TeX
Multi-page table with inter-row page breaks
Usually it is a bad idea to break table inside a row. But people do want it. Once I sketched a quick dirty hack for latex cals package and since then I've go...
March 03, 2019
DANTE e.V. Frühjahrstagung 2016
I was a speaker at the TeX users meeting in Wuppertal, with the talk "Erfahrung und Vorhersagen für automatisches XML-nach-PDF-Publizieren mit TeX" (experien...
April 20, 2016
User TeX Live 2013 repository when 2014 is the default
I've tried to install a TeX package and got the error message:
tlmgr: The TeX Live versions supported by the repository
http://ftp.fernuni-hagen.de/ftp-dir/...
July 07, 2014
latex cals tables version 2.2
I've updated "cals" package -- multipage tables with wide range of features -- to version 2.2. In the new version, alignment of tables should work. Also, I'v...
June 06, 2013
easy LyX styles
The official way to introduce custom styles to LyX is:
* the layout-file should be located in a special directory,
* after the layout file is changed, the us...
June 08, 2012
custom tex in rpm/apt distributions
I prefer to use TeX from TeXlive distribution, not the default TeX bundled with an operating system. The problem is that rpm and apt tools check dependencies...
January 06, 2012
\AddFontFeature in plain XeTeX
XeLaTeX package "fontspec" provides an useful command "AddFontFeature" to add an effect to the curently selected font. Unfortunately, it works only if fontsp...
January 18, 2011
how to install latest LuaTeX
After reading Paul Isambert's article "Three things you can do with LuaTeX that would be extremely painful otherwise " I finally decided to check LuaTeX. Unf...
December 21, 2010
multi-page tables with inter-row page breaks
I'm not sure that a typesetting system exists, which could break within a table row. I managed to do it (in the first approximation) in LaTeX: source code, P...
December 06, 2010
running TeX tools from non-standard locations
In some configurations (for example, when using MacTeX), if you copy a TeX-related binary to non-standard location, the tool stops working. More precisely, i...
April 28, 2010
XML to paper publishing with manual intervention
My paper "XML to paper publishing with manual intervention" is accepted for XATA 2010 (XML: Aplicações e Tecnologias Associadas), 19 and 20 May, Vila do Cond...
April 15, 2010
unicode math in xelatex
In XeTeX, an unicode version of TeX, it's logical to use unicode math. However, till now (march 2010) unicode math publishing doesn't work directly out of th...
March 26, 2010
chess diagrams on A6 cards using LaTeX - 2/2
In the first part I wrote: ``put to a template in your favourite text processor''. Attached is a template (class-file) for LaTeX and an example, the explanat...
December 04, 2009
TexML and unicode characters for math operators
Bug (?) report: ``after switching from LaTeX(pdflatex) to XeTeX(xelatex) as the PDF generator something has ceased to work. Mathematical operators given as u...
November 25, 2009
chess publishing in latex, starting
I'm experimenting with LaTeX and chess. As there is no "for dummies" information in internet, my notes (even if incorrect) could be useful for beginners.
So,...
September 15, 2009
my wrappers around “includegraphics”
To put an image to a document, LaTeX provides the command "\includegraphics". As it often happens, due to LaTeX was designed for manual typesetting, this com...
July 20, 2009
XeLaTeX: change font for headers and footers
I've noticed that headers and footers of the documents, generated by XeLaTeX, use some other font instead of Helvetica. After digging into the LaTeX code, th...
October 24, 2008
escape a TeX string in Python
Do you generate [La]TeX files using Python? If yes, do you escape the special characters. Haven't you forgotten to escape also empty strings?
To avoid reinve...
October 17, 2008
LaTeX to EPS
I'm a bit furious. I spent a lot of time on getting EPS from LaTeX. Portability of PostScript and PDF is a great myth. This idea works only in theory. But in...
October 09, 2007
LaTeX paragraphs cheat sheet
* Indents: first, left, right
\parindent, \leftskip, \rightskip
* Space: above, below:
\addvspace
* Align: left, right, center, justified
ragged2e package
\C...
September 03, 2007
poster proposal for XML Prague 2007
In addition to my talk "Generative XPath" at XML Prague 2007, I decided to submit also a poster:
Title: XML to beautiful documents
Abstract: I'd like to pre...
June 11, 2007
general questions about DocBook -> LaTeX
In the mailing list docbook-apps, I recently answered to the post titled "General questions about DocBook -> LaTeX". I think my notes are interesting not ...
February 23, 2007
file names in LaTeX
The symbols like "_" and "<SPACE>" are special for LaTeX, therefore using them for file names used by LaTeX isn't a good idea. Anyway, we can't control...
September 25, 2006
LaTeX bizcard variation
I've adapted the LaTeX bizcard package for the following:
* A4 page.
* Two columns of visit cards, each card is of the size 85x55 mm.
* Top and bottom margin...
September 21, 2006
GPL text variations
I've spent some time trying to nicely format an GPL excerpt in LaTeX. The problem is that the all-caps text of the "no warrantly" section doesn't fit to the ...
September 11, 2006
source specials for PDF
Some TeX implementations or macro packages provide the facility to automatically include so-called "source specials" into a .dvi file. These contain t...
September 04, 2006
parsing latex log files
In mary cases, LaTeX should be run several times to get the correct result (for example, to resolve cross-references). The only way to detect if re-run is re...
August 10, 2006
understanding if LaTeX run is successful
I'm using LaTeX in batch scripts, and I need to detect if the result is successful. It seems the best way is to look into the log file. I wonder if an imagin...
March 23, 2006
showbox in LaTeX
Not a first time when I need to trace a LaTeX layout by digging into the details, and again I've spend time remembering how to do it. Fixing the magic in wri...
February 26, 2006
minipage and vertical spacing, parskip
I noticed that my \parskip was ignored by the "minipage" environment. After some investigations I found that many vertical spacing commands have a special be...
October 14, 2005
avoiding space before and after list in a table cell
The problem is best described by someone else's question:
I'm trying to use the generic list environment inside a longtable. Unfortunately I get unexpected s...
October 14, 2005
captions of wide longtables are indented
Some of my longtables are wider than \hsize (=\columnwidth). It's ok. The problem is the left-aligned captions of such tables. If a table is X too wide, then...
October 12, 2005
revising LaTeX notes on font substitutions
Automatic font selection scheme in LaTeX somethimes is not so good. For example, when series "n" (normal) and "bx" (extra bold) are defined for a font, and a...
October 05, 2005
avoiding babel shorthands
Babel allows LaTeX to speak multiple languages. It also introduces shorthands, one- or two-character sequences, which help non-English authors to type langua...
October 04, 2005
WingDings font in LaTeX
My documents should use WingDings font, so I've added the font to LaTeX. It wasn't easy task because (1) the font is True Type (2) the font encoding is non-s...
September 29, 2005
using Helvetica symbols in LaTeX
A LaTeX document sets Helvetica as the main font, but some special symbols (like "copyright") look strange. After detailed look at PDF, I found that the symb...
September 22, 2005
image color inconsistency by pdfLaTeX and dvipdf
I've noticed that results of pdfLaTeX and LaTeX plus dvipdf sometimes differ. One case is the color of an image.
Sample TeX file:
\\documentclass{article}
...
September 15, 2005
Are CJK and everysel compatible?
CJK and everysel seems not compatible. If a CJK document loads "everysel" package (or "ragged2e", which loads "everysel"), the result has artefacts.
A sampl...
September 12, 2005
LaTeX, CJK, and “Font C70/song/m/n/6/57=cyberb57 at 6.0pt not loadable: Metric (TFM) file not found.”
I started to use CJK in LaTeX recently, and I spend a lot of time trying to fix the following problem:
! Font C70/song/m/n/9/65=cyberb65 at 9.0pt not loadabl...
September 12, 2005
making unicode pdf bookmarks with TeXML
I've added a new feature to TeXML. Content of the element "pdf" is converted to utf16be and encoded using escape-sequences. It is useful for making PDF strin...
September 07, 2005
no Chinese bookmarks in Acrobat Reader
I've spent two days understanding how to create CJK bookmarks using LaTeX. Finally, I checked the internal structure of a PDF document with a sheet of paper,...
June 23, 2005
search path in LaTeX breaks expectations
Some tutorials on non-root installation of LaTeX modules rely on the environment variable TEXMFLOCAL. Unfortunately, it doesn't work when the folder "~/texmf...
June 21, 2005
TeXML: any encoding as ASCII
The TeXML development version 1.27 brings new essential functionality: "--ascii" parameter. Now it's possible to generate plain ASCII TeX files in a desired ...
June 20, 2005
latex utf8 files as plain ascii
I have problems with non-latin publishing through LaTeX, and I'm going to ask for help in forums. While asking, I should provide a sample LaTeX file, but how...
June 15, 2005
Chinese publishing
Without any knowledge of Chinese, I have to publish a Chinese document. Fortunately, I have a source as an utf8-encoded XML.
These remarks should help me la...
June 14, 2005
converting XML CALS table to LaTeX
It looks there is a need for a converter from CALS tables to LaTeX. Here is yet another ask in comp.text.tex. Jonathan Fine answers a bit enigmatic, and I an...
May 24, 2005
suggestions for thesis projects
In comp.text.tex, Tristan Miller asked:
Can anyone recommend some small to medium-sized open problems which satisfy all of the four points below?
Here are ...
April 28, 2005
LNCS LaTeX style works
I'm writing a paper for a conference. It should be written with conformance to the Lecture Notes in Computer Science style. After visiting the page with info...
April 08, 2005