Sunday, January 30, 2011

LaTeX: Errors

Here is a webpage I found that has helpful LaTeX or TeX errors (the common errors, I suppose), and what they usually refer to.

Mysterious TeX Errors: http://www.tug.org/errors.html

Edit/Update: 7-7-11

I thought I had linked this page before. Here is a list of error classes. This list provides the error message, it's class, and the cause of the error. Two tables, one for ambiguous errors and the other for common errors.

Latex Error Classes - http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~witchel/errorclasses.html

LaTeX - Formatting & the command \newline (especially for tables)

Here is a great link to the Wikibooks site for LaTeX - Formatting. This is a great source for general things in LaTex such as quotes, font styles, symbols, paragraph formatting, lists, footnotes, etc.

Another formatting page that might be helpful:

http://pangea.stanford.edu/computing/unix/formatting/latexexample.php

Now, to the second part of the post. I had a hell of a time formatting a table in my thesis. Well, I hadn't really looked at tables so this was my first go. As you can see there are a myriad of help sites out there. However, I was looking for a simple command to start a new line in a cell of the table. We all know that the double-slash \\ works in paragraph or heading formatting. However, in tables it begins a new row. For some reason, I couldn't find what I was looking for, until I found it here:

http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/3748/in-cell-newlines-in-tabular-environments.

(edit: If you are familiar with LaTeX then you probably already know this, but there is usually several ways to do something in LaTeX. This is the beauty of it, so independent and free. Anways, there were several ways to do the newline thing I was looking for (i.e. i tried to do a list, :/), but they all seemed too convoluted for the simple task I was looking for.)

Of course the command was simple and straightforward, I was just thrown off by all the other table formatting stuff out there. The command is \newline, and it works great and was exactly what I was looking for. So for anyone else who had the same trouble as me here it is.

Here is the link to the main webpage I was on. It is a Q&A for TeX, LaTeX, ConTeXt, and related typesetting systems.

http://tex.stackexchange.com/

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Detexify - An Online LaTeX Symbol Generator

Ok, stealing another from fellow blog Please Make a Note who in turn reposted it from another fellow blog Walking Randomly :P, but this needs to be shared with as many as possible, :)! There is an online program or site called Detexify. Ever needed a symbol in LaTeX but can't find it or don't want to browse for it, then Detexify is for you. Simply go to the site, write the symbol you're looking for into the box, and Detexify returns several options depending upon the match. Try it out here -> Detexify http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html

Reposted from:

Saad, T. "LaTeX Symbols - Detexify". Weblog entry from Please Make A Note. http://pleasemakeanote.blogspot.com/2010/07/latex-symbols-detexify.html

Edit/Update: 7-6-11

I saw this as a smartphone app the other day. Not sure if it was on Android or iOS or could be both. Check it out!!

Friday, January 21, 2011

LaTeX - Having a section level underneath \subsubsection

Ah, wow, I found this on fellow blog Please Make a Note. I was wondering if you could have a section underneath the level of \subsubsection, and it turns out you can (numbered or not). I was simply just making the text bold and/or italic to set it off as a separate subsubsubsection in LaTeX. Apparently, the \paragraph is the level under \subsubsection and \subparagraph under that. To number use

\setcounter{secnumdepth}{5}

Then the levels are as follows:

\section{} % level 1
\subsection{} % level 2
\subsubsection{} % level 3
\paragraph{} % level 4 - equivalent to subsubsubsection
\subparagraph{} % level 5

Taken from:

Saad, T. "How to Activate \subsubsubsection in LaTeX". Weblog entry from Please Make A Note. http://pleasemakeanote.blogspot.com/2010/06/how-to-activate-subsubsubsection-in.html

Quickie: Kile LaTeX Editor - Shortcut for commenting

Ok this is something real quick, and I had a hard time finding for some reason. Every now and then when trying to save in Kile by pressing Ctrl+S I would accidentally hit something else and comment the line, which is a nice trick/shortcut to know but I couldn't figure out what I had hit. It is in fact Ctrl+D. To uncomment press Ctrl+Shft+D.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

LaTeX Error: \@citex \include{file-name}

Ok, so I have been working on my thesis in LaTeX, and I was getting this error in my code.  I knew where it was (the file-name, mine in this case was {back-matter-appendix-5} or something like that. I found out from this nice blog:

http://ergodicthoughts.blogspot.com/2010/03/latex-file-ended-while-scanning-use-of.html

that the error pertains to a wrong bracket placement or type. However, I couldn't find it! The error linked me to a random line in the code. After searching, I finally found it at the bottom, and yup it was a citation without a closed bracket!!

Check out the rest of the blog where I found that nice tip.

http://ergodicthoughts.blogspot.com/