Malaysian LaTeX User Group

A New LaTeX User’s Testimonial

2012-05-21T21:05:00.003+08:00

Last week I received an e-mail from Bahareh Pahlevanzadeh, a graduate student at Universiti Sains Malaysia, describing her happiness at discovering L^aT_eX and my usmthesis class/template for writing her thesis.

Your mileage may vary, but I was a bit surprised when she expressed her opinion that

When it comes to getting my writing organised, I found L^aT_eX, especially with the USMthesis class template, to be actually very user-friendly.

Well I don’t know about you, but I think I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve heard/read in person the words “very user-friendly” being used to describe L^aT_eX!

You can read more about Bahareh’s experience here.

Apple's Keynote Beamer Themes for The Poor

2012-05-12T17:13:00.002+08:00

If you don't have Keynote in your Mac, or does not even own any Apple's hardware, perhaps considering this theme, click here

LaTeX Template Website

2012-04-24T19:16:00.002+08:00

Just read from an article here regarding Vel's effort on putting template on a single page. You can check out Vel's initiative from this page.

TeX4ht Options

2012-04-17T13:45:00.001+08:00

CV Radhakrishnan (CVR) has posted a list of TeX4ht options, the most comprehensive I have seen yet.

TeX4ht is a very powerful piece of software for converting L^aT_eX to other formats, such as (X)HTML and ODT. Unfortunately, the documentation was never truly complete, and the inner workings of the system can be hard to grasp and understand. The original creator, Eitan Gurari passed on unexpectedly in 2009. CVR and Karl Berry has since taken over the maintenance of TeX4ht.

As a side note, if you have an existing L^aT_eX document that you need to convert to other formats, TeX4ht is the most robust system that I have come across, i.e. it works with almost any L^aT_eX packages that are used in your document. (See this link for other L^aT_eX-to-whatever conversion tools.)

On the other hand, if you’re just starting to write your document from scratch, with a view to exporting to different output formats later, you might be better off using DocBook or pandoc instead. I personally prefer the markdown syntax in pandoc and exporting to L^aT_eX later for further editing.

Reaction to Bad Kerning

2012-03-24T16:00:00.000+08:00

Methinks this is one syndrome likely to afflict L^aT_eX users as well as designers. Everyone who’ve felt this way whenever you see a badly kerned sign, say “Aye”!

Working collaboratively.. which one you prefer?

2012-03-17T16:53:00.000+08:00

I found out this website, perhaps from an event organizer whom advising on the usage of MS Word over LaTeX.

Perhaps somebody out there could point out if there is any business entity that does the same business but in the other way around - using LaTeX

Converting an EndNote Database to BibTeX

2012-03-17T10:36:00.002+08:00

During a recent L^aT_eX introductory workshop, many participants said that they’re very much looking forward to using L^aT_eX for their future writings, but mentioned that there didn’nt seem to be an obvious way of porting their existing EndNote bibliography libarary into BibT_eX format.

EndNote does have an “Export BibTeX” filter, but it doesn’t seem to generate satisfactory BibT_eX files. After some googling, I found Bevan Weir’s customised export filter, which does a much better job than EndNote’s default. I modified his filter file a little bit more, and was able to convert an EndNote bibliography library to BibT_eX with the following steps.

I tested this with EndNote X5 on the Mac, with JabRef 2.7, but they should also work with Windows versions. %ENDNOTE% refers to the path where EndNote is installed on your system.

Put BibTeX_Export_LLT.ens (download) in %ENDNOTE%/Styles/ .
Start EndNotes, and load your library.
Make sure the new style is listed:
Edit > Output Styles > Open Style Manager
Make sure BibTeX_Export_LLT is checked.
File > Export
Make sure Save File as Type is set to Text Only, and Output Style is set to BibTeX_Export_LLT.
Save your file and check that it has a .bib extension.
Open the exported .bib in JabRef. There will be a whole bunch of errors about corrupted or empty BibT_eX keys; don’t worry. Just click OK.
Ctrl+A to select all the BibT_eX entreis, Tools > Autogenerate BibTeX keys.
Check through the BibT_eX entries, especially those highlighted red, to check and correct any crucial information loss.

And hopefully the converted bibliography file is now usable enough.

‘Funny Drawings’ with pst-fun

2012-03-06T22:11:00.001+08:00

I learned of the pst-fun package today from an answer at T_eX.SX, which provides convenience commands for some ‘fun’ drawings in PStricks. Time for some quick fun then!

\documentclass{minimal}

\usepackage{pst-fun}

\begin{document}

\begin{pspicture}(-1, -2)(13,10)

\psParrot{.8}

\rput (2.5,7) {\psBird[Branch]}

\rput (10,-1.5) {\psscalebox{-1 1}{\psKangaroo[fillcolor=red!30!yellow]{5.75}}}

\rput {-50} (6,0) {\psBird}

\end{pspicture}

\end{document}

Compile with latex, or xelatex if you want a PDF output. And the output looks like this:

…and I really should get back to work now!

LaTeX Training & Consultancy

2012-02-28T14:44:00.000+08:00

I’ve recently started offering L^aT_eX training and consultancy services as a freelancer (between writing up my thesis and parenting). So if you happen to be sourcing for a trainer, or need a consultant for L^aT_eX-related typesetting or design, feel free to have a look at my webpage and contact me.

Thanks to the other blog authors for letting me post this here. I’m doing this T&C as a personal attempt, so please address your gripes just to me (Lian Tze) if you have any issues with my services, and not to the other authors here.

Creating an Online Academic Portfolio with LaTeX and TeX4ht

2012-02-09T11:38:00.001+08:00

This was originally asked on TeX.SX, the requirements being:

Any one know of a good script to turn a bibtex file into a nice academic portfolio that:

links to electronic versions where known (from url or doi)

works with local files (e.g. with bibdesk's format or otherwise)

automatically creates a thumbnail of the first page

and generally produces a polished web page suitable for showing off your work?

Well, I maintain my own online publication list by generating the HTML code from my BibT_eX, using BibL^aT_eX, Biber and T_eX4ht. So my answer to the above question was a quick modification of my own workflow, adding Ghostscript to the mix to generate thumbnail images of the papers. The output looks like this: (The publication lists can be split according to their types)

(BibL^aT_eX is a complete reimplementation of the bibliographic facilities provided by L^aT_eX in conjunction with BibT_eX. It’s very flexible, and many find it easier to deal with compared to the BST language. Biber is the replacement of the BibT_eX binary, for users of BibL^aT_eX.)

The source codes can be downloaded here as a .zip file. Further elaborations follow.

The Bibliography File

Back to the task at hand. First we have the BibT_eX file, the content of which is pretty much the norm, except that I used the custom BibL^aT_eX field to hold the local PDF file name. My publications.bib contains entries like:

@ARTICLE{Lim:Ranaivo:Tang:2011,

author = {Lim, Lian Tze and Ranaivo-Malan\c{c}on, Bali and Tang, Enya Kong},

title = {Low Cost Construction of a Multilingual Lexicon from Bilingual Lists},

journal = {Polibits},

year = {2011},

volume = {43},

pages = {45--51},

url = {http://polibits.gelbukh.com/2011_43/43-06.htm},

usera = {LLT-polibits.pdf}

}

The L^aT_eX Source File

Next is the portfolio.tex file, in which I set up a hook at every bibliography item to include the first page of the file pointed to by usera. I've also added a bibmacro called string+hyperlink, to make the publication title link to the url or doi field if these are available, as shown in this answer.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[backend=biber,bibstyle=authoryear,sorting=ydnt]{biblatex}

\usepackage{graphicx}

\bibliography{publications}

\usepackage{hyperref}

\ExecuteBibliographyOptions{doi=false,url=false}

\newbibmacro{string+hyperlink}[1]{%

\iffieldundef{url}{%

\iffieldundef{doi}{#1}{\href{http://dx.doi.org/\thefield{doi}}{#1}}}

{\href{\thefield{url}}{#1}}}

\DeclareFieldFormat*{title}{\usebibmacro{string+hyperlink}{#1}}

\newbibmacro{usera}{%

\iffieldundef{usera}{}{%

\savefield*{usera}{\filename}%

\usebibmacro{string+hyperlink}{\includegraphics[width=100pt]{\filename}}\\}%

}

\AtEveryBibitem{\usebibmacro{usera}}

\begin{document}

\section{My Academic Portfolio}

\nocite{*}

\printbibliography[title={Articles},type={article}]

\printbibliography[title={Conference Proceedings},type={inproceedings}]

\end{document}

T_eX4ht Configuration File

I then set up a T_eX4ht personal configuration file, called portfolio.cfg (included in the .zip file). It contains some simple CSS, and tells T_eX4ht to convert the first page of the local PDFs into PNGs using ghostscript. (So yes you will need to have ghostscript installed for this to work.)

Generating the HTML

Right, now we can run the following commands:

$  htlatex portfolio "portfolio"

$  biber portfolio

$  htlatex portfolio "portfolio"

And you should then get portfolio.html, which you can further embellish with more CSS. Well that was fun!

LaTeX in comic

2012-02-03T18:28:00.003+08:00

from here

Mail-Merge Batch Generating Documents with datatool Package

2012-01-20T23:26:00.000+08:00

If you aren’t aware of the possibility before this, you read the title right, it’s possible to do mail-merging in L^aT_eX with e.g. the versatile datatool package. This makes L^aT_eX quite a handy Swiss knife in a pinch.

The example scenario: you need to produce a batch of letters, name cards, or certificates really quickly. Let’s say certificates of appreciation for some long-serving employees. The recipients list has most probably been compiled by someone, as a spreadsheet like this:

Now all spreadsheet applications should be able to export the worksheet as a comma-separated values (CSV) plain text file, so we have namelist.csv with the following contents:

Name,ID,Gender,Years in Service

Abdul Ali,382473856,M,15

Francesca Joestar,461276432,F,10

Chan Ker Mei,463724631,F,5

Hikaru Yagami,154954739,M,10

The datatool package can then load namelist.csv as a simple database, which each line being a record, consisting of fields delimited by commas. By default, the field names are given by the first line of the .csv file. After assigning macros to the field names, we can then use the macros to insert ‘mail merge’ fields into a L^aT_eX document.

Here’s a quick example, using the wallpaper package and an external image (image courtesy of fromoldbooks.org) for the decorative frame:

% Use scrartcl to allow larger base font size

\documentclass[16pt]{scrartcl} 

\usepackage[left=3cm,right=3cm,top=6cm,bottom=5cm]{geometry}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

\usepackage{tgschola}

\usepackage{fourier-orns}

\usepackage{graphicx}

\usepackage{wallpaper} % For background image frame

\usepackage{datatool}

% Load database 'names' from file 'namelist.csv'

\DTLloaddb{names}{namelist.csv}

\begin{document}

\linespread{2}\selectfont

\pagestyle{empty}

% Set old-border.jpg as background image

\TileWallPaper{\paperwidth}{\paperheight}{old-border}

% For each record (line) in database 'names'

% Assign field values by name to macros

\DTLforeach{names}

{\name=Name, \ID=ID, \gender=Gender, \yr={Years in Service}}{

  {\centering

    {\LARGE\bfseries Certificate of Appreciation}\par

    {\LARGE\decofourleft\quad\decoone\quad\decofourright}\par

    \vskip2em

    We thank\par 

    % Insert '\name' field

    {\large\bfseries\MakeUppercase{\name}}\par

    % Insert '\ID' field

    {\large (ID: \ID)}\par

    for having been with\par

    {\large XYZ Company}\par

    % Insert '\yr' field

    {for \emph{\LARGE\yr} glorious years}\par

    \vskip1em

    % Test '\gender' field and insert him/her, his/her

    We commend \DTLifeq{\gender}{M}{him}{her} on

    \DTLifeq{\gender}{M}{his}{her} excellent service.\par

  }

  \vfill

  \hfill

  \begin{minipage}{.4\textwidth}

    Managing Director\par

    \vskip1cm

    \rule{8em}{.5pt}

    \vskip-1em

    (MD's Name)\par

  \end{minipage}

  \pagebreak

}

\end{document}

And voilà, the output document has 4 pages, each containing the certificate for a recipient listed in namelist.csv.

Just for fun, here’re the same certifates using ornaments from the adforn font package. For more flamboyant ornaments, see the webomints fonts (installable via getnonfreescripts) or the psvectorian package.

The .tex source codes can be downloaded here.

datatool has many more macros for testing field values and even arithmetics. Other accompanying packages in the bundle, such as datapie, dataplot and databar, even lets you draw charts from .csv files via TikZ/PGF, so do check out the documentation.

Now I’m off to my holidays! Happy Chinese New Year to everyone, and may the Year of the Dragon brings only good tidings for you!

Use of LaTeX in Industry

2012-01-12T17:05:00.000+08:00

A question on TeX.SX about “How is L^aT_eX used in industry and what are some examples?” has garnered over 6k views since posted yesterday. I had mentioned during my MOSC talk that L^aT_eX would be very useful in scenarios where some printable content has to be batch-generated or on-the-fly, and now some actual real life examples are given in the answers.

For example, this website allows users to query transportation timetables and returns the results as a pdfTeX-generated PDF:

And here’s another schedule generated by another German transportation website (PDF):

If you read the other answers, you’ll see what and how L^aT_eX is used in other companies (besides academic publishers). For example, this answer by Peter Flynn:

As a LaTeX consultancy, we have produced classes and styles for many organisations, including companies, government departments, and non-profits. A London auction house uses LaTeX to generate invoices; an electronic systems training company uses LyX and LaTeX to create their course workbooks and white papers; a Dublin printer uses LaTeX for pharmaceutical labelling; a local government organisation uses TeX to generate the Register of Voters; a professional scientific association uses LaTeX for its regular series of technical reports; and of course we use it internally for client reports, newsletters, and invoicing.

Latex on Mobile Smart Devices

2012-01-09T09:30:00.000+08:00

I believe most of us got a smartphone which you may use for surfing, taking pictures, emails and playing games. But somehow you might as well use your tablet or perhaps phone (let say, as big as Samsung Galaxy Note) for your productivity tasks.

Since I am more into Android devices (the reason is, most Apple stuffs are pricey, and I could get several Android devices with the price), I managed to find some applications which allow the users to do their Latex activity.

I found VerbTex[APK file], which uses Verbosus, (which, unfortunately means, you need an internet access to send your Tex file for compilation).

Also, I found this for the iPad. I am not sure whether it compiles natively or work like VerbTex. But throughout my readings on the page, nothing being mentioned on sending the compilation over the network (perhaps it could be compiled natively?)

How about you, tell us about your "mobile latexing" experience!

Text-to-Path Conversion with Ghostscript

2012-01-08T17:17:00.001+08:00

So you’ve prepared some PDF material with L^aT_eX, which you’re going to send to the printing company.

If they’ using the PDF as it is, fine and dandy. But if they need to import the PDF into, say, Illustrator for some further processing, you might be in some kind of a fix if the fonts you used (in L^aT_eX) aren’t easily obtainable as TTF OTF forms.

One solution is to convert all texts into paths before submitting the PDF to the printers. I don’t have Illustrator, so I tried Inkscape instead. Now Inkscape does have a convert-text-to-path function, but for the texts to display properly in Inkscape in the first place, I’d still need the TTF OTF files. Inkscape cannot make use of fonts embedded in the PDF to import the text as paths directly. Not very helpful, then.

Fortunately, suv gave this workaround using Ghostscript:

As a workaround, you can use Ghostscript to convert text in a PDF (or EPS/PS) file to outlines. It requires to convert the PDF to an intermediary PS file, and then back to PDF (thus losing PDF features not supported by PostScript, like transparency).
E.g. use a shell script, containing a command similar to this one:

$ gs -sDEVICE=pswrite -dNOCACHE \ -sOutputFile=- -q -dbatch -dNOPAUSE \ -dQUIET "$1" -c quit | ps2pdf - \ "`echo $1 | cut -f1 -d'.'`"-nofont.pdf

So long as your file does not contain any transparency, the script works just fine, and you can submit the file*-nofont.pdf to your printer. And of course, expect some increase in file size.

Happy New Year! Fireworks with TikZ

2011-12-29T09:39:00.000+08:00

T_EX wizards recently demonstrated how you can draw fireworks with TikZ:

(There’s also an earlier Q&A about drawing Christmas trees.)

Geeky DIY Christmas and New Year cards, anyone? :-)

Ampang Beamer Theme [best with Ubuntu LaTeX Fonts]

2011-10-20T16:24:00.000+08:00

Hi all,

I have created a beamer themes which depends on Ubuntu font.
Get it from here:
https://github.com/raden/beamer-ampang

On Linux or if you have Cygwin

git clone git://github.com/raden/beamer-ampang.git beamer-ampang-read-only

Result:

https://github.com/raden/beamer-ampang/blob/master/ampangcolor.png
https://github.com/raden/beamer-ampang/blob/master/ampang-color-inside.png

Also, committed to Google Code:
http://code.google.com/p/ampang-beamer-theme/

Git pull:
git clone https://code.google.com/p/ampang-beamer-theme/

English Translation of ChinaTeX’s Interview

2011-10-17T16:08:00.000+08:00

I’ve finally gotten round to translating ChinaTeX’s interview with me (originally in Chinese) into English. It’s not a word-for-word translation, but I made sure the main points are preserved.

Fixing the Biolinum Font in Beamer

2011-10-15T16:09:00.000+08:00

The libertine package provides L^aT_eX support to the Linux Libertine and Linux Biolinum fonts. The package release dated 2011-06-06 contains a bug, in which the ex unit value of the san serif font, Linux Biolinum, is not set correctly. This causes problems if the libertine package is used in a beamer presentation:

Notice how the heights of the headline and footline coloured boxes are almost zero. The same thing happens to the itemized and enumerated list markers, too.

A bug report has been filed with the LinuxLibertine project, but it’s still open at the time of writing.

In the meantime, Ulrike Fischer and Robin Fairbairns have provided an interim solution by resetting the ex value in the .fd files. Here’s what I did following their suggestions.

Locate the Biolinum .fd files, which should be in $TEXMF/tex/latex/libertine/ . I usually work with T1 encoding, so I homed in on the files t1fxb.fd, t1fxbf.fd, t1fxbj.fd, t1fxbjo.fd and t1fxbo.fd. (All these files, because sometimes I want the old-style numbers fonts.) I then added the code in red below for each m-n series-shapes:

\DeclareFontShape{T1}{fxb}{m}{n}{

   <-> \fxl@@scale fxbr-t1

}{\fontdimen5\font=\fontcharht\font`\x}

I didn’t bother with the \DeclareFontShape of other series-shapes, as the above seems to have fixed the problem for me:

So hopefully this’ll help anyone else who’s run into a similar predicament. Thanks again to Ulrike and Robin for the solution.

ChinaTeX Interview

2011-09-26T20:04:00.000+08:00

As you may guess from the name, ChinaTeX is a T_eX resources website from China. They’ve done a good job rounding up T_eX resources from around the Web, and translating them to Chinese for the benefit of Chinese users. Their latest endeavors over the weekend was to provide video tutorials.

Recently ChinaTeX approached me for an e-mail interview. We talked mainly about how I came to know, love and use L^aT_eX in book design and typesetting. Thanks for the interview, guys! 有空再来坐坐、交流，谢谢！

Cyberjaya, an MMU Beamer Theme

2011-09-26T10:34:00.001+08:00

And here’s Cyberjaya, a Beamer theme based on Multimedia University’s (MMU) colours. (Cyberjaya, Selangor, Malaysia is where MMU’s main campus is located.)

Screenshots and download link:

Brief example using the theme:

\documentclass[compress]{beamer}

\usetheme{Cyberjaya}

\author{This is Me}

\title{This is My Presentation}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}[plain,t]

\titlepage

\end{frame}

\begin{frame}

\frametitle{First Frame}

My content

\end{frame}

\end{document}

Gelugor, a USM Beamer Theme

2011-09-21T00:15:00.001+08:00

Just last week, I had another Beamer-related inquiry from a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Mathematical Sciences, Universiti Sain Malaysia (USM). Was it possible to have a Beamer theme modelled after USM’s Powerpoint template?

I came up with Gelugor over the weekend. (Gelugor, Penang, Malaysia is the town where USM’s main campus is located.)

Screenshots and download link:

Brief example using the theme:

\documentclass{beamer}

\usetheme{Gelugor}

\author{This is Me}

\title{This is My Presentation}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}[plain,t]

\titlepage

\end{frame}

\begin{frame}

\frametitle{First Frame}

My content

\end{frame}

\ThankYouFrame

\end{document}

Skudai, a Beamer Theme for UTM

2011-09-21T00:03:00.001+08:00

This all started a couple of months back when Najmi asked me if it was possible to get a Beamer presentation to look like his university's (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, UTM) Powerpoint template.

The eventual result is Skudai, a UTM Beamer theme. (Skudai is the name of the city town in Johor, Malaysia, where UTM’s main campus is located.)

Screenshots and download link:

A brief example on using the theme:

\documentclass{beamer}

\usetheme{Skudai}

\author{This is Me}

\title{This is My Presentation}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}[t]

\titlepage

\end{frame}

\begin{frame}

\frametitle{First Frame}

My content

\end{frame}

\end{document}

Converting BibTeX to EndNote format

2011-09-12T22:10:00.001+08:00

You might somehow need to submit your research findings in a journal which however, needs you to submit compulsively in Microsoft Words format.

If your institution is subscribing to EndNote, perhaps you might want to install them, at least, in Wine on top of your Linux machine

For easy convertion from *.bib file to EndNote importable format (XML).. use this software, bib2endnote

Fedora Linux for Research Writing

2011-09-12T07:30:00.002+08:00

Recently I got a chance to deliver a short talk during Fedora Activity Day 2011 at UCTI, Technology Park, Kuala Lumpur. My talk basically was targeted to undergraduate who (I thought so) attended that slot.

Here goes