Penguin
Recent Changes

Notes on making the LaTeX markup language do what you want it to do.

  • use pdflatex(1) to create PDF files. See the PdfLatexNotes page for more.

    • alternately, you could use LaTeXpdf (which is a different method for making PDFs from LaTeX).
  • Here is a really good online HTML doc about LaTeX commands

Here is a command that lets you do different things with numbers depending on their magnitude.

\newcommand{\formatnumber}[[1]{
  \ifnum#1=0 {\bf zero} \else
  \ifnum#1<2 {\bf one} \else
   {\bf two or more}\fi
  \fi
}

Error message - "Float(s) lost"

! LaTeX Error: Float(s) lost.

See the LaTeX manual or LaTeX Companion for explanation.
Type  H <return>  for immediate help.
 ...

l.2085 \end{figure}

?
[34]

! LaTeX Error: This may be a LaTeX bug.

See the LaTeX manual or LaTeX Companion for explanation.
Type  H <return>  for immediate help.

I got this message when I had a figure at the start of a \subsection with no text before it. Moving the figure down a bit so that some text appeared before it in the input file fixed this.

Relative Include (\input) Paths

See the LatexMakefiles page.

Arbitrary Angles

   \usepackage{rotating}
   ...
   \begin{turn}{90}%
   vertical
   \end{turn}

see /usr/share/doc/tetex-version/latex/rotating/examples.tex if you have the tetex-doc package installed.

Putting text at the bottom of a page

  \newpage
  \vspace*\fill
  \begin{centering}
    {\small \copyright{} 2005}
  \end{centering}

See also LatexWordcount.