General ⇒ achemso demo help

[jonlong]

Hi, I am new to LaTeX and I am having some problems building PDFs from the TeXnicCenter. I wish to use a journal format which fits that of the american chemical society. Their website recommends using the achemso package and offers a demo file. When I try to build this demo file the PDF file cannot be found. The error log in TeXnic says that it cannot open the [filename].aux file. I then get an error message along the lines, [DocOpen("%bm.pdf")]. I have updated the Miktex packages and the problem still occurs. If anyone can shead any light on this I would greatly appreciate it!

Cheers

J

[josephwright]

This is not an achemso issue as such. Have you downloaded or copied the achemso-demo.tex file to somewhere for testing (for example, a folder inside My Documents)? If so, do you get a .log file: if you do, please post it here.

[jonlong]

Many thanks for the reply. Unfortunately it does not generate any of the .aux, .log files. If I replace \documentclass[journal=jacsat,manuscript=article]{achemso} at the start of the code with \documentclass[12pt]{article} then it generates a PDF allbeit with numerous errors and strange formating. I downloaded the achemso package through the Miktex package manager, should I do this some other way?
I downloaded the demo from the ACS website and also the package files although I am unsure how to install them manually.

Thanks
J

[josephwright]

Any TeX error at all (including achemso simply being missing) will result in some kind of .log file. Can you try compiling achemso-demo.tex from the Commmand Prompt? ("pdflatex achemso-demo" in the folder where the .tex file is). You should then get some clues on the screen as to what is up.

[jonlong]

Thanks again for your help

I tried using the previous version of MiKtex (2.7) instead of 2.8 and this worked nicely, I don t think the 2.8 version I had was linked to the Texniccenter properly.

I actually have another problem now! How do I construct a .bib file to work with achemso package. I have tried creating a name.bib file containing the @article etc commands and then reading it by the \bibliography{name} command but it creates many errors and does not link or create citations. Am I doing something wrong here.

Thanks
J

[josephwright]

I actually have another problem now! How do I construct a .bib file to work with achemso package. I have tried creating a name.bib file containing the @article etc commands and then reading it by the \bibliography{name} command but it creates many errors and does not link or create citations. Am I doing something wrong here.

As is shown by the demo file achemso-demo, you do indeed want a .bib file with entries such as

Code: Select all

@ARTICLE{Arduengo1994,
  author = {Arduengo, III, Anthony J. and Siegfried F. Gamper and
    Joseph C. Calabrese and Fredric Davidson},
  title = {{L}ow-coordinate carbene complexes of nickel(0) and
    platinum(0)},
  journal = jacsat,
  year = {1994},
  volume = {116},
  pages = {4391--4394},
  number = {10},
  doi = {10.1021/ja00089a029},
}

In the LaTeX file, you then need to \cite the entries, for example

Code: Select all

\cite{Arduengo1994}

On the first LaTeX run, no citations will appear, but LaTeX will add the relevant information to the .aux file. You then need to run BibTeX followed by LaTeX again twice in order to get the citations correct in the document.

If you are getting errors, please post an example document and the resulting log here, so that we can examine it and give detailed advice.