I can assure you I searched a hell lot before posting this and I only post questions online if I have totally given up. :(
I am new in LaTeX since I chose it to write my undergraduate thesis. I can only write my thesis in Greek (since my professor doesn't want to bother forwarding my request to ...
@OFFSHARING if you are using a typesetting tradition that does indent initial paragraphs use \usepackage{indentfirst} (a package of impeccable quality as @egreg will confirm)
@FaheemMitha I suspect that it will forever have the highest ratio of documentation to code of any latex package.
@OFFSHARING well it's a lot easier to add/remove a single package use in the preamble than add/remove random \indent formatting instructions scattered through your source, which is rather the point of latex markup to keep such style decisions separate from the writing of the actual text.
@FaheemMitha I remember being quite sad really when we packaged it for latex2e and added \ProvidesPackage{indentfirst} at the top in the house style, that added 14 tokens to what was previously a 4 token package.
I have a template. Does anyone have tips about converting it to a class file? Tips may or may not include "Don't do that". Is there a question on the site about this, perhaps?
@FaheemMitha you can easily make a class (or even more easily a package) from the preamble, in the package case literally take all the lines between but not including \documentclass and \begin{document} and put them in mypackage.sty and then just use \usepackage{mypackage}
What are the actual differences between the two? I am new to LaTeX and I need to create a custom "look & feel" -- should I be looking into making a class or a style?
@FaheemMitha that was all i meant. There is no command \usestylefile as there are no things officially called style files, but there are things called packages which are used with \usepackage.
@FaheemMitha no, latex209 used \documentstyle[longtable,array,12pt,....]{article} so what are now packages were just options to the class (any option that was not "known" like 12pt caused the system to look for a file with name of form option.sty
@FaheemMitha so 2e got rid of \documentstyle and introduced \documentclass and \usepackage as separate commands (but we kept the .sty extension because most of them then just worked without change)
So, is it LaTeX 2.09 and LaTeX2e? Or are the spaces not well defined?
@DavidCarlisle I made a few more edits to that answer. If you are unhappy with them, please do not hesitate to revert. In particular, one sentence now starts with a preposition. I hope that does not make you faint in horror.
@FaheemMitha 2.09 usually has a space, 2e is defined in the latexe macro to be \LaTeX\kern.15em2$_{\textstyle\varepsilon}$} .15 em is about half a normal word space so approximate that by a space or no space as you wish....
@FaheemMitha She got involved in drugs and convicted for pushing, but she was cleared some years later (very slow judicial system here). She never recovered and got into very bad depression.
@DavidCarlisle I think github.com/latex3/unicode-data is just about right now: I've separated out the XeTeX classes as I'm now pretty convinced any 'real' use needs more sophistication but at the same time for plain and 2e a loader for this is required.
@DavidCarlisle A review would be appreciated, then I'll step to v1 and send to CTAN (and add a changes list to the README for v1 onwards)
@JosephWright OK just packing up now (10 minutes ago, but someone came to my desk:-) will look from home in a bit... By the way have you looked at xgreek (it came up in a couple of questions and Ulrike tracked it down to being docstripped with tex not pdftex, but it over-writes all the uppercase settings for greek (I remember a thread about that on xetex or texlive list a while back)
@egreg yes sure that's the reason but while looking at that i was looking what the package actually does which is sort of relevant to @JosephWright's unicode case changing setup.
@egreg I can't decide if I should ask the author to use ascii markup in the package to avoid that problem. It's the safest thing, but makes it a lot less readable...
If you don't want longtable to add headers and footers to the table at the same time that multicol is balancing where to make the break (which would require that frank and I cooperate:-) then multicol will balance the output from longtable if you first trick longtable into thinking that it isn't ...
In computer science, the ostrich algorithm is a strategy of ignoring potential problems on the basis that they may be exceedingly rare. It is named for the ostrich effect which is defined as "to stick one's head in the sand and pretend there is no problem." It is used when it is more cost-effective to allow the problem to occur than to attempt its prevention.
== Use with deadlocksEdit ==
This approach may be used in dealing with deadlocks in concurrent programming if they are believed to be very rare and the cost of detection or prevention is high. For example if each PC deadlocks once per 10 years...
Why doesn't the book class define \partmark to issue \markboth{}{} by default instead of hardwiring \markboth{}{} in \@part? Every sectional level needs its \<level>mark command, why should \part be different? :(
I use TeXworks for typesetting LilyPond music. The syntax is very similar, and the idea as well (text file -> PDF), so it's very convenient.
However, LilyPond doesn't (obviously) use syncTeX for inverse-search, it uses the textedit:// links. I would like to configure these links to work for forw...
I need to make a form, not a computer-fillable pdf, but a paper form. Is there a good package for that? I might just use the addlinespace macro in booktabs, but I suspect that there's a better way.
I have written the bibliography in a .bib file. Can we use in this file a command for example \begin{otherlanguage} so that I can use an other language as in the main text?
@MaryStar you can, with the disadvantage that the bib file is then only usable with documents that set up that language with babel, but if it is a personal bib file that's not a problem
@MaryStar oh I thought you meant for changing the language of individual titles. for the whole bib don't put anything in the bib file and use in your document \begin{otherlanguage} \bibliography{yourfile}\end{otherlanguage}
What are the actual differences between the two? I am new to LaTeX and I need to create a custom "look & feel" -- should I be looking into making a class or a style?
