LaTeX Boilerplate

Overview

• A LaTeX boilerplate: skeleton code that implements various commonly used features in LaTeX. Code is all commented and will be expanded to include more packages or other aspects of LaTeX. Organized into sections, beginners should be able to debug easier while more advanced users can use it as a basic setup to get the ball rolling.

Features

• Functional LaTeX project, download and start typesetting right away. Tested and works with MiKTeX.
• Automated compiling via scripts for Windows (build.bat) and Unix/OSX (build.sh) users. Allows for both pdf and html output.
• Fully commented with explanations for more difficult to understand elements.
• Various new commands to allow standardization of figure style and other common formatting.
  • Functional \newcommand example implemented with pgfkeys.
• BibTex example file and example citation usage inside main text.
• Index implemented with example indices implemented in text (i.e. \index{})
• Automatic list creation, answer key code, and equation citation.
• Table creation straight from .csv files using csvsimple.
• Automated inclusion of all files in a directory.
• And more!

Installation

Git

Go to your personal LaTeX projects directory (or wherever) and clone the repository using the command below:

git clone https://github.com/gaara42/LaTeX_Boilerplate

Manual

• Download the files using the GitHub .zip download option
• Unzip the files and rename the folder to whatever name you want, references are relative only below the root folder.

Dependencies

• LaTeX (e.g. MikTeX).
  • Make sure to have all packages updated.
• Pandoc for conversion of files if need be

Windows

• After installing LaTeX distribution of choice, need to add the folder (e.g. \MikTeX\miktex\bin) containing pdflatex.exe, bibtex.exe, makeindex and xelatex.exe to you PATH environment variable.

Linux/OSX

• Install MikTeX or another LaTeX distribution.
• pdflatex, bibtex, makeindex and xelatex should be callable from command-line automatically.

xelatex, pdflatex, and htlatex

• The option to compile between xelatex, pdflatex, and htlatex is given in build.(bat/sh). xelatex and pdflatex will both give a PDF output while htlatex will produce a html webpage. xelatex is best for non-standard fonts.

xelatex

• Nothing to see here (for now!).

pdflatex

• Comment out \usepackage{fontspec} and \setmainfont{Futura Std Book} in package.tex to avoid errors.

htlatex

• See pdflatex. In addition, may need to remove figures or other special floats if errors occur.

tex4ht.env

• This file should be changed to improve the equation image quality output.
• Add a space in front of <dvipng> and <\dvipng> and change -D 72 to -D 150 to get higher quality image. Then remove space from in front of <convert> and </convert> so it is not used.

Instructions

Overview

• The project has been tested on MiKTeX 2.9 and compiles fine (project.tex). If there are errors, open an issue and let me know.
• Open project.tex, contains the main TeX mark-up and references to other files. \include is used to add other project files.

Build

• User is prompted to choose whether you want output; suppressed using -interaction=batchmode for (xe)latex or --quiet for bibtex.
• Removes .aux and other files then builds with (xe)latex and bibtex. Opens .pdf afterwards.
• Windows: double-click build.bat.
• Unix: open Terminal, cd to directory, and type bash build.sh.

Shortcuts

• Sublime Text 2 shortcuts have been added to the \extras\sublime_text folder.

Fonts

• \common\packages.tex contains packages used and settings to get particular fonts working, example include Helvetica and Futura.
• Under \assets is FuturaStd-Book.otf, which must be installed on the system to use xelatex for custom Futura Std Book font seen in packages.tex.

Pre-loaded

• These files are loaded before \begin{document}.
• common\packages.tex contains all the packages to be loaded.
• common\header.tex contains fancyhdr and other header/footer specifiers.
• common\codes.tex contains the new commands.
  • All commands are documented and also used within the example files (e.g. chapters\chapter1.tex).
  • pgfkeys is used to circumvent the 9-argument problem with \newcommand.
• common\thanks.tex is for copyright, thanks and update date tracking.

Main Body

• These files are loaded in \begin{document} environment.
• \chapters\citations.tex includes some citations to figures, tables, and code.
• \chapters\code.tex shows how to include code in document by referencing source file.
• \chapters\equations.tex has several example equations.
• \chapters\fasta.tex include a macro to simplify integration of FASTA sequences into documents.
• \chapters\lists.tex shows the use of \lbpitemize, a macro create to make list creation faster and use less lines.
• \chapters\problems.tex demonstrates several example problems and use of the \answers macro.
• \appendix\figures.tex contains example figures using the new figure commands.
• \appendix\table.tex contains a row-shaded table.
• \images has example images used in \appendix\figures.tex to create figures.
• sections\section1.tex is an example file to create a new section.

Bibliography

• Bibliography implemented in BibTeX, more extensible than manually entering citations.
• Run BibTeX twice before running (Xe)LaTeX to have citations included (automatically done with build scripts).
• citations\cited.bib is the bibtex file, contains book, article, online and other example source citations.
• citations\Citations.xlsx is an Excel spreadsheet that allows quick formatting of sources into LaTeX format if source online doesn't provide .bib link.

Index

• Index implemented using makeidx package and makeindex.
• citations\index.tex contains the TeX code to include in the main project file.
• \lbpindex{term}{} is the new command to help add term at specified position while also adding it to the index, e.g. term\index{term}.

Conversion

• I have included batch files (bash scripts forthecoming) to easily convert HTML to LaTeX and vis-versa. More Batch/Bash scripts to come for other common conversions.
• Windows: make sure to include the pandoc directory (e.g. C:\Program Files\Pandoc) in your PATH environment variable.
• convert\0HTMLtoLaTeX.bat ask for an output file name and converts convert\0HtoL.html to a .tex file.
• convert\0LaTeXtoHTML.bat ask for an output file name and converts convert\0LtoH.tex to an .html file.

Changelog

• Added tikz package to implement foreach loop for inputing files automatically from a folder, see html/code/io.tex. (2013.07.02)
• Added csvsimple tables to html code. (2013.06.20)
• Implicitly call tex4ht parameters (e.g. \usepackage[html,imgdir:images/,fn-in]{tex4ht}) in packages.tex for htlatex and changed command line call to ht latex to account for this. This helps avoid errors due to passing options via args in the commandline. (2013.06.20)
• Updated build.sh to bring it in line with build.bat (actually, its technically a couple steps ahead...but bash>>>batch, so no surprise). They should be updated concurrently going forward. (2013.06.19)
• Major update: separated code into html and pdf branches. Tried to maintain them in a single code base, but that proved difficult and they each have their own advantages (esp. the need to greater simplicity in the html code). These will likely be merged once i simplify the pdf codebase. The html version has been tested with htlatex only, tex2page and others will be implemented in the future. build.bat has been updated to reflect this change, asking for the directory and automatically switching to the correct TeX version (htlatex for html and xelatex for pdf). At the moment, the html branch is based on a personal project and will be scrubbed/generalized in the future. (2013.06.19)
• Fixed problem with setting output to display with bibtex, updated lbpindex references to lidx, moved xcolor package around to avoid problems of setting it with table, changed \includecode to remove caption errors. (2013.06.19)
• Removed reliance on simplemargins.sty and switched fully to geometry package for handling margins and text layout. (2013.06.10)
• Added example of directly importing tables into file using csvsimple. See appendix/table.tex for example. (2013.05.29)
• build.bat improved so re-run correctly conserves previous runs variables, htlatex (for html output) pipeline re-done to allow correct index/bibliography creation. (2013.05.27)
• Height and width of text is now independent in the code, still relative. See header.tex for more. (2013.05.19)
• Separated different types of commands into individual .tex files, centrally imported in common\codes.tex and located in \common\code. Added watermark to the \lbptitle command. Organization of files made more logical. (2013.04.30)
• Now an option in build.bat to compile with htlatex along with example output. Comment out fontspec package in package.tex to avoid errors. Added \watermarkpic command to allow insertion of full height or width watermarks on pages (vertically centered by default). In addition, cleaned up the code for removing files after each run in build.bat. (2013.04.29)
• Added \unskip to reduce unnecessary space caused by use of \lidx and other macros. (2013.04.25)
• Fixed build.bat to include variable expansion, resetting defaults should work properly now. (2013.04.20)
• Improved code listing function and added \codecite for referencing code within text. Added code to customize the listing output (to be Code instead of the more obscure Listing) (2013.04.04).
• Changed from \ref to \autoref for figure/table/equation citation to make entire link clickable (2013.04.02).
• Split each different example into its own chapter for easier maintenance. Should also make it easier for people to find and use examples. (2013.03.17)
• Added equation macro along with new command to include code bits directly in the project. Improved build.bat to allow for more defaults to be set, saving key presses. Improved page height and margin calculations. (2013.03.16)
• Demo of previous new features, improvement to build.sh to bring it up to date with build.bat. Added an example .eps file to show postscript integration works (2013.03.03).
• New functions to make list creation easier, improve the default \href function, \answer function for document-wide switching on/off of specific text (useful for answer keys), and much more. Improvement to multifig to allow better detection of different inputs and adjust formatting accordingly (2013.02.23).
• Added color to the figures and table titles, improved index formatting, provided example alternative titlepage, and expanded multi-figure function to accept 2-4 figures and adjust accordingly. Added defaults to batch file. Slightly changed organization of some tex files (see titlepage.tex). (2013.01.11)
• Improved table of contents referencing, added nested indexing example and function, and several new packages. (2013.01.10)
• Margins and text height/width are now relative rather than absolute, if page size changes, text should dynamically change as well. (2013.01.10)
• Updated readme (2012.12.23)
• Added index, redefined its layout and made new index command. (2012.12.22)
• Redefined references layout. (2012.12.21)
• Improved build.bat a bit, cleans up more files after building. (2012.12.21)
• Added working example of a table, including shaded rows. (2012.12.21)
• Improved a bit of the layout and commenting (2012.12.21)
• Added build.sh for Unix users and updated build.bat to support several options at the beginning. (2012.12.08)
• Updated bibliography to include international support, organization tweaks (2012.12.08)
• Added to GitHub (2012.12.02)

In Development

• Clean-up code and comments, add additional LaTeX features.
• Addition of conditional statement to figure to dynamically generate different multi-panel figures.
• Bash scripts for pandoc conversion.

License

Biafra Ahanonu

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU. Attribution is appreciated, but not required, if parts of the software are used elsewhere.