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LaTeX Cookbook

By : Stefan Kottwitz

5 (5)

LaTeX Cookbook

5 (5)

By: Stefan Kottwitz

Overview of this book

LaTeX is a high-quality typesetting software and is very popular, especially among scientists. Its programming language gives you full control over every aspect of your documents, no matter how complex they are. LaTeX's huge amount of customizable templates and supporting packages cover most aspects of writing with embedded typographic expertise. With this book you will learn to leverage the capabilities of the latest document classes and explore the functionalities of the newest packages. The book starts with examples of common document types. It provides you with samples for tuning text design, using fonts, embedding images, and creating legible tables. Common document parts such as the bibliography, glossary, and index are covered, with LaTeX's modern approach.You will learn how to create excellent graphics directly within LaTeX, including diagrams and plots quickly and easily. Finally, you will discover how to use the new engines XeTeX and LuaTeX for advanced programming and calculating with LaTeX. The example-driven approach of this book is sure to increase your productivity.

Preface

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Sections

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

1. The Variety of Document Types

1. The Variety of Document Types

Introduction

Writing a short text

Writing a thesis

Designing a book

Creating a presentation

Designing a curriculum vitae

Writing a letter

Producing a leaflet

Creating a large poster

2. Tuning the Text

2. Tuning the Text

Introduction

Inputting accented characters

Improving justification and hyphenation

Converting numbers to words

Putting text into a colorful box

Visualizing the layout

Visualizing boxes of letters and symbols

Typesetting in a grid

Absolute positioning of text

Starting a paragraph with an over-sized letter

Fitting text to a shape

Creating a pull quote

3. Adjusting Fonts

3. Adjusting Fonts

Introduction

Choosing a font for a document

Locally switching to a different font

Importing just a single symbol from a font family

Writing bold mathematical symbols

Getting the sans serif mathematics font

Writing double stroke letters as if on a blackboard

Enabling the searching and copying of ligatures

Suppressing ligatures

Adding a contour

4. Working with Images

4. Working with Images

Introduction

Including images with optimal quality

Automating image positioning

Manipulating images

Adding a frame to an image

Cutting an image to get rounded corners

Shaping an image like a circle

Drawing over an image

Aligning images

Arranging images in a grid

Stacking images

5. Beautiful Designs

5. Beautiful Designs

Introduction

Adding a background image

Creating beautiful ornaments

Preparing pretty headings

Producing a calendar

Mimicking keys and menu items

6. Designing Tables

6. Designing Tables

Introduction

Creating a legible table

Adding footnotes to a table

Aligning numeric data

Coloring a table

Merging cells

Splitting a cell diagonally

Adding shape, shading, and transparency

Importing data from files

7. Contents, Indexes, and Bibliographies

7. Contents, Indexes, and Bibliographies

Introduction

Tuning a table of contents, lists of figures, and tables

Creating a bibliography

Adding a glossary

Creating a list of acronyms

Producing an index

8. Getting the Most out of the PDF

8. Getting the Most out of the PDF

Introduction

Adding hyperlinks

Adding metadata

Adding copyright information

Inserting comments

Producing fillable forms

Optimizing the output for e-book readers

Removing white margins

Combining PDF files

Creating an animation

9. Creating Graphics

9. Creating Graphics

Introduction

Building smart diagrams

Constructing a flowchart

Building a tree

Building a bar chart

Drawing a pie chart

Drawing a Venn diagram

Putting thoughts in a mind map

Generating a timeline

10. Advanced Mathematics

10. Advanced Mathematics

Introduction

Quick-start for beginners

Fine-tuning math formulas

Automatic line-breaking in equations

Highlighting in a formula

Stating definitions and theorems

Drawing commutative diagrams

Plotting functions in two dimensions

Plotting in three dimensions

Drawing geometry pictures

Doing calculations

11. Science and Technology

11. Science and Technology

Introduction

Typesetting an algorithm

Printing a code listing

Application in graph theory

Writing physical quantities with units

Writing chemical formulae

Drawing molecules

Representing atoms

Drawing electrical circuits

12. Getting Support on the Internet

12. Getting Support on the Internet

Introduction

Exploring online LaTeX resources

Using web forums

Framing a really good question

Creating a minimal example

Index

Index

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Plotting functions in two dimensions

Functions play an important role in mathematics. To visualize them to better understand their properties, so that we can see roots and extreme points, we can plot them in a coordinate system. In this recipe, we will see how to easily plot functions. First, let's print the polynomial function f(x) = x^3 - 5*x.

How to do it...

We will use the pgfplots package, which is based on PGF/TikZ. We already used it in the previous chapter to draw various diagrams. Now it will plot a function for us. Follow these steps:

Start with a document class. For this recipe, we decide on the standalone class, which is great for creating single graphics with just a small margin, but you can choose the article class or another one as well.
```
\documentclass[border=10pt]{standalone}
```
Load the pgfplots package:
```
\usepackage{pgfplots}
```
Start the document and open a tikzpicture environment:
```
\begin{document}
  \begin{tikzpicture}
```
Begin an axis environment with centered axis lines:
```
    \begin{axis...
```

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