left, Lower Left, Upper Right and Lower Right corners of the page respectively.

For tiling wallpapers, there are:

\TileWallPaper{<width>}{<height>}{<filename>}, where you can specify (in pt, cm, in...) the width and height of the included image.
\TileSquareWallPaper{<number>}{<filename>}, where the included image would be re-shaped as a square, and <number> is the number of "image tiles" that will fill up the width of the paper.

Note that all the commands above will apply the background images on every page after the command is issued. To clear the wallpaper, use \ClearWallPaper.

Also, for each command \XXXWallPaper command above, there is a \ThisXXXWallPaper command that takes the same arguments but would apply the background image on only the current page.

You can now run wild with your imagination to design letterheads, chapter headings, covers, etc. Have fun!

Malaysian LaTeX User Group: Latex beamer and blocks

Block

\begin{frame}
\frametitle{Portable Object (PO) files}
\begin{block}{Nature}
\begin{itemize}
\item It's a raw, untranslated file
\item Created automatically using gettext package
\item Ready to be translated
\end{itemize}
\end{block}
\end{frame}

produce this :

Alertblock

\begin{frame}
\subsection{gettext}
\frametitle{gettext}
\begin{alertblock}{gettext in short}
\begin{itemize}
\item Part of GNU packages
\item Enables internationalization of software
\item Enables the creation of Portable Object (PO) file
\end{itemize}
\end{alertblock}
\begin{center}
\alert{\emph{Portable Object?}}
\end{center}
\end{frame}

produce this :

Exampleblock

\begin{frame}
\frametitle{Machine Object (MO) files}
\begin{exampleblock}{Description}
\begin{itemize}
\item \alert {Compiled file}, derived from PO
\item It's a binary, thus \emph{machine readable}
\end{itemize}
\end{exampleblock}
\end{frame}

produce this:

Good luck !

LaTeX Project: New LaTeX release (September 24, 2009)

A new version of LaTeX was placed on CTAN a fortnight ago; it will be included in the upcoming TeX Live 2009. This version of LaTeX is a maintenance release only, but marks the first new version since the publication of The LaTeX Companion, 2nd Ed. In case you missed it earlier, the LaTeX source files are now publicly available and this is also the first release from this new location. More information can be found in LaTeX News issue 19.

TeXblog: REVTeX 4.1 Released

The first update to REVTeX since 2001 has been released yesterday, today it's been uploaded to CTAN. REVTeX 4.1 is a set of LaTeX2e macro packages. It is especially well-suited for preparing manuscripts for submission to the journals of the American Physical Society (APS) and American Institute of Physics (AIP). The Version 4.1 brings bug fixes, improved functionality and support for a wider range of journals.

Some TeX Developments: No restricted \write18 just yet!

Having posted about restricted \write18 support in TeX Live 2009 (and MiKTeX 2.8), a message to the TeX Live mailing list now tells me that for the moment there’s been a change: … we pulled the plug and try to fix it. The problem is that allowing epstopdf we in fact obliterate openout_any becasue epstopdf can write everywhere. As [...]

Rob J Hyndman: Research tips: Squeezing space with LaTeX

I’ve been writing a grant application with a 10-page limit, and as usual it is difficult to squeeze everything in. No, I can’t just change the font as it has to be 12 point with at least 2 cm margins on an A4 page. Fortunately, LaTeX is packed full of powerful features that help in [...]

Malaysian LaTeX User Group: Name that symbol!

If you wanted to insert some symbol in a word processing application, you'd probably open up a character palette or symbol map, and browse through various fonts (wingdings, dingbats...) to find that elusive symbol.

In LaTeX, the Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List has just about every symbol imaginable in LaTeX, from mathematical operators and symbols (including Greek letters), the Euro symbol, wingdings, dingbats, blah blah blah. The list is accessible as a PDF on your local installation via the commands texdoc comprehensive on TeXLive, or mthelp --view comprehensive on MikTeX.

However, browsing through the list is still rather tedious, even if the document has a good index to make searching a leeeeeetle bit easier. Detexify is a free online tool that greatly simplifies the hunt for a LaTeX symbols. You sketch your symbol with the mouse, and detexify tries to classify it and returns the appropriate LaTeX package and command required for rendering it.

Here's an example of a "null" symbol. The 2nd symbol in the list is the one I'm looking for, so I'm going to include the lines

\usepackage{amssymb}
...
$... \varnothong ... $

in my .tex file.

Here's another example of a maths symbol.

Wingdings and dingbats work, too. In fact, I haven't even finished drawing the envelope, and detexify has already showed me \Letter from the marvosym package.

Some TeX Developments: The TDS and TDS zip files

In my post about working with dtx files, I made the somewhat throw-away statement The idea of a TDS-ready zip is also popular … I’ve been pulled up on that by e-mail, so I thought I’d consider this a bit more before looking at automating working with dtx sources. First, what does ‘TDS’ mean? The short answer is [...]

Malaysian LaTeX User Group: Drawing diagram; the cryptic way

Well, this is not-so-latex stuffs, but I just want to share with you guys...

I managed to tried out 3 applications:

Let's see for Tikz;

%modified from texample.net
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{mindmap,trees}
\usepackage{verbatim}

\begin{document}
\pagestyle{empty}

\begin{tikzpicture}
\path[mindmap,concept color=red!50!black,text=white]
node[concept] {Hidup}
[clockwise from=0]
child[concept color=green!60!blue]
{
node[concept] {Pertimbangan}
[clockwise from=90]
child { node[concept] {cari duit} }
child { node[concept] {buat amal ibadat} }
child { node[concept] {belajar sungguh-sungguh} }
child { node[concept] {bina keluarga bahagia} }
}
child[concept color=orange] {
node[concept] {research}
[clockwise from=-30]
child { node[concept] {jurnal} }
child { node[concept] {artikel} }
};
\end{tikzpicture}\end{document}

will produce

then how about ditaa;

Raw source snapshot:

will produce:

and finally graphviz;

Source, the "dot" file:

digraph process{
node [color=blue,fontcolor=black,font=helvetica,]
nodesep=1.5
A[label="Machine Object (MO)"]
B[label="Portable Object (PO)"]

C[label="developer"]
D[label="translator"]
E[label="tools"]
F[label="POedit"]
G[label="kbabel"]

C->B[label="prepares PO",style=dashed]
C->A[label="compiles MO",style=dashed]
C->B->D [label="send PO files/i18n",fontcolor=red]
D->B->C[label="return translated files/l10n",fontcolor=green ]
D->E[label="translate using",fontcolor=blue,style=dashed]
E->F
E->G
}

returns;

Malaysian LaTeX User Group: TeXample aggregator

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The German Ubuntu Linux User Conference "Ubucon" will be held for the third time in Göttingen, hosted by the Georg August University, October 19-22, 2009. The conference program includes three LaTeX workshops/talks: "LaTeX in the year 2009", "LaTeX introduction for new users" and "Producing magazines with LaTeX".