NELKINDA SOFTWARE CRAFT

LaTeX Cheat Sheet

Since 3 decades, LaTeX is the state of the art typesetting system for professional publishing. Its fonts are of unmatched beauty, and its features leave nothing to be desired. I use LaTeX for more than 2 decades now. This cheat sheet gets you jump started for more than 80% of what is needed for a professional publication.

Author:
Christian Hujer, Software Crafter and CEO / CTO of Nelkinda Software Craft Private Limited
First Published:
by NNelkinda Software Craft Private Limited
Last Modified:
by Christian Hujer
Approximate reading time:
Figure -1: LaTeX Logo

1 Introduction

If a thing is worth doing,
it's worth doing well.
― Proverb

I have high standards when it comes to documentation and publishing. Something worth doing is worth doing properly. This applies to multiple levels. I want nice fonts and nice layout because that makes reading easier. But I also want other features, such as lots of cross-references of different kinds, to make handling technical books easier. A full-text search doesn't always cut it, and a full-text search is also slower than designed, built-in hyperlinks. The cheat sheet in this article provides nothing less than:

2 Basic Document Structure

I've published the basic document structure as a GitHub Template nelkinda/template-latex-book

Makefile
.ONESHELL:
SHELL:=/bin/bash

book.pdf: book.tex data/*.tex chapters/*.tex data/book.bib
	-pdflatex $<
	-bibtex book.aux
	-makeindex book
	-makeglossaries book
	-pdflatex $<
	-makeindex book
	-makeglossaries book
	pdflatex $<

.PHONY: clean
clean::
	$(RM) {,*/}*.{aux,dvi,log,bbl,blg,lof,lol,lot,toc,idx,ilg,ind,out,ist,glo,acn,acr,alg,glg,gls}

.PHONY: distclean
distclean:: clean
	$(RM) *.pdf
book.tex
\documentclass{memoir}
\usepackage{graphics}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{listings}
\usepackage{color}
\usepackage{makeidx}
\usepackage[acronym,toc]{glossaries}
\usepackage{longtable}
\usepackage{todonotes}

\include{data/acronyms}
\include{data/glossary}

\makeindex
\makeglossaries

\title{Title of the Book}
\date{2018-05-09}
\author{Christian Hujer}

\stockaiv

\begin{document}
\frontmatter
\pagenumbering{roman}
\maketitle
\newpage
\tableofcontents
\newpage
\listoffigures
\newpage
\listoftables
\newpage
\lstlistoflistings
\include{chapters/preface}

\mainmatter
\part{Introduction}
\include{chapters/part1/chapter1}
\include{chapters/part1/chapter2}
\part{Integration}
\include{chapters/part2/chapter3}
\include{chapters/part2/chapter4}

\appendix
\include{chapters/appendix1}
\include{chapters/appendix2}

\backmatter
\printglossary[type=\acronymtype]
\printglossary
\bibliographystile{ieeetr}
\bibliography{data/book}
\printindex
\end{document}

3 Acronyms

book.tex
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage[acronym,toc]{glossaries}
\include{data/acronyms}
\makeglossaries
\printglossary[type=\acronymtype]
data/acronyms.tex
\newacronym{acronym:GNU}{GNU}{GNU is Not Unix}
chapters/chapter.tex
\acrshort{acronym:GNU}

4 Glossary

book.tex
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage[acronym,toc]{glossaries}
\include{data/glossary}
\makeglossaries
\printglossary
data/glossary.tex
\newglossaryentry{agile}
{
    name=agile,
    description={
        A style of organizing software development described by the Agile Manifesto.
    }
}
chapters/chapter.tex
\Gls{agile} or \gls{agile}

5 Unordered List (<ul/>-style)

chapters/chapter.tex
\begin{itemize}
\item Item 1
\item Item 2
\end{itemize}

6 Ordered List (<ol/>-style)

chapters/chapter.tex
\begin{enumerate}
\item Item 1
\item Item 2
\end{enumerate}

7 Index

Makefile
book.pdf: book.tex
	-pdflatex $<
	-makeindex book
	pdflatex $<
book.tex
\usepackage{makeidx}
\makeindex
\printindex
chapters/chapter.tex
\index{Maven}Maven
\index{Ritchie, Dennis M.}Dennis M. Ritchie
\index{Hello, World!make}Hello, World in make
\index{Hello, World!C}Hello, World in C
\index{printf@\texttt{printf}}\texttt{printf}

The \index{} tag should be before the text that is to be indexed.

The expression that is to be indexed may be subject to a page break. The index page should be the first of the two pages of a broken expression. Therefore, the reference should be to the start of the expression. To achieve that, the \index{} tag should be before the text that is to be indexed.

8 Listings

book.tex
\usepackage{listings}
\lstlistoflistings
chapter/chapter.tex
\lstinputlisting[caption={Hello, World!\index{Hello, World!C} in C}, label={lst:hello.c}]{src/hello.c}

8.1 # in the path

I have the special situation that my paths contain the #-symbol, for example, src/C#/hello.cs. Here's how I got this to work in the listings package.

In the preamble, add the following command:

\edef\hashchar{\string#}

A corresponding \stinputlisting could then look like this:

\subsection{false in C\#}
\lstinputlisting[caption={\index{false!C\#}false program in C\#}, label={lst:false.cs}]{src/C\hashchar/false.cs}

I found the solution to this problem by asking a question on the TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange [SO].

9 Epigraphs

chapters/chapter.tex
\chapter{Introduction to C}
\epigraph{``C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.''}{\em Dennis M. Ritchie\index{Ritchie, Dennis M.}\em}
\chapter{Text Editors}
\epigraph{\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{gfx/real_programmers}}{xkcd}

10 Bibliography

book.bib
@book{latexcompanion,
    author    = "Michel Goossens and Frank Mittelbach and Alexander Samarin",
    title     = "The \LaTeX\ Companion",
    year      = "1993",
    publisher = "Addison-Wesley",
    address   = "Reading, Massachusetts"
}
book.tex
\backmatter
\printglossary[type=\acronymtype]
\printglossary
\bibliographystyle{ieeetr}
\bibliography{data/book}
chapters/chapter.tex
The \LaTeX\ Companion\cite{latexcompanion}

Multiple authors are separated with and.

11 Miscellaneous