Tips for TeX

To begin with

I want to summarize various tips for writing a paper with TeX. This article is written by English because of enhancing my English writing skill. I would be glad if you teach me mistakes in my article (e.g. English grammar or contents) or tell me your recommended packages/commands. This article is sometimes added or fixed. An environment is supposed to Ubuntu.

How to install

You can install Japanese version texlive by following processes.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install texlive-lang-cjk texlive-fonts-recommended texlive-fonts-extra texlive-extra-utils

Compile the TeX code

1. Make TeX file

2. uplatex filename
   Generate typesetting file. This file is called DVI(device independent) file.

3. dvipdfmx filename
   Generate PDF(portable document format) file.
   When you use ptex2pdf -u -l filename command, you can also generate DVI and PDF files at the same time.

4. gnome-open filename.pdf
   Open a PDF file.

Automatic compile

These processes can be replaced into latexmk command.
This command is really useful because we can automatically compile our document.

latexmk -pdfdvi -pvc filename.tex

Initial code

• In case of jarticle, you use \documentclass{ujarticle}.
• In case of jreport, you use \documentclass{ujreport}.
• In case of jbook, you use \documentclass{ujbook}.

Tips for TeX command

Option on figure/table

Basically, it's good that a option on figures or table is [tp] or [tpb].
(But this is only my opinion and it depends on journals).

Numerical expressions

In case of one numerical expression, we should use equation environment. In case of multiple numerical expression, we should use align environment. eqnarray environment is deprecated.

Roman and Bold commands

\rm command is deprecated. Instead of this command, we should use \mathrm or \textrm command. \bf command is also same as above.

Double-quote

You use back-quote in front of the term and single-quote behind the term.

TeX-code

``abc''

Range

You use endash when you show any range.

TeX-code

100--500

Unique noun in bibliography

When a title of bibliography includes unique nouns, you have to put braces around to the nouns.

bibTeX-code

@ARTICLE{bib-id,
  ...
  title = {Image segmentation using {CNN}},
  ...
}

Set style files

1. Make a directory in the /usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/latex/ directory.
2. Put the *.sty file in the directory.
3. Execute the command, mktexlsr.

cd /usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/latex/
sudo mkdir algorithm
sudo mv ***/algorithm.sty ./algorithm/
sudo mktexlsr

BibTeX file should be put in the directory, /usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/bibtex/bib/.

Recommended style files

• flushend.sty
  This file is useful to align in the final page of a paper in case of 2-columns format.

• nidanfloat.sty
  This file is useful to arrange figures nicely in case of 2-column format.

References

packages and commands of deprecation (Japanese article)

About figure

It is a tiresome work to make or arrange figures nicely. I summarized tips for handling figures below. Basically, it's desirable that a option on figures or table is [tp] or [tpb] (But this is only my opinion and it depends on journals).

My recommended packages

nidanfloat

How to download this package is written in "[Recommended style files](##Recommended style files)."

subcaption

This package is useful when you'd like to arrange multiple images as a figure. You have to memorize an existing caption format temporally because this package break the format. And then you can restore the format again. If you need to adjust an interval between image and caption, you can use skip option as follows. The default value of skip option is 6pt. You write a code as follows to do above processes.

TeX-code

\makeatletter
\let\MYcaption\@makecaption
\makeatother

\usepackage[skip=1pt]{subcaption}

\makeatletter
\let\@makecaption\MYcaption
\makeatother

Extensions of images

It is desirable that a extension of the image is pdf or eps. This is because their extensions are vector format. Vector format is constancy on scaling. Vector format is also easy to rework a image because this image consists of group of parts. When you use some software(e.g. Inkscape), you can rework PDF images easily.

In case of PNG

If you use PNG images in a paper, you have to be careful about resolution of images.
Generally, you have to use images more than 300 dpi in many journals.

mogrify -trim *.png # if you remove unnecessary spaces
extractbb *.extension

In case of PDF

I recommend to use PDF vector images.
In case of using PDF, it is unnecessary to be careful about resolution of images.

pdfcrop *.pdf # if you remove unnecessary spaces

You can write a TeX code as follows

TeX-code

\usepackage[dvipdfmx]{graphicx}
\graphicspath{{./images/}}

\begin{document}
\includegraphics[width=**cm]{image.jpg}
\end{document}

Tips for compression of images

A little reduction of size in case of PDF images

You need to convert from pdf to ps extension and then reverse from ps to pdf extension.

pdf2ps command is useful to convert from pdf to ps extension.

pdf2ps original.pdf

ps2pdf command is useful to reverse from ps to pdf extension. dPDFSETTING option has some choices: screen, ebook, printer, prepress in the order of high resolution. This option also has default but it's deprecated.

ps2pdf -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook original.ps optimize.pdf

The above setups are the same as making a shell-file as bellow.

for i in *.pdf; do
  pdf2ps $i
  f=`'echo $i | sed 's/\.[^\.]*$//'`
  ps2pdf -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook ${f}.ps ${f}-opt.pdf
done

Empirically, you have no choice but to convert to PNG when size of a file is still large even if you use ebook.

Major reduction of size in case of PDF images

You need to convert from pdf to png extension. -r option has a role of adjusting DPI.

pdftoppm -png -r 100 original.pdf optimize.pdf

The above setups are the same as making a shell-file as bellow.

for i in *.pdf; do
  f=`'echo $i | sed 's/\.[^\.]*$//'`
  pdftoppm -png -r 100 $i ${f}-opt
done

References

pdftoppm command
ps2pdf command (Japanese article)

Compress PDF documents

Use Ghostscript (gs) to compress a large PDF file.
The software has some options to choose the compression ratio.

• screen (72 dpi = screen only)
• ebook (150 dpi)
• printer (300 dpi)
• prepress (300 dpi with color preserving)
• default (almost identical to screen)

gs -sDevice=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=compressed_output.pdf ./original_huge_file.pdf

Useful packages in all genres

• fancyhdr
  Freely customize the header and footer in a document

To close

That's all.
Thank you for reading :)