special commands used in this document

this section is simply an itemized list of all the things i did in this document that aren't explained by the L^ATEX rules in the previous section. it may be incomplete (if it is, let me know), and the items are in the order in which i found the commands in the input file, which has nothing to do with order of importance or anything like that, so you may have to look around a bit.

• changing page dimensions: the article class normally has very large margins, so i use a few commands to increase the amount of text on each page. the following lines in the file howto.tex change the margins on the top, the left side of odd numbered pages, and the left side of even numbered pages, respectively:

  \addtolength{\topmargin}{-0.5in}
  \addtolength{\oddsidemargin}{-0.5in}
  \addtolength{\evensidemargin}{-0.5in}
  

  the following lines increase the amount of text on the page in each direction by twice the increase in margins. (the bottom and right margins are simply determined by the amount of space left on the page, given the top and left margins and the amount of text.)

  \addtolength{\textwidth}{1.0in}
  \addtolength{\textheight}{1.0in}
  

• creating new commands: newcommands are created using the \newcommand command, whose syntax is:

  \newcommand{\newname}[args]{effect}
  

  after this declaration, whenever you type \newname in the input text, the interpreter substitutes effect and interprets that instead. if a nonzero number of arguments is given as the optional parameter [args], then you may specify the location of each argument in the text of effect by including the string #n, where n is the number of the argument to be substituted. up to 9 arguments are allowed. as an example, i defined the following two commands in howto.tex:

  \newcommand{\auth}[1]{\vspace{0.1in}\noindent{\it by: #1}}
  \newcommand{\bs}{\symbol{92}}
  

• leaving blank space: if you want blank space between two paragraphs of input, you have to include it by hand. this is done with the command \vspace, which takes some amount of length as an argument. so

  \vspace{0.1in}
  

  leaves 0.1 inches blank between paragraphs. remember to separate the \vspace command from other paragraphs with a blank line on either side, or it won't have the desired effect.

• suppressing paragraph indentation: if you don't want a paragraph to be indented, put the command \noindent at the beginning of it.

• using other type styles: there are several styles of type which can be accessed easily within a paragraph. simply delimit a region with braces, and put the appropriate command at the beginning of the braces. for instance, the command

  {\it do you want to buy a duck?}
  

  produces the output ``do you want to buy a duck?'' as shown in the example, \it produces italicised text. in addition, \bf produces bold text, like this, and \tt produces fixed width typewriter-style text, like this. to produce several consecutive lines of fixed width text with no special character interpretation, delimit the text by:

  \begin{verbatim}
  text not to be interpreted, with funny characters :~)
  \ end{verbatim}
  

  note: don't really put a space between \ and end -- that's just a hack because i've forgotten how to keep the verbatim environment from interpreting itself.

• explicitly printing font symbols: if you can't figure out any other way to get L^ATEX to let you include a certain symbol of a certain font, then the command

  \symbol{n}
  

  will include symbol n of the current font from the current encoding. i used this to get the backslash in typewriter font.

• creating a title page: in order to create a title page, you need to call the commands \title and \author in the command section of the file. each of these commands takes one argument, which is the text to be listed as title or author of the file. then, in the text section of the file, put the command \maketitle, which prints the title, author, and current date on separate lines in a large font.

• adding input from other files: if i had put all the input for this manual in one file, it would have been over 3000 lines long, and i would have been unhappy. the command

  \input{filename}
  

  finds whichever of filename or filename.tex exists in the current directory, and interprets the contents of filename as if they occurred in place of the \input command in the calling file. this command can be used in either the command section or the text section of the input. (note that L^ATEX tries to interpret absolute and relative pathnames when finding input files, but it can't handle .. or ~.)

• explicit formatting: the command \newpage produces a page break. the command \newline produces a line break, but this shouldn't be necessary unless the interpreter is misbehaving.

  conversely, the syntax a~b forces L^ATEX not to place a line break between a and b.

  by default, there is no space between a command and the next input symbol in the output. to force a space to appear in the output, put a backslash followed by a space after the command.

• dividing input into sections: the command

  \section{section name}
  

  produces a new section in the output file. it increments the section counter, and produces a numbered section header in a large font. the commands \subsection and \subsubsection also exist and have their own counters within a section.

• creating a table of contents: the command

  \tableofcontents
  

  creates a table of contents at the current point in the input. it contains the names and numbers of all sections, subsections, and subsubsections.

• labelling and referencing sections: immediately after starting a new section, the command

  \label{labelname}
  

  will store the number of this section under the name labelname. anywhere in the input (even before that section), the command

  \ref{labelname}
  

  will insert the number associated with labelname into the text. once you start labelling things, you'll probably have to start running L^ATEX twice on the input file every time you make changes, so that it can sort the references.

• comments: the character % is used to comment out lines of an input file. everything from the % symbol to the end of the line will be ignored by the interpreter.

• nifty syntax: the input - will produce an n-dash (-). the input -- will produce an m-dash (--).

  don't use ordinary quotation marks in a L^ATEX input file: the input ``word'' will produce the output ``word''. (and, yes, the processor turns all left quotes upside down, which is usually what you want.)

• self reference: the command \LaTeX produces the official-looking output L^ATEX. works for \LaTeX2e, too.

• footnotes: footnotes are very simple: the command

  \footnote{does it quack?}
  

  should be placed within the text, right where you want the little number to appear. the number (there's a counter for this, too, which resets every section) appears there, and the text appears at the bottom of the page.

• lists: to have stuff appear in a list, use the itemize environment. it creates a bulleted list, and has an optional argument of something to replace the bullet. the input:

  \begin{itemize}
  \item here's the first item
  \item[] an item with no bullet
  \item[3)] an item with a number
  \end{itemize}
  

  will produce the output:

  $\bullet$

  here's the first item

  an item with no bullet

  3)

  an item with a number

  a list must always contain at least one \item statement. you can nest lists, if you want.

• math mode: i thought i was going to get out of this without mentioning math mode at all, but i used a few symbols from it. math mode is delimited by $ symbols at the beginning and end, and things work differently there. i used it to draw pointy brackets: $<>$ produces $<>$.

• underlining: the command

  \underline{of course it quacks, it's a duck}
  

  will produce the output of course it quacks, it's a duck.