Department of Engineering

IT Services

Environments

Alignments

In these environments \\ starts a new line.

\begin{flushleft}
Some people like to stay firmly\\ on the left whereas others
\end{flushleft}
\begin{flushright}
feel more at home on the right.\\ 
\end{flushright}
\begin{center}
but most of us prefer to stay dead in the center.
\end{center}

Some people like to stay firmly
on the left whereas others
feel much more at home
on the right.
but most of us prefer to stay dead in the center.

Listing Items

The items can be marked in one of three way:

\begin{itemize}
\item just by a bullet, using \texttt{itemize}

\item numbered, using \texttt{enumerate} 

\begin{enumerate}
\item one
\item two
\item three
\end{enumerate}

\item or with a label, using \texttt{description} 

\begin{description}
\item[itemize] bullets
\item[enumerate] automatic numbering
\item[description] labelling
\end{description}

\end{itemize}
  • just by a bullet, using itemize

  • numbered, using enumerate

    1.
    one
    2.
    two
    3.
    three

  • or with a label, using description

    itemize
    bullets
    enumerate
    automatic numbering
    description
    labelling

The pifont package includes a variant of the itemize command that will replace the usual 'bullet' by a Zapf Dingbat symbol of your choice

\begin{dinglist}{43}
\item First 
\item Second
\end{dinglist}


\begin{dinglist}{43}
\item First
\item Second
\end{dinglist}

and a variant of the enumerate command that given an initial Zapf Dingbat symbol will increment the symbol for each item.

\begin{dingautolist}{172}
\item First 
\item Second
\end{dingautolist}

\begin{dingautolist}{172}
\item First
\item Second
\end{dingautolist}

Tabular

Tabular output is supported. When you create the environment you specify how many columns to have and how the contents are to be aligned (use l, c or r to represent each column with either left, center or right alignment) and where you want vertical lines (use |). The contents of the columns are separated by a `&' and rows by \\. Here's a simple example

\begin{tabular}{l|c|r}
left & centre & right\\
more left & more centre & more right\\
\end{tabular}

left centre right
more left more centre more right

To draw a full horizontal line, use \hline otherwise draw a line across selected columns using \cline. The \multicolumn command allows items to span columns. It takes as its first argument the number of columns to span. The following, more complicated example shows how to use these facilities.

\begin{tabular}{||l|lr||} \hline
\textbf{Veg}  & \multicolumn{2}{|c||}{\textbf{Detail}}\\\hline
carrots    & per pound & \pounds 0.75 \\ \cline{2-3}
           & each      &         20p  \\ \hline
mushrooms  & dozen     &         86p  \\ \cline{1-1} \cline{3-3}
toadstools & pick your own & free     \\ \hline
\end{tabular}

(n.b. the HTML representation below is inaccurate - too many lines)

Veg Detail
carrots per pound £0.75
  each 20p
mushrooms dozen 86p
toadstools pick your own free

Tables won't continue on the next page if they're too long. The longtable or supertabular commands are needed to do this. See the Supertabular documentation for details and examples.

If the text in a column is too wide for the page, LATEX won't automatically text-wrap. Using p{5cm} instead of c, l or r in the tabular line will wrap-around the text in a 5 cm wide column.

There are various packages to assist with table creation. The array package adds some helpful features, including the ability to add formatting commands that control a whole column at a time, like so

\begin{tabular}{>{\ttfamily}l>{\scshape}c>{\Large}r}
      Text  & More Text & Large Text\\
      Left  & Centred   & Right
\end{tabular}

Text MORE TEXT Large Text
Left CENTRED Right

The rotating package is useful if you have a wide table that you want to display in landscape mode. You need to put your table inside \begin{sidewaystable} and \end{sidewaystable}.

If you want the table to have a caption and float (float up the page if it's started right near the foot of a page, for example), use

\begin{table}[htbp] 
\begin{tabular}...
...
\end{tabular}
\caption{...}
\end{table}
See section 4.7 for details.

Array

The array environment (not to be confused with the array package) is similar to the tabular but must be within a math environment. This

\begin{math}
\left(
\begin{array}{clrr}
      a+b+c & uv & x-y & 27 \\
       x+y  & w  & +z  & 363 
\end{array}
\right)
\end{math}

produces

$\left(
\begin{array}{clrr}
a+b+c & uv & x-y & 27 \\
x+y & w & +z & 363
\end{array}\right)$

Pictures

LATEX has some graphics capabilities. It's much better to import an encapsulated postscript file. See the LATEX Maths and Graphics document for more details.

\newcounter{cms}
\setlength{\unitlength}{1mm}
\begin{picture}(50,39)
\put(0,7){\makebox(0,0)[bl]{cm}}
\multiput(10,7)(10,0){5}{\addtocounter
   {cms}{1}\makebox(0,0)[b]{\arabic{cms}}}
\put(15,20){\circle{6}}
\put(30,20){\circle{6}}
\put(15,20){\circle*{2}}
\put(30,20){\circle*{2}}
\put(10,24){\framebox(25,8){a box}}
\put(10,32){\vector(-2,1){10}}
\multiput(1,0)(1,0){49}{\line(0,1){2,5}}
\multiput(5,0)(10,0){5}{\line(0,1){3,5}}
\thicklines
\put(0,0){\line(1,0){50}}
\multiput(0,0)(10,0){6}{\line(0,1){5}}
\end{picture}


\begin{picture}% latex2html id marker 484
(50,39)
\put(0,7){\makebox(0,0)[bl]{cm...
...
\put(0,0){\line(1,0){50}}
\multiput(0,0)(10,0){6}{\line(0,1){5}}
\end{picture}

Maths

Maths is dealt with in the LATEX Maths and Graphics document. Here are some examples

\begin{math}
 \lim_{n \rightarrow \infty}x = 0 \\
x^{2y} \\
x_{2y} \\
x^{2y}_{1} \\
\frac{x+y}{1 + \frac{1}{n+1}} \\
\end{math}
produces $\lim_{n \rightarrow \infty}x = 0 \\
x^{2y} \\
x_{2y} \\
x^{2y}_{1} \\
\frac{x+y}{1 + \frac{1}{n+1}}$

   
Figures

To include graphics, use the \includegraphics command (provided by the graphicx package) inside figure environment. The arguments to figure specify where the space will be made, preferentially

h here
t top of page
b bottom of page
p on a page with no text

\begin{figure}[htbp]
   \vspace{1cm}
   \caption{1 cm of space}
\end{figure}

 
Figure 1: 1 cm of space

Putting ! as the first argument in the square brackets will encourage LATEX to do what you say, even if the result's sub-optimal.

If you have a label defined in the caption, LATEX may give an error message. \label is a fragile command (see the LATEX book for details) so you'll need to do something like

...
\caption{1 cm of space\protect\label{EMPTY}}

or simply put the \label command after the caption. Note that if you put the \label before the caption, the resulting reference will be the section number and not the figure number. See the LATEX Maths and Graphics document for more details.

Tabbing

Within this environment tabs can be set by \= and the next tab moved to by using \>.

\begin{tabbing}
if \= it's raining\\      % set tab here, after the 'if'
   \> get an umbrella \=\\ % go to the defined tab and set a new one
else\\
   \> get wet \> * next tab is here\\
endif
\end{tabbing}

if it's raining

get an umbrella
else
get wet * next tab is here
endif

Verbatim

Within this environment things come out unformatted. It's useful for showing examples of typed input and provides a way of printing characters that have a special meaning for LATEX.

\begin{verbatim}
caret is ^, tilde is ~ and backslash is \
\end{verbatim}

produces

caret is ^, tilde is ~ and backslash is \

If you just want to quote a few characters, use \verb|quoted text|. The characters delimiting the quote can be anything as long as they are the same.

Quote, abstract

These widen the margins and change the font. The abstract environment also adds a title.

Letter

See letter.tex in /export/Examples/LaTeX

Curriculum Vitae

See cv.tex in /export/Examples/LaTeX