Various LaTeX tips

I decided to bring together LaTeX tips from my other blog.

How to change line spacing?

To change spacing between baselines:

% to set one-and-half spacing
% put before \begin{document}
\renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{1.5}

More flexible way is provided by setspace package. It allows to change line spacing for parts of the text. To use the package, add before \begin{document}:

\usepackage{setspace}
\onehalfspacing % one-and-half spacing globally
% or \singlespacing % normal spacing
% or \doublespacing % double spacing
% or \setstretch{factor} % arbitrary spacing

Then after \begin{document} you can use onehalfspace and doublespace environments:

\begin{onehalfspace}
This text will be set with one-and-half line spacing.
\end{onehalfspace}
\begin{doublespace}
This text will be set with double line spacing.
\end{doublespace}

How to change margins?

The easiest way is to use geometry package, add before \begin{document}:

\usepackage[left=2cm,right=2cm,top=2cm,bottom=2cm,bindingoffset=0cm]{geometry}

To change layout and margins of the particular pages use chngpage package.

How to fit the text on one page?

First, try to \enlargethispage:

\enlargethispage{2\baselineskip} % add two more lines to this page
\pagebreak % finish the page

If you want to shrink the text, use the “starred” version \enlargethispage*{length}:

\enlargethispage*{\baselineskip}

How to rotate a page?

Use lscape package and the landscape environment it provides to rotate arbitrary pages. This may be useful to fit wide tables or figures:

% before \begin{document}
\usepackage{lscape}
% after \begin{document}
...
\begin{landscape}
...
This text will appear on a rotated, i.e. landscape, page.
...
\end{landscape}

Why figure numbering is wrong?

Check your figure environment. \label should always go after \caption. \caption first, \label second. The right template for the figure is:

\begin{figure}
... % insert your figure here
\caption{Caption text}
\label{fig:myfigure}
\end{figure}

See also figure numbers wrong in LaTeX.

How to make my own BibTeX style?

Fortunately, it is easy. Use makebst.tex program. In my system I can run it as

$ latex /usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex/custom-bib/makebst.tex

Choose merlin as a template, choose any name for your style (e.g. mystyle), answer all the questions patiently. Finally, copy ile mystyle.bst to the directory with your article. Use it like this:

\bibliographystyle{mystyle}
\bibliography{bibfile}

How to enable/disable page numbering?

To disable page numbers:

\pagestyle{empty} % no page numbers

To enable page numbers:

\pagestyle{plain} % enable page numbers

To change it just for one page:

\thispagestyle{style}

To do more fancy things, use fancyhdr package.

How to make the PDF I produce with PDFLaTeX searchable?

Answer:

\usepackage{cmap}

How to strike-through or highlight the text?

To strike through words in LaTeX use package ulem:

% before \begin{document}:
\usepackage{ulem}
…
% in the text, after \begin{document}:
\sout{Wrong.} Right.

The result will be something like this:

Wrong. Right

To highlight words with different colour, use xcolor package:

% before \begin{document}
\usepackage{xcolor}
…
% after \begin{document}
I want some words to \textcolor{red}{stand out}.

Expect the result to be:

I want some words to be stand out.

If you want to change the background colour, \colorbox will help you:

% to make text appear on whitish blue (blue 50% – white 50%)
\colorbox{blue!50!white}{Text on whitish blue background}

And the result:

Text on whitish blue background

How to make notes on margins?

This is what \marginpar command does:

\marginpar{This text appears in the margin.}

Check also Todo notes in LaTeX by Henrik Skov Midtiby. He uses \marginpar to add side notes to the draft document. They look awesome (but don't work for me). I settled on a simplified version. Put before \begin{document}:

%%% todo notes, idea from
%%% http://midtiby.blogspot.com/2007/09/todo-notes-in-latex.html
%%%
\newcommand{\todo}[1]{
      \addcontentsline{tdo}{todo}{\protect{#1}}
      \colorbox{orange!90!black}{\textcolor{white}{\tt TODO}}
      \marginpar{\colorbox{orange!90!black}{\textcolor{white}{
      \parbox{4cm}{\small\tt\raggedright TODO:\\#1}
      }}}
}
\makeatletter
\newcommand\listoftodos{\clearpage\section*{Todo list} \@starttoc{tdo}}
\newcommand\l@todo[2] {\par\noindent {\Large $\Box$\;#1\dotfill\makebox[1.5em][r]{#2}\;}\par}
\makeatother

Then in the text add notes with:

\todo{rewrite this}

and finally add in the end:

\listoftodos