## 16 May 2006

### Some of my LaTeX tricks

Every mathematician of the last 20 years should have their personal bag of LaTeX tricks. Here's a couple of mine:

• Graphics. This, in particular, is an area where everyone has their own tricks. My standard procedure is as follows:
• Create some graphic in XFig, making sure that all text is marked special. (You can do this automatically by editing your `.xfigrc` file.)
• Using TransFig, convert this file into four formats: `pstex`, `pstex_t`, `pdftex`, `pdftex_t`. There's a catch here: you need to make sure that `myfigure.pdftex_t` version includes `myfigure.pdf`, not `myfigure.pdftex`, which is the default. I guess this counts as a bug. This chore is usually done by a script for me:
`#!/bin/sh# Convert all fig files to four other formats, using fig2dev.for FILE in *.fig; do   FILE=`basename \$FILE .fig`   if [ \$FILE.fig -nt \$FILE.pstex ]; then       fig2dev -L pstex \$FILE.fig \$FILE.pstex   fi   if [ \$FILE.fig -nt \$FILE.pstex_t ]; then       fig2dev -L pstex_t -p \$FILE.pstex \$FILE.fig \$FILE.pstex_t   fi   if [ \$FILE.fig -nt \$FILE.pdf ]; then       fig2dev -L pdftex \$FILE.fig \$FILE.pdf   fi   if [ \$FILE.fig -nt \$FILE.pdftex_t ]; then       fig2dev -L pdftex_t -p \$FILE.pdf \$FILE.fig \$FILE.pdftex_t   fidone`
• Then in my LaTeX file, I have this code in the preamble:
`\usepackage{ifpdf}\ifpdf  \pdfcompresslevel=9  \providecommand{\myinput}[1]{\input{#1.pdftex_t}}  \usepackage[pdftex]{graphicx}\else  \providecommand{\myinput}[1]{\input{#1.pstex_t}}  \usepackage{graphicx}\fi`
and whenever I want to include the file `myfigure.fig`, I just write `\myinput{myfigure}`.
This has several nice properties: you can use LaTeX math constructs in figures (just surround them with dollar signs) and it looks great in both PDF and DVI.
• I'm very proud of the following piece of code:
Now we have an environment `lettereqns`, with one parameter, which makes all equations in it be numbered (P1), (P2) etcetera if the parameter is P.