General ⇒ Larger project

[thedreamshaper]

Hi all,


Iam starting to write my statistics notes into LaTex but i am very new at this, there is about 150 tightly packed word pages with loads of graphs and formulas.

My very general question is, do you have any good tips or pointers for me before i start this project ?


Cheers
Thor

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Thor,

welcome to the board!
Perhaps have a look at LaTeX resources for beginners.

Quick tips:

• Avoid old templates.
• Read l2tabu.
• Use logical formatting (\section etc.) instead of physical (like \bfseries).
• Define your own commands to use them inside your document. It ensures consistency and allows changes easily. Don't just repeat code, use \newcommand a lot.
• Choose an appropriate document class. For such a big document I guess scrreprt or scrbook would be a good choice, perhaps memoir.
• Use \include to manage your document.
• Add comments to your command definitions and settings.
• Use the geometry package instead of manipulating LaTeX lengths.
• Use amsmath for maths.
• Use booktabs for beautiful tables, avoid vertical lines within tables.
• Use the fixltx2e package.
• Check out the TeX FAQ.
• Don't use \baselinestretch if you wish to get a wider line spacing, use the setspace instead.
• Use T1 font encoding.
• If you create a pdf document, use hyperref. Load it as last package, there are few exceptions.
• Use microtype for typographic enhancement.
• To typeset units, use siunitx.

Stefan

[josephwright]

• To typeset units, use siunitx.

I like the fact that siunitx has made it onto the list of 'general tips'! Thanks :-)

[Stefan Kottwitz]

I like the fact that siunitx has made it onto the list of 'general tips'!

Thanks for programming the package!

Stefan

[localghost]

[...] I like the fact that siunitx has made it onto the list of 'general tips'! [...]

That shouldn't astound you. In my opinion the package is indispensable for people (like me) who have to write a lot of scientific units in their documents. For me there is no alternative.


Best regards
Thorsten

[thedreamshaper]

Thank you for the input, i am doing my best to use it (for now that consists of using sections and subsections etc. and trying to use amsmath at some point)

At this point i am using:
\documentclass[12pt,a4paper,oneside]{report}
\usepackage[top=2.0cm,left=2.0cm,right=1.0cm,bottom=2.0cm,headheight=14.5 pt]{geometry}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage[ansinew]{inputenc}
\usepackage{amssymb,amsmath}
\begin{document}


some questions at this point:

What could i do to decrease the distance between "headlines" (chapters etc.) and the top of the page ?

one of my subsection headlines goes to the right hand limit of the page, how can i change it so this headline becomes two (not split them up but just make a line break)

Again, thanks for all the help

[localghost]

[…] some questions at this point:

What could i do to decrease the distance between "headlines" (chapters etc.) and the top of the page ?

one of my subsection headlines goes to the right hand limit of the page, how can i change it so this headline becomes two (not split them up but just make a line break)[…]

Both issues should be solved by the titlesec package. See code below for a small example.

Code: Select all

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper,english]{report}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage[%
  top=2.0cm,
  left=2.0cm,
  right=1.0cm,
  bottom=2.0cm,
  headheight=14.5pt
]{geometry}
\usepackage[raggedright]{titlesec}
\usepackage{blindtext}

\titlespacing*{\chapter}{0pt}{20pt}{40pt}   % default values 0pt, 50pt, 40pt

\begin{document}
  \blinddocument
\end{document}

For more information refer to the package manual via command line on your local machine.

Code: Select all

texdoc titlesec

[Stefan Kottwitz]

What could i do to decrease the distance between "headlines" (chapters etc.) and the top of the page?

With the report class it could be done in a dozen lines of code or more, redefining internal macros: \@makechapterhead and \makeschapterhead.
Alternatively you could use the titlesec package, especially its command \titlespacing.
If you use scrreprt instead of report it's just one line using a class feature. It may happen again, that you're requesting features that a powerful class offers, but if you keep using a base class you have to program it yourself or use a package if it exists.

one of my subsection headlines goes to the right hand limit of the page, how can i change it so this headline becomes two (not split them up but just make a line break)

You could break the line by \\.

Stefan

[thedreamshaper]

Thanks for all the advice guys


i ended up using:

Code: Select all

\newcommand{\bigrule}{\titlerule[1.0mm]}
\titleformat{\chapter}[display]
{\bfseries\Huge}
{%
 \vskip-3em
  \titlerule
  \filleft 
}
{0mm}
{\filleft}
[\vspace{1.0mm} \bigrule] 

Which works fine for the chapters part, however there is still alot of wasted space just above my table of contents. Also it moves the chapeter names to the right of the page, i would like them to be on the left

any idea guys ?