Tools
and Tips for Writing Papers
- TeXnicCenter
specific: Modes to use
- You can read an
article written by Qin Zhang and an
article written by Bill Moss. In case they become broken
links, you can find the cached versions at our server
/home/public/docs/writingdocs.
- Normally when
you are editing, use the mode "LaTeX=>DVI", which is faster to
use.
- When you try to
generate PDF for submission in the end, use the mode
"LaTeX=>PS=>PDF". I usually don't recommend you to use
the mode "LaTeX=>PDF" (which may not recognize EPS figures)
unless "LaTeX=>PS=>PDF" doesn't work.
- In any mode,
always watch the console output in the lower part of the application
window. If you see some red errors (even if you can successfully
produce and view DVI or PDF), you need to address these issues. You
want to see in the end of the console information: "LaTeX-Result: 0
Error(s) ...". You shouldn't allow non-zero errors.
- If you don't see you have a list of profiles (including
LaTeX=>DVI, LaTeX=>PDF, LaTeX=> PS, LaTeX=>
PS => PDF) by clicking Build-> Define Output Profiles,
you need to do the following thing:
1. Download the following configuration that I exported from my
TeXnicCenter: publications/texniccenter.tco
2. Import it from a button "Import" in the above dialog.
Then you can see a list of profiles.
Note that in the profile for LaTeX=>PS=>PDF, I configured
correctly on producing a PDF that can pass IEEE PDF checking, which
normally would report missing fonts in your generated PDF file if you
don't follow my configuration.
In editing mode, you should use the "LaTeX=>DVI" profile (using
the pull-down menu on the shortcup menu list), and click Cltrl+F5 (or
the shortcut button "Build and View Output" to see the view the
generated DVI.
When you want to build a PDF to submit, choose the
"LaTeX=>PS=>PDF" mode.
- Use spell check
features of TeXnicCenter: In TeXnicCenter,
Tools->Options->Spelling tab-> enable all checkbox
options in that tab including "Check spelling while typing". You can see that those words that
cannot pass spell checks are underlined with red lines. To enable those
special words such as "pointcut", right click the words and click "Add"
to add the words to the dictionary. Then later on the same words won't
be underlined. Normally you should make these red underlines disappear
unless in some code snippet where you will have a lot of red unerlines
(don't bother to add those words there to dictionary).
- If I create a PDF file using
PS2PDF or PDFLaTeX the paper size is changed to Letter instead of A4
(the generated PDF has a narrow top margin) (or the other way around when the
prefered size is letter)
TeXnicCenter
specific (1beta
6.31):
- You can
configure the PS2PDF command line options at menu
"Build->Define Output Profiles..." Click
LaTeX=>PS=>PDF on the left-size list box, then click
Postprocessor tag, click the "Ghostscript (ps2pdf)" entry in the list
box on the right. The "Arguments" box on the bottom should be put with
the following command line options:
-sPAPERSIZE=a4 -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite
-dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dSubsetFonts=true
-dEmbedAllFonts=true -sOutputFile="%bm.pdf" -c save pop -f "%bm.ps"
where "-sPAPERSIZE=a4" specifies that A4 size is generated.
- If your
preferred size is letter instead of A4, you need to replace the " -sPAPERSIZE=a4" above with "-sPAPERSIZE=letter".
In addition, add "-t letter" to the command line argument for dvips.
Note that you don't need to put
\pdfpagewidth=8.5in
\pdfpageheight=11in
to the document preamble as some guideline suggests.
WinEdt
specific: (from LaTeX
FAQs)
If you use WinEdt's default settings and
run PDFLaTeX or PS2PDF on a A4 sized LaTeX document, the resulting PDF
file might have page size Letter (8.5 x 11 inch). To fix this do the
following:
- PS2PDF users:
when you create a PostScript file using DVIPS, a dialog is displayed in
WinEdt. In this dialog you should change the "Generic Parameters" to -P
pdf -t A4 -z (instead of the default -P pdf).
WinEdt will remember this setting.
- PDFLaTeX users:
add the a4paper option to the \documentclass
command, usually the first line in your LaTeX document.
Example:\documentclass[11pt,twoside,a4paper]{article}
- In WinEdt,
click on "Wrap" at the bottom of the screen to turn off automatic line
wrapping whenever you are dealing with program listings! That is, if
you are about to paste in a listing from the clipboard, turn off wrap
first. If your cursor is anywhere in the listing, turn
off wrap. For normal text, you typically have wrap turned on, but not
for listings.
- How to configure WinEdt or
TeXnicCenter to pass IEEE PDF eXpress when error reports said "Font XXX
is not embedded"? (from UNC
thesis FAQs) i.e., How to embed ALL fonts (including the
times family) in a PDF file?
TeXnicCenter Specific
(1beta 6.31): (if you have configured PS2PDF's
command line like the above when addressing the issue of A4 Size, you
shouldn't have problems in the missing font issue)
- How to
check whether Type 1 Fonts are embedded? There are two options to check:
- (1) In
Acrobat Reader, use 'File' - 'Document Properties' and click on the
'Font' tab.
- (2) From a
UNIX command-line, just use the pdffonts program (usually included with
xpdf), viz: "% pdffonts my-paper.pdf"
-
More
options can be found here.
A solution is to include this dvips option -Pdownload35,
viz.
dvips -t letter -Pdownload35 -o <file>.ps <file>.dvi
This
option 'forces' the embedding of all the fonts. (Note: This
option is not available in all dvips versions.)
- You can
configure the PS2PDF command line options at menu
"Build->Define Output Profiles..." Click
LaTeX=>PS=>PDF on the left-size list box, then click
Postprocessor tag, click the "Ghostscript (ps2pdf)" entry in the list
box on the right. The "Arguments" box on the bottom should be put with
the following command line options:
-sPAPERSIZE=a4 -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite
-dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dSubsetFonts=true
-dEmbedAllFonts=true -sOutputFile="%bm.pdf" -c save pop -f "%bm.ps"
where "-dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dSubsetFonts=true
-dEmbedAllFonts=true" specifies that all embedded fonts are included in
PDF.
- If your
preferred size is letter instead of A4, you need to replace the " -sPAPERSIZE=a4" above with "-sPAPERSIZE=letter".
In addition, add "-t letter" to the command line argument for dvips.
Note that you don't need to put
\pdfpagewidth=8.5in
\pdfpageheight=11in
to the document preamble as some guideline suggests.
Some fonts such as ArialMT are not embeded in the generated PDF
- The reason is that Microsoft cannot embed fonts such as ArialMT due to license. Below is the solution to fix it.
- open your pdf file,
- select file -> print
- set your printer to be Adobe printer (assuming you already installed it)
- click on properties
- click the tab "Adobe PDF Settings"
- uncheck "Rely on system fonts only; do not use document fonts"
- click on the Edit... after Default Settings
- click on Fonts, add those missing fonts to "Always Embed" (It is recommended to save the properties as a new setting.)
- print the pdf file with the new settings, and your new pdf file should be good to go.
WinEdit 6.0 Version Specific:
Please see here
for more tips.
WinEdit 5.5 Version Specific:
- Open WinEdt
- Select: Options, Execution Modes
- Select ps2pdf
The Command Line Switches for gswin32c.exe
are
-
-dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -r600 -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4
Add the following
switches to this line:
-dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dSubsetFonts=true -dEmbedAllFonts=true
WinEdit Past Version Specific:
- The ps2pdf
batch file has to be changed. Assuming winedt is used, the batch file
is typically under C:\Program Files\WinEdt Team\WinEdt\Bin. Open the
batch file and add the option -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer
-dSubsetFonts=true -dEmbedAllFonts=true -dMaxSubsetPct=100
-dCompatibilityLevel=1.3 for gswin32c. This
approach has been tested with Ghostscript 8.13. Note that the
typical options, -dSubsetFonts=true -dEmbedAllFonts=true, do
not work without the pdf setting.
It is possible however to tell PS2PDF to
embed the fonts: (copied
from here)
From now on PS2PDF will embed all fonts.
- How to recognize EPS figures?
TeXnicCenter specific (1beta
6.31):
- When you use
choose "LaTeX=>PDF" in the shortcut box or in menu
"Build->Select Output Profiles...", you cannot successfully
compile a LaTeX source file including eps type figures. The reason is
that "LaTeX=>PDF" uses "PDFLaTeX", which doesn't support eps.
More details can be seen here.
To address this issue, you can use the following solution:
- Solution
1: Don't use
"LaTeX=>PDF" but use "LaTeX=>PS=>PDF"!
When you are editing the LaTeX source, you can use "LaTeX=>DVI".
When you want to produce a PS/PDF version to submit, choose
"LaTeX=>PS=>PDF" or "LaTeX=>PS".
- Solution 2: Try to
install the MiKTeX 2.4.1705 version, which is
available at our research server:
/home/public/tools/miktex/small-miktex-2.4.1705.exe
WinEdt
Specific:
- Don't use the
"PDF LaTeX" button in the botton bar. In order to generate PDF,
following this action sequence: first click "LaTeX" to generate the DVS
file, then click "DVIPS" button to generate the PS file, and finally
click "PS2PDF" to generate the PDF file.
- Space saving in LaTeX
- PDF
Files Created with LaTeX: The font looks blurry
- Converting a MS PowerPoint slide/Word Image to
EPS embedded in LaTeX (here is another trick: convert
ppt to eps)
Option 1 (recommended):
- Download and
install OpenOffice
- Open a
Powerpoint slide or Word with OpenOffice
- Export it as
a EPS file (File->Export->Choose EPS file type)
- Open the
generated EPS file with GhostView,
and turn on menu "Option->EPS Clip and EPS Warn". Choose the
menu "File->PS to EPS", allow the bounding box to be
automatically calculated, and save with a different filename, say,
figure_final.eps.
- You may
import figure_final.eps into a LaTeX document like
\begin{figure}[t]
\centerline{\includegraphics[scale=0.8,clip]{figure_final.eps}}
\mycaption{Figure name}{Figure.}
\label{fig:figure}
\end{figure}
Option 2: Please
follow the steps below:
Download and install: wmf2eps;
this tool will provide you WMF2EPS Color PS L2 printer (I found MS
Windows' default postscript printer is not perfect for printing eps
files to nicely fit into LaTeX)
- Download WMF2EPS to a temporary directory in
your hard drive. Expand the downloaded file ("wmf2eps1.2.zip") to the
directory of your choice, for example, "c:\Program Files\wmf2eps".
- You may
install the (pseudo)-printer-definition file shipped with the program,
"WMF2EPS2.PPD", which uses the built in standard PostScript driver of
Windows 2000.
- Double-click
on "Add printer" under "Settings", "Printers" in the Start menu. Add a
local printer and select "FILE:" as the port. Then select "Have disk"
and click on the "Browse" button to point to "c:\Program
Files\wmf2eps\PSprint\Win2000\Standard\W2kPrint.INF". Windows will
display the name of the selected printer (WMF2EPS Color PS L2). Click
on "next". Windows will allow you to change the name of the printer and
also if the printer will be the default ("No" should be selected). In
the next two screens, select "Do not share this printer" and do not
print a test page.
- "WMF2EPS
Color PS L2" appears now in the list of printers. Right-click on its
icon and select "Properties" from the context menu. In the "General"
tab, select "Printing Preferences" and scroll down to "Document
Options", "PostScript Options". Under "PostScript Output options"
select "Encapsulated PostScript (EPS)". Click on "OK" to apply the
change and close the properties dialog box.
Download and install: emftoeps
Save your PPT slide or other word images into Enhanced Metafile Format
(EMF) such as figure.emf
Run the emftoeps tool; within the tool, open the EMF file you just saved
Choose menu "Edit->Preferences" (specify Resolution as default
300dpi) and choose WMF2EPS Color PS L2 printer as your printer. In
"print
setup->properties->paper/quality->advanced->postscript"
option, change postscript output option's value from "optimizing for
speed" to encapsulated postscript". Also change paper size's value from
A4 to postscript custom page size. These configurations are important
to display your later exported eps file correctly in your LaTeX. You
may also configure your printer's orientation as landscape.
Choose "Convert" from the menu to do either all files or those selected
by you. Then the files are saved in the same directory, with the
extension of ".eps", e.g., figure.eps.
Open the generated EPS file with GhostView,
and turn on menu "Option->EPS Clip and EPS Warn". Choose the
menu "File->PS to EPS", allow the bounding box to be
automatically calculated, and save with a different filename, say,
figure_final.eps.
- You may
import figure_final.eps into a LaTeX document like
\begin{figure}[t]
\centerline{\includegraphics[scale=0.8,clip]{figure_final.eps}}
\mycaption{Figure name}{Figure.}
\label{fig:figure}
\end{figure}
- Converting a PNG or another type of image to EPS
embedded in LaTeX
Don't use JPEG but use PNG to get lossless
images, see
here.
Note that it is bad to convert your Powerpoint or Word figures to PNG
images first and then convert the PNG images to EPS. You should convert
Powerpoint or Word figures to
PDF and then to EPS (see the instruction above). But for screen
snapshots, you may have to capture the screen and then paste it inside
a picture-editing software tool (such as Windows Paint) and then save
it as a PNG image. Then following the steps below to convert a PNG
image to EPS. See more tips here.
Option 1: (Recommended)
- Download and install a free ImageMagick
tool set. Run "convert XXXX.png XXXX.pdf" in your command line to
convert your PNG file to a PDF file. (Please don't use the convert
command there to convert your PNG file to a EPS file directly!) See the
instruction on the convert command here.
- Then use your PDF reader (such as Adobe Acrobat) to
open the PDF file and then save it as a EPS file.
Option 2:
Please follow the steps below:
- Download an
evaluation version of Paint Shop Pro at www.jasc.com. Althogh
the site says it expires in 30 days, the software works pretty much the
same way beyond that period.
- Use Paint
Shop Pro to open jpeg
- File->
Save As, then choose the "Save as type": Encapsulated Postscript (eps)"
and then click Save button.
- Use GSview to
open the eps file.
- File->
PS to EPS
- A dialog pops
up and you check the checkbox of "Automatically calculate Bounding Box"
and then click Yes button
- A dialog pops
up and ask you what file you want to save the new eps. After you
specify a new file name and click Save button, you are done.
- Merging multiple tex files and bib
files into a single tex file for final submission
- Sometimes some
camera ready versions require you also submit your single LaTeX file
besides your PDF and PS files. But usually you put different sections
as different LaTeX source files and bib as a single file. Here is what
you can do, first copy your main LaTeX file into another file with the
name as expected by the camera ready submission. Then you start
commenting out \input{XXX} by adding "%" before it ot delete the line.
Then you replace the line with the content that you copy from the
XXX.tex file. A bit tricky is about the bib file. Assume in your
original main tex source file:
\bibliographystyle{abbrv}
\bibliography{yangtse}
- Assume your
main tex file is oopsla.tex, then you can find oopsla.bbl in the same
directory, which is the bibitem file compiled from your yangtse.bib
file. Then you can copy the content in oopsla.bbl to replace the line
"\bibliography{yangtse}" You can see the
single source tex file that I produced for my
SIGPLAN SRC 04 paper. Note that there I do some tricks to
make the bibitems with a smaller font size; you don't need to do that
if you have enough space.
- Note that you
should compile the resulting single tex file to see whether the
generated PDF file is the same as the one you earlier generate from
multiple tex files. Sometimes you may make mistakes in manually merging
multiple tex files into a single tex file.
- For example you
can use the preceding way to fulfill the requirement from ACM
OOPSLA 06: "Please include all text (including references from the
.bbl file) into your .tex file to make one complete .tex
document. We do not want a directory of multiple files, just one file
with all text from your submission. We do not need the figures. We are
not recompiling your submission, only using the one (single-complete)
source file to extract text and data that we need to make the metadata
for ACM's digital library."
- Managing bibtex database
- Technical
Publishing with Microsoft Word
- Managing
references: EndNote
+ Bibutils
(which converse bibtex items to endnote format)
- Drawing figures using xfig
- Drawing figures using Dia (download Dia here)
- Dia is a free open source tool that implements nice
features of MS Visio (like the way that OpenOffice
implements nice features of MS Office)
- To export to LaTeX/EPS format, right-click on the diagram
and select Export (or click menu File->Export),
then select extension type Encapsulated Postscript (EPS).
- Here are some
more tips on tools for drawing figures and some
other tips
- Drawing
figures side by side (from tips
here)
- To place to figures side by side, you could use minipage
like this:
\begin{figure}
\begin{minipage}[b]{0.5\linewidth} % A minipage that covers half the page
\centering
\includegraphics[width=6cm]{bild1.eps}
\caption{En liten bild}
\end{minipage}
\hspace{0.5cm} % To get a little bit of space between the figures
\begin{minipage}[b]{0.5\linewidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=6cm]{bild2.eps}
\caption{En liten bild till}
\end{minipage}
\end{figure}
With minipage,
you get two different figures. Another way to do it is to use the
package subfigure
(\usepackage{subfigure}
in the preamble). You will then get two subfigures inside one figure.
\begin{figure}
\centering
\subfigure[Bild a.] % caption for subfigure a
{
\label{fig:sub:a}
\includegraphics[width=4cm]{bild_a.eps}
}
\hspace{1cm}
\subfigure[Bild b.] % caption for subfigure b
{
\label{fig:sub:b}
\includegraphics[width=4cm]{bild_b.eps}
}
\caption{Bild a och b.}
\label{fig:sub} % caption for the whole figure
\end{figure}
When you use subfigure
you only get one figure, i.e figure 3. When you refer to the
subfigures, they are called figure 3(a) and figure 3(b).
- Making project schedule with MS Visio
(copied from MS Visio Help)/Converting Visio to EPS
- Simple solution for Viso -> EPS (copied
from here): export as WMF from Visio, then use wmf2eps (http://www.wmf2eps.de.vu/)
to convert to EPS.
- Hide a data
column: In a Gantt chart, click the column heading of the column you
want to hide. On the Gantt Chart menu, click Hide Column.
- Redisplay a
hidden data column: If you hide a column in your Gantt chart, you can
display it again with the data preserved. Right-click the column to the
right of where you want the hidden column to reappear, and then click
Insert Column. In the Column type list, click the column type you
previously hid, and then click OK.
You cannot hide the ID column in your Gantt chart.
- Convert Visio to EPS (copied
from here)
- 1. In Visio, Save As... a Windows MetaFile
- 2. Import the MetaFile into a program that can handle
it, such as Adobe InDesign or PageMaker. (Alternative: use ACDSee
[using PaintShop or other picture editting software seems to get
low-quality PDF] to open the Windows Metafile and print it to a PDF
using tools such as PDF FactoryPro with resolution as high as 600dpi)
- 3. Save as (or export to) a PDF.
- 4. Use Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader) to export as an EPS.
- 5. Use GSView to clean-up the bounding box (although
Acrobat can do this too, just not as accurately).
- Tricks in writing LaTeX source
- Preparing preprint versions for different
conference styles (in preprint version, you can put the
conference info on the top of the paper's first page and add page
numbers to the paper
- For LNCS
style:
%keep your original style file
\documentclass{llncs}
- For IEEE
style: (download and use ieee.cls,
ieee.bst)
%replace your original document class with ieee
\documentclass[preprint]{ieee}
...
%replace your original bib style with ieee
- For ACM
style: (download and use sig-alt-release2.cls)
%replace your original document class with sig-alt-release2
\documentclass{sig-alt-release2}
- Then for
either of these styles, add the following after the line of
"\documentclass...."
%the following are the new added lines
\usepackage{fancyheadings}
\renewcommand\headrulewidth{0pt}
\lhead{\scriptsize{\hspace*{0.2in}Appears in \textit{Proceedings of
XXXXX (XXXX 04), Seattle, WA}}
\pagestyle{plain} \setcounter{page}{290}
...
add the following line after the line of "\maketitle"
%the following is the new added line
\thispagestyle{fancy}
...
- Making Lyx exported LaTeX file to work with
conference style file (and produce preprint version):
- In Lyx, click
menu Layout ==> Document, in Document Setting dialog, put the
following in the preamble:
\usepackage{LaTeX8}%this is ieee style file
\usepackage{times}
%the following is added if you want to produce a preprint
version
%with conference info on the top of the first page and add page numbers
\usepackage{fancyheadings}
\renewcommand\headrulewidth{0pt}
\lhead{\small{\hspace*{0.3in}Preliminary version. To appear in
\textit{Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Software
Engineering (ICSE 05)}}}
\pagestyle{plain} \setcounter{page}{1}
- In Lyx, move
mouse to the place after the "Abstract", click menu Insert ==>
Tex, then enter:
\thispagestyle{fancy}
- Counting
words
- dvips -o -
substra.dvi | ps2ascii | wc -w word-count
- Adding
"A/B/C/D/.." before page numbers in LaTeX (format required in proposals
at least to DoD agencies)
- Step 1: Put the
following in preamble of your tex files:
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy} \cfoot{\sectionname-\thepage} \fancyhead{}
\cfoot{\sectionname-\thepage}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}
\newcommand{\sectiontitle}[1]{%
\pagenumbering{arabic}
\def\sectionname{#1}
}
- Step 2: Put
\sectiontitle{D} in the beginning of the part that you want the page
numbers to start with A/B/C/D...
If
you want to output your proposal title and "D. Project
Description" in the beginning of your proposal, you can use
the following steps:
- Step 1: Put the
following in preamble of your tex files:
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy} \cfoot{\sectionname-\thepage} \fancyhead{}
\cfoot{\sectionname-\thepage}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}
\newcommand{\sectiontitle}[3][Your proposal title]{%
\pagenumbering{arabic}
\def\sectionname{#3}
\begin{center}
\Large{\textbf{#1}}\\*[3mm] \Large{\textbf{\textsc{#2}}}
\end{center}
}
- Step 2: Put
\sectiontitle{D. Project Description}{D} in the beginning of the part
that you want the page numbers to start with A/B/C/D...
- Information
on the Use of Designated Fonts in NSF Proposals
More
NSF Guidelines are here
- Using
Arial in LaTeX
- Read
about NSF guide on using LaTeX (click "Next Page"
till you read all the pages of instruction)
- Note that for LaTeX users, you DON'T need to do anything
special in your LaTeX source file to accomodate the font requirement,
since the defaultLaTeX font is Computer Modern, exactly required by
NSF. For more see this
article
- You need to make sure "All
pages of the proposal must be numbered, including the 1 page summary."
- But what you (as a LaTeX user) need to make sure is to
make your proposal "margins,
in all directions, must be at least an inch.". Based
on LaTeX
help for NSF proposal writers at MIT Math, you can put the
following lines in the begining of your proposal to make sure your
margines to be exactly an inch:
\documentclass[11pt,letterpaper]{article}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\pagestyle{plain}
%%
%%%%%%%%%% EXACT 1in MARGINS
%%%%%%%
%%
\setlength{\textwidth}{6.5in}
%%
%%
\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{0in} %% (It is
recommended that
you %%
\setlength{\evensidemargin}{0in} %% not change
these parameters, %%
\setlength{\textheight}{8.5in}
%% at the risk of having
your %%
\setlength{\topmargin}{0in}
%% proposal dismissed on the basis %%
\setlength{\headheight}{0in}
%% of incorrect
formatting!!!) %%
\setlength{\headsep}{0in}
%%
%%
\setlength{\footskip}{.5in}
%%
%%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%%
\newcommand{\required}[1]{\section*{\hfil
#1\hfil}}
%%
\renewcommand{\refname}{\hfil References
Cited\hfil}
%%
\bibliographystyle{plain}
%%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
- Presentation Slides
- Creating effective poster
presentations
- Jon Doyle's
NCSU
Beamer Style (LaTeX Beamer
class)
- Peng
Ning's NCSU
CS Powerpoint Template
- NCSU CS Powerpoint Template 2
- Marie Davidian's
Presentations
using seminar.sty
(User's
Guide for seminar.sty by Van Zandt) and the LaTeX
source code to create the slides (and the additional figure)
(in a
course on Preparation for Statistical Research offered at NCSU Stat
Dept.)
- Andreas
Zeller's LaTeX
style for presentations (short
intro in Germany). Visit his
course web to see what generated PDF slides look like.
- Slidesshow (making slides with
DrScheme)
- Enable
PowerPoint to typeset sentences and equations using the power of TeX: Texpoint
TeX4PPT
- A Few Tips on How to Use PowerPoint
for Mathematical Presentations
- Converting MS Powerpoint slides to a Google Slides file
in Google Docs (if you fail to go through the normal
exporting/importing way, try the following one):
- Step 1. Change slides in my Powerpoint slides to use
slides to emulate animation (you can use the following free tool to
automatically do that: http://www.dia.uniroma3.it/~rimondin/downloads.php)
- Step 2. Create a Google Slides file fresh in Google
Docs
- Step 3. For each slide in my Powerpoint slides, I
select all entities in the slide and press "Ctrl+C" to copy them, and
then press "Ctrl+V" to paste these entities to the editor browser
window for the Google Slides file. Note that such entities are pasted
as an image instead of editable entities in the Google Slides file.
Indeed, I need to do some position and size adjustment on some images
to make the images aligned well.
- If you want
to collaborating with others on making slides or maintain your own
slides in CVS, you might prefer to have a format that is in
text form. The text-form requirement seems to leave MS Powerpoint out
of the game. See more discussion below (the discussion includes
thoughts and experiences from Darko
Marinov)
- You can
use LaTeX
Beamer class and then make PDFs to show, but it may be
painful to draw figures.
- You can
use Slidesshow
(making slides with DrScheme) but if you are not comfortable
with DrScheme, it might not be a good choice.
- The other
option is to use some open-source replacement for PowerPoint, e.g., OpenOffice
or StarOffice.
Those programs have better representation for slides (such as its ODP
format written in XML) and thus can be stored in CVS. They
can also read Powerpoint files and convert them to their own text
formats but note that OpenOffice and StarOffice sometimes may not
correctly show some slides. It is good to use but it doesn't seem as
good as PowerPoint (or even as controllable as LaTeX).
In order to compare two XML files from ODP, you need to split them in
lines; you can use the following:
sed 's/>/>\
' file.xml >file-with-line-breaks.xml
- Reference formats
- Organizing Thoughts and Keeping Track
of Peer Research
-
The info listed below on Things to do on finishing up a paper won't be
maintained. Please refer to Checklist
for Preparing Camera-Ready Versions, whose last part includes
and evolves the info below.
Things to do on finishing up a paper (here are some more
tips: Instructions
for the Preparation of a Camera-Ready Manuscript in LaTeX, Form
& Style, Rules
to write a good research paper).
- 1. Turn on the spell check feature of your LaTeX editor
(like TeXnicCenter) to show the real time warning as red
underlines like in Microsoft Word. In TeXnicCenter,
Tools->Options->Spelling tab-> enable all checkbox
options in that tab including "Check spelling while typing". Then
before you send your paper for me to review or submit it to somewhere,
make sure you don't have red marks except for those words from the
program source code like method names or variable names. You
can add those special words (such as "AspectJ") that are not in
dictionaries but are ok in spelling to avoid their being marked with
red underlines later on.
- 2. Run the style-check on your LaTeX source files before
you send me your paper for me to review or submit it to somewhere. The
instructions of using style-check can be found here.
You should create style-check patterns as regular expressions based on
common errors that I pionted out on your writing in the past.
- 3. Print out your paper draft and go through it on
hardcopy, identify errors, and fix them before you send me your paper
for me to review or submit it to somewhere. Relying on screen reading
is very inefficient in spotting out writing errors. I don't do review
on screen but on hardcopies. In addition, don't revise your draft while
you are still in the middle of reviewing it; revise your paper only
after you finish reviewing the whole draft or at least a good portion
of your draft.
- More other
steps before you submit a paper:
- Use spell
checker features of your editing software and fix typos.
- Use style-check
to scan through your tex files (instructions
are below) and fix any warnings that you think need to be
fixd. Especailly pay attention to those warnings including ASE, which
are created inside the ASE group.
- Check the top
margine of your generated PDF. If they are too narrow, follow the instructions here
- If you are
submitting to an IEEE conference, they usually provide an IEEE PDF
eXpress interface for you to check the compatibability of your
generated PDF. One common issue of generated PDFs is missing embeded
fonts. Here are some instructions
on dealing with the issues.
- Some
layout/format styles to follow:
- Try to
arrange all figures or all tables on top of the page rather than in the
middle or bottom of the page. If you have only one
single-column figure/table, try to arrange it on top right-column.
-
In
addition, don't make a table out of powerpoint or
word and then transform it to an EPS figure. You should
directly write the table in LaTeX formats. There are several
advantages: they look nicer; their content can more easily
modified in LaTeX; most importantly, you can use LaTeX macros to
automatically update the contents by using a (Perl) script to transform
the raw experimental data to the data entry data. See my ASE 04 LaTeX
source example in making tables.
- Make sure all
items in your bibliography are consistent. For example, make sure all
references have page numbers (except for references on books or URL
resources). If you use the format of "In Proc. International
Conference" then stick to it for all references. If you use
the abbreviation of conferences/workshops, then put abbreviations for
all possible references.
- Look out for
widow or orphan. You should try to avoid these, as they
disrupt your layout, are unattractive, and can be confusing. To adjust
space for avoiding them, put \vspace*{-5.0ex} (changing 5.0 to other
numbers as you need; change - to + if you want to expand the space)
below or above figures, tables, or their titles.
- Balanced Columns on Last Page
- Thanks to Conference
Publishing Solutions: LaTeX:
In order to balance the columns of the last page to the same length,
insert the following command into the LaTeX source before
\begin{document} :
\usepackage{balance}
and the following in the text that would appear as first column of the
last page without balancing:
\balance
(Alternatively, \usepackage{flushend} might work as well.)
- Headline-Style Capitalization (Thanks
to Conference
Publishing Solutions)
- Capitalize:
- first and last word, first word after a colon
(subtitle)
- all major words (nouns, pronouns, verbs,
adjectives, adverbs)
- Lowercase:
- articles (the, a,
an)
- prepositions (regardless of length)
- conjunctions (and, but,
for, or, nor)
- to, as
- Hyphenated Compounds:
- always capitalize first element
- lowercase second element for articles,
prepositions, conjunctions and if the first element is a prefix or
combining form that could not stand by itself (unless the second
element is a proper noun / proper adjective)
- Font Embedding (Archive PDF, als known as PDF/A-1a, cf. AIIM's
PDF/A Committee) (Thanks to Conference
Publishing Solutions)
- Some
conferences may require you to submit a single tex file including
everything. But usually you have multiple tex files for a paper. Here
you can find the guidelines of merging
multiple tex files and bib files into a single file.
- Using
style-check in our research server
- I have
installed style-check
in our research server. To use it, you need to go to your home
directory, type in:
ln -s /home/public/tools/stylecheck/.style-censor
.style-censor
This command generates a symblic link to the ASE group common ruleset
for checking. You only need to type in this command once. Next time
when you log in, the link is still there.
- You upload your tex files to a
directory under your home directory in the server.
- Go to the directory, type in the
command line:
style-check.rb -v *.tex
If you want to save the checking results, you can type in:
style-check.rb -v *.tex > checklog.txt
- You can view the log either in Linux
or download it to your local machine.
- Try to search the line starting with
"(matched". Then the line above it is the verbose description of what
the problem is. The line fruther above is the place where the problem
is found and the end of the line shows the matched phrase.
- You can focus
on those version descriptions that start with " ASE "
- You are encouraged to add more rules
that you think you often violate in to the rule set!
- To update to
the rule set, you can modify ~\.style-censor and add whatever rules
that are specific to you. Your group members can also get to share them
automatically..
- Note that if
you plan to add more rules here, please put comments and put " ASE " in
the beginning of your comments so that we know the rules are created by
our NCSU ASE group and warnings related to them should be paid
more attention. Note that after "%" you need to specify a class
(syntax, capitalize, phrase, spelling, or ignoredcommand) and then put
your comments. More details on them can be found at here.
- To read how
the existing rule sets are written. You can take a look at the files
located at /etc/style-check.d/ and the rule set inside our ASE
group: /home/public/tools/stylecheck/.style-censor. When you
directly modify your ~/.style-censor in your home directory, the
changes shall be reflected on the one shared by us because of the
symbolic link you created earlier.
- I have
incorporated many guidelines in my Common Technical
Writing Issues slides. But some of them may not be
easily incorporated. You shall take a look at the slides.
- Reference formats
- Make sure you have consistent format for the references.
I usually use the following format:
D. Shepherd, J. Palm, L. Pollock, and M. Chu-Carroll. Timna: a
framework for automatically combining aspect mining analyses. In Proc.
20th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software
Engineering, pages 184-193,
2005.
To save space, you don't need to put conference locations, months,
publishers, or "(Proc)eedings of the". The items in the above format
are mandatory. But if you do want to include any of them in your
references, include them **consistently** for all references.
- If you copy bib entries from ACM Lib, you often need to
turn the first character of the words in the conference title to upper
cases.
- In my bib file, I usually put the id for a bib entry with
AuthorlastnameYear:FirstConcreteWordOfTitle like "sen06:cute" for the
entry below.
- If some characters of some words in your reference paper
title should be upper case, you need to do special things as below.
Bibtex automatically turns the words (except for the first character of
the the first word) into lower cases. To force some words in the
generated title to maintain their original upper cases, you should put
{} around these words.
For example, you may have title like:
@inproceedings{sen06:cute,
author = {Koushik Sen and Gul
Agha},
title = {CUTE and jCUTE :
Concolic Unit Testing and Explicit Path Model-Checking Tools},
booktitle = {Proc. 18th International Conference
on Computer Aided Verification},
year = {2006},
pages = "419--423",
note = {(Tool Paper)},
}
Then the generated reference would include a title like "Cute and
jcute: Concolic ...". To generate "CUTE and jCUTE: Concolic ...", you
need to put {} around "CUTE and jCUTE" in the bib file like:
title = {{CUTE and jCUTE} :
Concolic Unit Testing and Explicit Path Model-Checking Tools},
- Uploading publications in the NSF
reporting system (e.g., for perparing your yearly report or
final report). Instead of manually entering your publication
information, the steps below enable that you can reuse your existing
bib entries and your publication lists from each previous year when
preparing your final report.
- Create your publication list in the bib format.
- Replace each "@inproceedings" with "@ARTICLE" and replace
each "booktitle" with "journal" (since the NSF reporting system allows
only journal publications but no conference publications, you need to
change your conference papers' format to journal format)
- Install and use the bib2endnote
tool to import the bib file and save it as an EndNote XML file (note
that this XML file doesn't seem to be recognized by the NSF system and
you need to do the subsequent steps)
- Use the Endnote
software to import the EndNote XML file to an EndNote library.
- Export the EndNote library as an XML file
- Upload the XML file in the NSF reporting system: the box
below "Upload Journal Publication citation(s) from your EndNote
library: (Note: To
successfully perform a file upload, all EndNote libraries must be
exported in XML format and include the following required fields:
Author(s), Title, Journal, Year.)"
- Disabling
PDF Display in Firefox or using Foxit
Go
to the “Tools -> Options” menu
Select the “Downloads” tab
Open “View and Edit Actions…”
Enter “pdf” in the “Search” box
Select “Change Action…”
Change the selection from “Use this Plugin” to “Open them with the
default application”, which should point to Adobe Acrobat, Adobe
Acrobat Reader, or your favorite PDF viewer
Advice Collection on Technical
Writing in Tao
Xie's comprehensive Advice Collections
Software Engineering Conferences
Queens'
U Graduate Resources
Chinatex.org
