Let's write some tag wiki entries

Question

As of yesterday, hovering the mouse pointer over a tag will show (amongst other info) the tag wiki excerpt. This makes the tag wiki content more prominent on the site. Unfortunately, the tag wikis of most of our tags are empty.

Remember that you can now make tag wiki suggestions directly on the the wiki. If you do so, please remove the tag from this list afterwards.

Here is a list of tags from the first tag page that do not have a description (when directly editing a tag wiki page, please remove the tag from the list).

• xetex (has an entry, but is very short)
• table-of-contents (excerpt, but no wiki)
• vertical-alignment
• compiling
• margins
• numbering
• latex-general (excerpt, but no wiki)
• layout
• formatting
• color
• captions (excerpt, but no wiki)
• templates
• programming
• editors
• line-breaking
• tools
• paragraph
• page-breaking
• pstricks
• indentation
• conversion (excerpt, but no wiki)
• syntax
• size
• labels
• matrices
• two-column
• counters

Answer 1

{align}

align is an environment in math packages that permits multiple related equations to be formatted vertically with a common reference point, usually at a sign of relation.

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The align environment is provided by packages such as amsmath and mathtools. The alignment reference point is indicated by &, which should be placed just before the sign of relation or operation in order to obtain proper spacing. The end of all lines except the last is indicated by \\. The related environment alignat allows horizontal space between equations on the smae line to be explicitly specified. Both align and alignat produce equation numbers; starred versions without numbering are provided as well.

Sub-environments aligned and alignedat are building blocks to be used when the aligned component is only part of a longer multi-line structure. The width of each component is only as large as necessary, so that it can, for example, be set within delimiters.

Use of these environments is described in the amsmath users guide, which on a TeX Live system can be accessed by texdoc amsmath.

Answer 2

texlive

This tag is used for questions relating to TeX Live, a widely used TeX distribution.

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TeX Live is TeX distribution that is mostly used on Unix-related operating systems like linux and osx. It is, however, also available for windows (where miktex is commonly used).

For questions concerning Mac TeX, which is a based on TeX Live, use the mactex tag.

Copied to Tag Wiki on 2011-01-12.

Answer 3

best-practices

Roughly modelled on the best-practices tag from programmers.sx

A "best practice" is a technique or approach that TeXnicians recognize as giving better results than other approaches.

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For example, it is widely accepted that there is value in separating commands that govern formatting from the document content — this is an example of a goal that is sometimes impractical to apply, and overall best practice provides guidance on how to manage the cases where it is not practicable.

For another example, when writing macros for packages or modules intended for use by others, it is a long-established best practice to use the @ character for internal macro names, which do not conflict with macros in regular documents, so that users do not have to pay attention to the package internals.

Answer 4

listings

listings is a package that provides advanced features for typesetting computer code

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The listings package extends LaTeX's verbatim features. A variety of syntax highlighting options are available.

For the unrelated concept of list structures, use the lists tag or the tag corresponding to a specific list structure.