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Quick links (alphabetically)

Additional (math) operators, relations and so on ❧ Beamer ❧ Bibliographies and citations ❧ Classes and class options ❧ Core concepts ❧ Cooperation with editors and non-TeX applications ❧ Correct centering ❧ Cross-referencing, including hyperref ❧ Databases ❧ Date and Time ❧ Debugging & log files ❧ Disaster recovery ❧ Documentation & Definition of commands ❧ Figure/table numbering ❧ Figure/table (float) positioning and sizing ❧ Fonts & font encoding ❧ Front matter ❧ Images/Graphics ❧ Indexing and Glossaries ❧ Installing, updating, restoring, other system operations ❧ Lists, itemize, enumerate ❧ Math environments ❧ Meta TeX.SE ❧ Naming ❧ Old font macros ❧ Page layout and output ❧ Sectioning and blocks of text ❧ Source code related issues ❧ Spacing and pagination, hyphenation, line breaking ❧ Symbols ❧ Table formatting ❧ Teaching/learning resources, and examples ❧ Text as text ❧ Theorems and friends ❧ TikZ issues

I keep seeing the same bad coding styles being used in MWE or even recommended in answers or comments. There are also some FAQs (like the famous and repeatable asked how-to-place-my-figure-here question) which need to be linked to the appropriate existing question. Sometimes I have issues finding the related question quickly even if I already linked to it a couple of times before.

So I thought it would be good to have a collection of such often references questions sorted after topic in a meta post similar to our create Text building blocks.

Questions should be listed after topic. Every topic as CW answer to this post. Please use the following format:

## Topic Headline at Start of Answer Post

* [question title](http://tex.stackexchange.com/q/<question id>) [2 spaces] [linebreak]
 ``[question title](http://tex.stackexchange.com/q/<question id>)``

This way the question is provided as link (for quick access from this page) as well as markdown code suitable for comments (and as in-line link in a chat message). The URL can be received by using the link link below a question. There is also an stackapps app (modified by me) which produces this format. The include /<user id> should be removed to have the links in a neutral form. The two spaces and line break after the first line makes sure that the code starts at a new line.

Topic headers at the start of every answer post should be done using second order headlines, i.e. ## Topic. The first order headlines are a little to large IMHO.

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  • 13
    Great list: thanks Martin!
    – Joseph Wright Mod
    Commented Apr 14, 2012 at 16:43
  • 4
    @doncherry: Good idea with the quick links, thank you!
    – Jake
    Commented May 8, 2012 at 19:58
  • @Jake: I was thinking to add a bullet-point list at the bottom myself, but it didn't looked good. I like the top list in this form much better.
    – Martin Scharrer Mod
    Commented May 8, 2012 at 20:03
  • @MartinScharrer I'm not sure if the format with several categories in separate answers is working out. We have 26 questions in 12 answers, that's about two per category, and whenever I want to add a question, I'm having trouble finding the right category. One answer with broader categories might be a better solution and more flexible?
    – doncherry
    Commented Nov 16, 2012 at 21:34
  • @JosephWright Would it be useful to add tex.stackexchange.com/questions/255709/… here? If so, does it belong with Installing or Fonts? I hesitate to just add it because it may be only frequently referenced by me and I don't want to use this meta-post for self-advertising ....
    – cfr
    Commented Nov 1, 2016 at 4:16

35 Answers 35

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Installing, updating, restoring, other system operations

Installing/updating the TeX distribution
(TeX Live, MikTeX, etc.)

Contents of TeX Live subsets

Installing packages

Installing fonts

Finding things (lost files, information about packages, etc.)

Compilation

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Symbols (see also Fonts & Font encoding)

Scott Pakin's Comprehensive symbols list
[Comprehensive symbols list](http://mirror.ctan.org/info/symbols/comprehensive/)

Symbols in math

Alphabetic (including with diacritics)

(Mostly) Non-alphabetic

Symbols in text or code

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Bibliographies and citations

General problems

Specific elements of a bib entry

Bibliography tools and packages

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Figure/table (float) positioning and sizing

Full-width * floats at the bottom of a multicolumn page

Sizing floats

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Correct centering

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Math environments

See also Symbols

Questions involving coding

Delimiters: \left / \right problems, sizing

Spacing, sizing and positioning (see also Symbols)

Displays and related multi-line environments

Matrices

Miscellaneous

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Source code related issues

Examples -- big lists

Control sequence naming and input format

Package loading order

Reusable code and packaging

Use of percent signs (%)

LaTeX internal commands with at signs (@)

Use of \@ (backslash-at)

Other non-alphabetic commands, e.g., &

Verbatim inclusions

LaTeX3 syntax

Over- and underfull boxes

Not ending paragraphs with a double backslash

Nested square brackets

Number parsing

Unicode (UTF-8) source

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  • I have issues finding a right title here. Feel free to change it. Not sure if there are more questions which fall under this topic.
    – Martin Scharrer Mod
    Commented Apr 17, 2012 at 16:48
  • I'd suggest tex.stackexchange.com/questions/7453/… as the canonical question about %, as it doesn't contain a second question about braces.
    – Caramdir
    Commented Jun 27, 2012 at 16:05
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Cross-referencing, including hyperref

labels

hyperref and bookmarks

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Fonts & Font encoding (see also Symbols)

Questions about text fonts

when using T1 font encoding, one should also

hyphenation problems with accented characters

using Times (the times package is obsolete)

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Spacing and pagination, hyphenation, line breaking

Horizontal spacing

Vertical spacing

Canonical way to typeset spacing in abbreviations

Controlling page breaking and pagination

Special cases of long strings without hyphenation

Ordinary hyphenation

Line breaking following a non-letter (e.g. a hyphen, slash or comma)

Ordinary line breaking

Paragraph shaping

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  • 1
    there are many, many questions that ask why there isn't a space following some command; many could be combined, but most haven't. i've just added the [spacing] tag to several that didn't have it (apologies for kicking them to the active list; most did have the tag already). i think this concept is a good candidate for addition here, but can't decide among the pertinent questions. some candidates (only the numbers, or i'll run out of space here): 14526, 17730, 17872 (closed ==> 17730), 25820, 29211, 44878, 79760 (closed ==> 14526), probably more
    – barbara beeton
    Commented Oct 30, 2012 at 21:16
  • since you're the one who added this category, there are quite a few questions about removing vertical space, especially before chapter headings. among them (numbers only): 17299, 39988, 43087, 44751, 70156, 79232, 109722, possibly more. i didn't check for xrefs, but suspect that there are some.
    – barbara beeton
    Commented May 9, 2013 at 20:24
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Old font macros

I need the following text quite often, so I post it here:

Please note that the `\it`, `\bf`, etc. font macros are deprecated because
they do not use the new font selection scheme introduced with LaTeX2e.
Please use `{\itshape ..}`, `{\bfseries ..}` or `\textit{..}`, `\textbf{..}` instead.
See [Does it matter if I use `\textit` or `\it`, `\bfseries` or `\bf`, etc.](https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/516)
and [Will two-letter font style commands (`\bf`, `\it`, …) ever be resurrected in LaTeX?](https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/15361)
for more information.
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Figure/table numbering

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Documentation & Definition of commands

(La)TeX core

xdoc and other online documentation

texdef & friends

source2e, macros2e

Miscellaneous (re)definition topics

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Naming

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TikZ

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  • The how to draw this scheme link is down.
    – Troy
    Commented May 9, 2017 at 10:04
  • @Troy Thanks. The question had been closed (as duplicate, but the dupe was deleted as well), and later deleted. But neither that question nor the duplicate had any answers, so I just removed the entry from the post. If you're wondering, it was about drawing this: texample.net/tikz/examples/multiplexer
    – Torbjørn T.
    Commented May 9, 2017 at 10:33
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Table formatting

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Indexing and Glossaries

Generating External Files (Running makeindex/xindy):

Indexing:

acro package:

acronym package:

glossaries package:

nomenclature package:

General:

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  • The perl scripts question isn't specific to glossaries, but I wasn't sure where else to put it.
    – Nicola Talbot
    Commented May 3, 2016 at 9:01
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Classes

General

Class options

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Images/Graphics

6

Front matter

Title page

ToCs, Lists of figures/tables

ToCs vs. bookmarks

Other things that appear at the top of a document

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Beamer

5

Sectioning and blocks of text

Including/excluding "sections" of input code

Material stored in boxes

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Meta TeX.SE

4

Additional (math) operators, relations and so on

4

Teaching/learning resources, and examples

4

Text as text

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3

Databases

CSV / Text Files

Relational Databases

General

3

Debugging & log files (see also Source code related issues)

3

Theorems and friends

Placing an ending marker on non-proof environments

Proofs

Lists in theorem environments

2

Lists, itemize, enumerate

See also

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