LaTeX.org

In two column mode it seems that the top of a float at the top of a column is about 4pt higher than the text in the other column.
Here is a minwrk example:

\documentclass[twocolumn]{article}
\setlength\abovecaptionskip{0pt}
\begin{document}
Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah ...

Must be a common problem. I think your best bet would be to use abbreviations like jacs in the .bib files where you give details of the articles
and have one .bib file (say, abbrev_journal_names.bib) where you define jacs etc as the abbreviated names
...
@String{JACS = {J. Am.\ Chem.\ Soc ...

I use emacs to edit .tex files and use user defined macros like \beq instead of \begin{equation} along with various other \newcommand macros that take arguments (such as \newcommand{\figref}[1]{\figurename~#1}).

emacs knows about the standard latex commands and uses pretty colours for their ...

Does anyone know of a .bst file that does abbreviated page ranges? For example, if the .bib file has pages={2420-2422}
then the output is given as 2420--2. makebst doesn't have this option.

Many thanks in advance,
Mike

Is there a way to get LaTeX to detect directories?
\IfFileExists doesn't do it. Minimal example:

\documentclass{article}
\IfFileExists{tmp}{\typeout{*** found ***}}{\typeout{*** not found ***}}
\begin{document}
\end{document}

If tmp is an ordinary file, it is found. If it is a directory, it isn't ...