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Advanced LaTeX

• Using Packages
• Document Types
• Sections
• Non-numbered Sections and Subsections
• Changing Your Headers and Footers
• • In a Thesis
  • In an Article Class
  • Footers
• Just What Are All Those Files?
• Multiple Columns
• Comments
• Marginal Notes
• Making Space
• Fixing Bugs
• Splitting Documents into Separate Files
• Verse

Using Packages

While writing your document, you will probably find that there are some areas where basic LaTeX cannot solve your problem. If you want to include graphics, colored text or source code from a file into your document, you need to enhance the capabilities of LaTeX. Such enhancements are called packages. Packages are activated with the \usepackage[ options]{ package} command, where package is the name of the package and options is a list of keywords that trigger special features in the package. Almost all packages are provided separately from the CTAN.org repository, but your installation probably has all of those below.

Commonly Used Packages

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Document Types

The first command in any LaTeX file determines the format for the entire document.

\documentclass[ options]{ class}

You can either use one of the four standard LaTeX classes, book, report, article, or letter, or a contributed class designed by an individual and contributed to the CTAN.org archive. A good example of a custom class is the аÄ×ÊÁÏ Thesis Template.

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Sectioning

For long documents like a thesis or long paper, you may need multiple sections of text. You may have parts, chapters, sections, and subsections. These sectioning commands take care of numbering, formatting the heading, include the section in the table of contents, and put the section title and number in the header at the top of the page. Each sectioning command uses the same syntax:

\section{ title}

If you want the table of contents entry to be different from the section name (often because of length), you should specify the name in square braces:

\section[ TableOfContents_Entry]{ title}

If you want the section unnumbered, you should add an asterix after the command name:

\section*{ title}

However this means it will not be in the table of contents. If you need it in the table of contents, include the following line proceeding the sectioning command.

\setcounter{chapter}{1} This will increment the counter so it will show up properly in the table of contents (ToC).
\chapter*{The First}
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{The First} This adds a chapter called The First to the ToC.

The sectioning commands are slightly different for long documents versus short documents. In your thesis you will want to use those for Book and Report classes, but if you're just writing a term paper you will probably want those for the Article class. Remember, you don't need to use all the commands, particularly the \paragraph and \subparagraph; experiment and see what looks best.

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Non-numbered Sections and Subsections

If you would like non-numbered sections and subsections in your thesis, and you would also like them to appear correctly in manually-created headings (using \markboth{LeftSideHeading}{RightSideHeading}), add the following to your reedthesis.cls file. 

\newcommand{\nonumsection}[1]{\section*{#1}
\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{#1}             
%\sectionmark{#1}}
\markboth{#1}{#1}}            
 \newcommand{\nonumsubsect}[1]{\subsection*{#1}
 \addcontentsline{toc}{subsection}{#1}}
%\subsectionmark{#1}}

Changing Your Headers and Footers

In A Thesis

There are many modifications people want for their thesis headers. The main ones are: the appearance (without changing what the header actually says) and to change the header to their chapter title instead of the current \section.

To fix the running headers to not be uppercase:

1. Make a backup of reedthesis.cls (it's good idea to have a backup anyway).
2. Open reedthesis.cls
3. Find the header lines:

4. \fancyhead[RE]{\slshape \leftmark}
   \fancyhead[LO]{\slshape \rightmark}

5. Change 'em how you like it:

6. \fancyhead[RE]{\slshape \nouppercase \leftmark} This makes the headers on the right side pages be italic and use lowercase With Capitals When Specified.
   \fancyhead[LO]{\slshape \nouppercase \rightmark} This does the same thing to the left side pages
   or
   \fancyhead[RE]{\scshape \leftmark} The headers will be in S MALL C APS.
   \fancyhead[LO]{\scshape \rightmark}

If you want each of your headers to say the name of the chapter (or something else specific), and not take their name from different sections, back out of the reedthesis.cls and go to thesis.tex.

Then where ever you start a chapter, define your headers, like so:

\chapter{Introduction}
\fancyhead[LE,RO]{\thepage}
\fancyhead[RE]{\slshape Introduction}
\fancyhead[LO]{\slshape Introduction}

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In The Article Class

You can make a header using the my headings page style. You will have to use \markboth{ left page header}{ right page header} to specify the header and adjust the spacing of the header with \headheight and \headsep commands. All this is in the preamble.

Here's how the myheadings page style is used to make headings:

\pagestyle{myheadings}
\markboth{This is on the even-numbered page}{This is on the odd-numbered page}
\setlength{\headheight{1 ex}} This specifies the