My own packages
- resume class
- An example resume: the LaTeX source and the resulting PostScript or PDF.
- handout class
- Documentation in PostScript or PDF.
Some things I had a hard time figuring out
There are a few measly things that took me some time to figure out in LaTeX (which probably says more about my intelligence than their difficulty). Here are some of them.
- Essential packages
- Use AMS-LaTeX with PostScript fonts + pdflatex.
\usepackage{latexsym,cmmib57} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{amsthm} \usepackage[psamsfonts]{amssymb,amsfonts,eucal}
- Equation tags with (*) and such
- In AMS-LaTeX, you can use
\tag
:\begin{equation}\tag{*} x=y^2 \end{equation} ...
Fonts
Fonts on MacOS X
You may feel like using some nice font in LaTeX, which is available to other MacOS X applications...
Here is a record of what I did to get Bembo work in LaTeX documents.
First problem: you need the Postscript font, but it's in a resource fork or stored in some
other weird Macish way. Use Fondu.
(If you never installed anything from the command prompt
(Terminal), here is a hint: you may need
to use sudo
. Installing Fondu was easy: just ran
configure
and then sudo make install
.)
Now you can extract the .pfa
or .pfb
files:
fondu ~/Library/Fonts/Bembo
(the font file may be in
the /Library/Fonts
directory).
Second problem: make LaTeX find your fonts (metric and PostScript files).
For Bembo, and a bunch of other popular fonts, it's fairly easy: download
the appropriate package from CTAN:
wget 'ftp://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/psfonts/adobe/bembo.tar.gz'
.
Untar the package. For other fonts, you need to produce the
necessary tfm fonts (fondu gives you a version, but that may not be good enough for purists):
download the afm fonts from Adobe's ftp site, for example, and then
transform the afm to tfm. (Usually, you need to pay for the Postscript fonts,
but the metric files are freely downloadable.)
Notice that there is a naming standard for the font files that dates back to the Stone Age:
in the case of Bembo, all files start with pbb.
(You may want to read the LaTeX font guides, and
Adobe has a list of their font naming conventions also - no hyperlinks here, I don't have them
at hand).
The files are now in the tex
, dvips
,
tfm
, and vf
directories. (Bembo in particular has a little glitch
in it: the dvips/pbb.map
has the wrong Postscript names, you need to replace
``MBembo'' with ``Bembo'' everywhere.)
I assume you have a teTeX installation rooted at
/usr/local/teTeX
.
Rename the Postscript font files as necessary:
mv Bembo.pfb pbbr8a.pfb
, etc., the .map
files show
what the names should be.
Copy the files to the appropriate locations. I decided to put everything under
/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local
. You may need to create the missing directories
as shown here.
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/dvips/adobe sudo cp dvips/* /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/dvips/adobe/ sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/fonts/type1/adobe/bembo sudo cp *.pfb /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/fonts/type1/adobe/bembo/ sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/fonts/vf/adobe/bembo sudo cp vf/* /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/fonts/vf/adobe/bembo/ sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/fonts/tfm/adobe sudo cp tfm/* /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/fonts/tfm/adobe/bembo/ sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/tex/latex/adobe sudo cp tex/* /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/tex/latex/adobe/
Make LaTeX and dvips aware of the new files: sudo texhash
.
Now you can use /usepackage{bembo}
with
latex
and then do dvips -Ppbb
.
For pdflatex
, you need to edit the
config file of /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/pdftex/config/pdftex.cfg
:
add a line of map +pbb.map
towards the end.
Luc's fonts
There are many free fonts available at the Web. Some of my favorites are found among Luc Devroye and Sandro Mazzucato's Postcript fonts. (The citations below are from Font samples page.)
(These instructions are for an older Unix machine I used to use.)
I use these fonts with LaTeX and dvips, so the rest is the instructions how to setup
files and environment variables.
In order to use these fonts, you'll need to download at least a
.pfa
or .pfb
file and a .tfm
file for each font.
The environment variable TFMFONTS
must include the path to reach the
.tfm
files. The DVIPSFONTS
variable should include the path to the
.pf?
files. Also, have a mapping file for fontnames and files. Mine looks
like this:
Pach Pach <Pach.pfb TropDePoils-Black TropDePoils-Black <TropDePoils-Black.pfb Bazooka Bazooka <Bazooka.pfb Waaiberg Waaiberg <Waaiberg.pfb
Add a pointer to it in your ~/.dvipsrc
file as
p +<your psfonts.map file>
and set the DVIPSHEADERS
environment variable to point to it. You can find more details in the
DVIPS manual.
- Pach
-
Janos Pach is a brilliant young Hungarian mathematician with a gorgeous handwriting. We obtained a sample written with a thick fountain pen when he gave a talk here at McGill, scanned it, and created a type 1 font by Sandro Mazzucato's software. The letter H shown here may not be the prettiest glyph, but one gets a good feeling for the smooth outlines that Sandro's oultline-optimization software leaves behind.
- Sample page in PostScript or PDF.
- My style file and font encoding file (TeX OT1). Some examples: a student homework about hitting times in a simple random walk and an invitation to a party.
- Bazooka
- Handwriting of a
left-handed 11-year old, Birgit Devroye.
- Sample page in PostScript or PDF.
- Waaiberg
Doodling characters with lots of curls. For display only. Medium weight. Lots of fun.
- Sample page inPostScript or PDF.
- TropDePoils
A typeface made for Italian menus. Based on Luc Devroye's handwriting.
- Sample page for TropDePoils-Black in PostScript or PDF.
LaTeX 2e and related documents
I removed from here a number of documents normally available with every LaTeX distribution.
- The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX 2e by Tobias Oetiker, Hubert Partl, Irene Hyna & Elisabeth Schlegl v3.3 1999/01/08
- xiv+81 pages lshort2e.pdf or latest version in many languages from CTAN.
- User's guide for the
amsmath
package AMS, Version 2.0, 1999/12/13 - amsldoc.pdf or latest version from the AMS-LaTeX page.
- Dvips: A DVI-to-PostScript Translator by Thomas Rokicki
- Latest version from CTAN.
Help and info
- This very page.
- Write a webpage listing all the webpages that do not reference themselves ...
- Hypertext help with LaTeX
- At NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York, NY or at one of its mirrors.
- Online help by Norman Walsh.
- Hypertext help documents on TeX and LaTeX.
- Latex 2e-relevant documents at CIRANO, Montréal
- Some eighty guides and documents in PostScript.
- (La)TeX Navigator (
loria.fr
) in English or in French - Vaste collection of (La)TeX documentation, resources and pointers.
- TeX-related docs at University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory (UK)
- It is said to be very specific for the local installation, but it is still useful. Primers; LaTeX2e documents; AMS-TeX; TeXinfo docs.
- TeX and LaTeX FAQ
- TeX page at UPenn Department of Mathematics
- A [not very extensive] collection of pointers.
- The TeXbook by Don Knuth
- TeX source from France (1349k) or from Stanford.
- TeX Users Group
- Info about TUG.
Sources
- CTAN-Web
- WWW interface to the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network.
- FTP: Comprehensive TeX Archive Network
- Main sites
- FTP: TeX distribution directory at Stanford
- Maintained by Donald E. Knuth. Big collection of fonts.
- FTP: theory.lcs.mit.edu
- Some TeX macro and style packages.