LaTeX

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LaTeX, BibTeX, and managing PDF’s

May 18, 2009 in Feature Requests | 2 comments

I am in the midde of writing my PhD qualifier paper and should be working on that rather than writing here.  However I’ve been rather irritated lately with several things.

Of primary concern is my LaTeX front end editor.  I use TeXnicCenter and have for about a year.  My masters thesis and most of my term papers of the last nine months were written using it.  The one HUUUUUGE problem that application has is its font choices.  It only will display text in the editor using monospace fonts.  Monospace fonts are horrible (for me anyway) to write with.  They bother my eyes no end and make me less able to write.  No, really.  I’ve tested writing in Word 2007 and TeXnicCenter.  My writing flows way easier in Word than in TeXnicCenter.

Lyx would be a great condender except that it is a WYSIWYG editor and not a straight LaTeX code editor.  I prefer using code rather than formatted text.  It also saves in a Lyx-specific file format.  Yes, it can be exported back to LaTeX but I want it to be natively LaTeX.

WinEdt looks to be equivalent to TeXnicCenter except that it can use any font.  Only problem there is that I have to have administrator rights to install it.  And I don’t.  It also costs $30 to use beyond the month-long trial period.

If only TeXnicCenter allowed fonts other than monospace!

On the BibTeX side of the equation my qualifier paper is now approaching 200 bibliography entries with associated PDFs on my harddrive.  Currently I store PDF’s in directories related to what general subject the pertain.  I make my BibTeX files by hand.  Every entry is manually typed into a BibTeX document.  I want some way to integrate all of that together.

So far I’ve tried Zotero, JabRef, and Mendeley.  None are satisfactory for a variety of reasons.  If all three could be blended together then we’d have something!  Until then I continue to plod along as-is.

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Masters Thesis – final edition!

February 9, 2009 in Livejournal | Please leave a comment

As far as I know, this is the final version of my Masters Thesis. Everyone has signed off except for the graduate school dean. That signature should come shortly.

I have already started doing background research for my PhD. The topic will be broadly based on risk and reliability engineering, trade-spaces, margin trading, cultural differences, and other such fun stuff. My new major professor, Dr. Irem Tumer, is finishing up a multi-university funding proposal to get everything setup for the next few years. At this point it all sounds rather exciting!

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Nearly final masters thesis draft

January 18, 2009 in School | Please leave a comment

Hopefully this is my last (or nearly last) thesis draft.  I am now down to finding any mistakes in my LaTeX code and correcting them.  The content is pretty well fixed.  What do you all think?  Are there any major errors I have to correct before I send it to the printer?

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Masters Thesis Draft

December 22, 2008 in School | 2 comments

I finished my Masters Thesis draft last night. It’s still pretty rough and will be beat into shape this week. I had to get it out the door for my committee to read over before next Monday’s defense.

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Term Paper: Complex Systems Design Across Cultures

November 25, 2008 in writing | Please leave a comment

Last week I wrote a little term paper for my Compex Systems Engineering class.  I am still trying to find a good LaTeX to html converter so in the meantime I am posting it in PDF format.

Complex Systems Design Across Cultures

It’s a rather rough paper but it will give you an idea of one avenue I’m investigating for my PhD work.  This might turn into a conference paper in a few weeks.

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Misc table information for LaTeX

November 18, 2008 in Technology | Please leave a comment

While writing my thesis, I found need to include several tables.  The standard table package included in LaTeX sucks.  Doing some research, I found that the booktabs package is far superior and produces truly beautiful results.

It can be called by inserting this code:\usepackage{booktabs}

The following links are for later use:

Here is an example of a table I created.  Note that the “textwidth” variable is defined in my class files.

\begin{table}
\caption{GLOBE Cultural Clusters \cite{GLOBE04}.}
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{l p{0.6\textwidth}}
\toprule
Cluster & Cultures \\
\midrule
Confucian Asia & Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, South Korea \\
\\
Southern Asia & Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Thailand, Iran \\
\\
Latin America & Ecuador, El Salvador, Columbia, Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, Argentina, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Mexico \\
\\
Nordic Europe & Denmark, Finland, Sweden \\
\\
Anglo & Canada, USA, Australia, Ireland, England, South Africa (White Sample), New Zealand \\
\\
Germanic Europe & Austria, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany-East, Germany-West \\
\\
Sub-Saharan Africa & Zimbabwe, Namibia, Zambia, Nigeria, South Africa (Black Sample) \\
\\
Eastern Europe & Greece, Hungary, Albania, Slovenia, Poland, Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan \\
\\
Middle East & Turkey, Kuwait, Egypt, Morocco, Qatar \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\label{table:cultural_clusters_GLOBE}
\end{table}

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LaTex “too many unprocessed floats” problem and solution

November 18, 2008 in Technology | 22 comments

After adding about 30 scanned images into an appendix, I started getting “too many unprocessed floats” errors.  Doing a little digging, I found that many of the images were starting to back up on each other.  LaTeX was getting plugged up and was barfing.

The solution:

Add this to your top-level file:

\usepackage[section] {placeins}

By using the placeins package with the section option selected, LaTeX is forced to dump all of the unprocessed floats at the end of each section.  There are a few other ways to do it with that package but this way made the most sense to me.  Doing that, I get no more errors!  Well, at least from that problem.

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LaTeX Graphicx Package Troubles

October 27, 2008 in School | 2 comments

I’m authoring my thesis in LaTeX, a sort of scripting language similar to HTML that produces beautiful final results… that is, if you can get it to cooperate.

My current problem is with trying to use the graphicx package.  I can’t get a graphic to display correctly.  The code looks correct but it keeps throwing strange errors.  I copied the code verbatim (with changing the file i’m trying to insert) from a friend’s masters thesis.  It worked in his so I don’t see why it’s not working in mine.  We are using the same class files and whatnot and the same general format.

The problem comes (i think) in the width variable.  That textwidth doesn’t seem to be working correctly.

The Code:

\begin{figure}[h]
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[width=0.6\textwidth, keepaspectratio=true ]{figures/hofstede_onion.png}
\caption{Hofstede's Onion Model of Culture: Cultural Values are located at the core and are surrounded by Rituals, Heros, and Symbols with Practices drilling down from the outside to the Values center. Reproduced from \cite{Hofstede01}.}
\label{fig:hofstede_onion}
\end{center}
\end{figure}

The Error Message:

! LaTeX Error: Cannot determine size of graphic in figures/hofstede_onion.png (no BoundingBox).
See the LaTeX manual or LaTeX Companion for explanation.
Type H for immediate help.
...
1.18 ... ctratio=true ]{figures/hofstede_onion.png}
) [5]

Thoughts, insights, ideas?

UPDATE:

With the help of Alex (recommended by Anne), I was able to get the graphics files to pop out.  The key was switching from outputting into a DVI file or a PS file to outputting directly into a PDF file.  To do this in TeXnic Center, I went to Build -> Select Output File.  I then chose the PDF option.

Other problems still exist with my output, but at least some of the big ones are now addressed.  No doubt, there will be further whining for help as I progress with my thesis.

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