217 lines
11 KiB
TeX
217 lines
11 KiB
TeX
\chapter{Basic document structure}
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\label{sec:basic-document-structure}
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In essence, every \LaTeX{} document is composed of two parts: the first part is
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the preamble. It is directly followed by the second part, the document environment.
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We call the first commands within our \LaTeX{} document a \emph{preamble}. It
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contains global information about our document, such as the document class, the encoding, the language, the page format, and additional packages that we want to use.
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The \emph{document environment}, on the other hand, contains the actual content
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of our document, that is, the things that we will later see in our generated
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\acro{PDF} file.
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\Example{lst:latex-document-basic-structure}{basic-document-structure/hello-world}{basic-document-structure/hello-world_crop}{Exemplary structure of a simple \LaTeX{} document with preamble and document
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environment}
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\section{Preamble}
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Let's take a closer look at the preamble.
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A minimal preamble should contain the following specifications:
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\subsection{Document class}\label{sec:document-class}
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We can define a document class by using the command
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\mintinline[breaklines,breakafter=\]]{latex}|\documentclass[<parameter>]{<document class>}|. The most
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commonly used document classes that are supported by default are
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\mintinline{latex}{article} for short documents, and \mintinline{latex}{report}
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for longer ones. Furthermore, you can use \mintinline{latex}{book} for books,
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\mintinline{latex}{beamer}\footnote{We do not cover making presentations in
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\LaTeX{} in this tutorial. However, if you are interested in the topic, we
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recommend this introduction on Overleaf:
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\url{https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Beamer}} for presentations, and
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\mintinline{latex}{letter}\footnote{We also do not cover letters in this
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script. An introduction can be found on WikiBooks:
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\url{https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Letters}} for letters.
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In addition to the standard document classes, the \acro{KOMA} script classes have developed. They provide alternatives to the document classes
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mentioned above: In lieu of \mintinline{latex}{article} you can use
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\mintinline{latex}{scrartcl}, \mintinline{latex}{report} is replaced by
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\mintinline{latex}{scrreport}, and \mintinline{latex}{scrbook} can be used
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instead of \mintinline{latex}{book}. As a replacement for
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\mintinline{latex}{letter} one can use \mintinline{latex}{scrlttr2}.
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A complete list of all \acro{KOMA} script classes is available
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online\footnote{Available at:
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\url{https://komascript.de/komascriptbestandteile}}. By using \acro{KOMA}
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document classes, the layout of the generated \acro{PDF} document is changed.
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On top of that, they provide additional functionalities.
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The standard document classes are designed according to the American-English
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standards whereas \acro{KOMA} classes adhere to European norms, e.\,g., for
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writing letters.
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Each \mintinline{latex}{\documentclass} command can hold optional parameters in
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square brackets.
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\mintinline{latex}{\documentclass[10pt,a5paper,landscape]{scrartcl}}, for
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instance, configures a \acro{KOMA} script article and sets its font size
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to 10\,pt\footnote{The standard font size is 12,pt.}, the page size to
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A5\footnote{The default case would be A4.}, and the orientation of the page to
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landscape. The language can be passed as an optional parameter, too (cf.
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\cref{sec:language}).
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\subsection{Digression: packages}
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\label{sec:packages}
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\begin{minted}{latex}
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\usepackage[<optionen>]{<paketname>}
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\end{minted}
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Packages provide additional commands and functionalities that we can use within
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our \LaTeX{} source code. There are numerous packages for different use cases
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(e.\,g., typesetting forumlas, lists, \textellipsis).
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In order make use of a package, it must be included within the preamble. To do
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so, the above-mentioned command is used.
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The most important \LaTeX{} packages can be found in the Comprehensive \TeX\
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Archive Network\footnote{Available at: \url{https://www.ctan.org/}}, short:
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\acro{CTAN}. You can also find the documentations for the packages there.
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\subsection{Encoding}
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\begin{minted}{latex}
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\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
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\usepackage[t1]
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\end{minted}
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One use case for packages is specifying the encoding of our \LaTeX{} document.
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The character encoding\footnote{cf.
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\url{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_encoding}} determines the
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available character set.
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The standard encoding in \LaTeX{} is \acro{ASCII}.\footnote{cf.
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\url{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII}}
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It is an American character encoding and therefore does, for instance, not
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contain German umlauts, or other special characters, which makes it unsuitable
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for most use cases.
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As a consequence, \acro{UTF-8}\footnote{cf.
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\url{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8}} can be used as universal
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character
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encoding.
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In \LaTeX{}, we need to specify two character encodings:
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The input encoding (short: \mintinline{latex}{inputenc}), which refers to our
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source code, and the font encoding (short: \mintinline{latex}{fontenc}), which
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concerns the choice of the file that is used to portray the content within our
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\acro{PDF} document, since we also need special characters
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there.\footnote{Details on
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\mintinline{latex}{fontenc} can be found at:
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\url{https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/108417/font-encoding-in-latex}}
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\mintinline{latex}{T1} is an enconding that tries to cover most European
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language with a limited number of characters.
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\subsection{Language}\label{sec:language}
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\begin{minted}{latex}
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\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
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\end{minted}
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The package \mintinline{latex}{babel} provides language-specific information
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(e.\,g., on hyphenation, special characters, changing fonts, translation of
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labels\footnote{cf. \cref{sec:references}} like \enquote{Chapter},
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\enquote{Table of Contents}, or \enquote{Figure}, \textellipsis).
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The desired language can be passed as an optional parameter.
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\mintinline{latex}{ngerman}, for instance, is used for the new German spelling.
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Some packages require that the language is already passed as optional parameter
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in the \mintinline{latex}{\documentclass} command. In this case, just leave out
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the
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optional parameter for the language within the \mintinline{latex}{babel}
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command.
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We can also use multiple languages in your document. To do so, we pass the
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languages,
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separated by commas, as optional parameter to the \mintinline{latex}{\babel}
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command. Within your document, we can switch between languages with the
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\mintinline{latex}{\selectlanguage{<language>}} command. Alternatively,foreign-language text
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can be included by using the following command:
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\begin{minted}{latex}
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\foreignlanguage{<language>}{<text>}
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\end{minted}
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\section{Document environment}
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The actual content of the \acro{PDF} document needs to be put between
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\mintinline{latex}{\begin{document}} and \mintinline{latex}{\end{document}}.
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\subsection{Continuous Text}
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The easiest content that we can integrate into the document environment is
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continuous
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text. We can write it directly into our source code. Line breaks and multiple
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spaces are ignored by \LaTeX{}. Blank lines create a new paragraph, that is
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indented by default.\footnote{The automatic indentation of new paragraphs can
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be prevented by using the command \mintinline{latex}{\noindent}.}
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Manual line breaks can be forced with two backslashes
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(\textbackslash\textbackslash). This should be avoided, though.
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\subsection{Comments}
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Some characters are reserved for \LaTeX-specific commands, for instance,
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the percent sign. Using a percent sign tells the \LaTeX{} compiler to ignore the
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rest of the line, i.\,e., the text after the percent character will not appear
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in the generated \acro{PDF} document.
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This can be useful in order to take notes while working on a document
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without affecting the document itself. This is called a comment.
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However, if we want the percent sign to actually appear in the text, we can
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achieve this by using a backslash: \mintinline{latex}{\%}.
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This solution is called escaping and also works for other reserved
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characters, like \#, \$, \&, \_, \{ and \}.
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In order to escape the backslash, the command
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\mintinline{latex}{\textbackslash} must be used.\footnote{An overview of
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additional special characters can be found in \cref{sec:special-characters}.}
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\subsection{Sections and chapters}
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Continuous text can be structured by headings that divide the document into
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sections and chapters. Needless to say, \LaTeX{} provides us with commands for
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that.
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The commands that are depicted in \cref{lst:headlines} can be used with any
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document class.
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\Example{lst:headlines}{basic-document-structure/headlines}{basic-document-structure/headlines_crop}{Heading Levels}
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Depending on your specified document class the commands
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\mintinline{latex}{\chapter{Chapter}} and \mintinline{latex}{\part{Part}} are
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additionally available -- for instance in books.
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You can mark the command with an asterisk if you want to omit the numbering of
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a section and exclude it from the table of contents\footnote{cf.
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\cref{sec:table-of-contents}}:
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\begin{minted}{latex}
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\section*{This section is excluded from the table of contents}
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\end{minted}
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An alternative title for the table of contents can be declared as an optional
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parameter in square brackets between the command and the actual title:
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\begin{minted}{latex}
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\section[Title in the TOC]{Actual Chapter Title}
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\end{minted}
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\subsection{Front matter}
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A simple front matter can be created by using the command
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\mintinline{latex}{\maketitle}. The values that get inserted into the front
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matter must be specified within the preamble.
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Multiple authors are joined by \mintinline{latex}{\and}.
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If the date is not specified by the \mintinline{latex}{\date} command, the
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current date
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will be inserted by default.
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The design of the front matter depends on the specified document class.
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\Example{lst:titles}{basic-document-structure/titles}{basic-document-structure/titles_crop}{The Front Matter}
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\subsection{Indices}\label{sec:table-of-contents}
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The command \mintinline{latex}{\tableofcontents} generates an automatically
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numbered table of contents by making use of the above-mentioned commands for
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dividing
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our text into sections and chapters (this can bee seen in \cref{lst:main-file}
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on \cpageref{lst:main-file}).
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The numbering style and depth, and many other options can, of
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course, be specified manually.\footnote{We recommend the following blogpost:
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\url{https://texblog.org/2011/09/09/10-ways-to-customize-tocloflot/}}
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For \LaTeX{} to create our table of contents properly, the project has to be
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compiled twice.
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Besides the table of contents, you can also generate a
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\mintinline{latex}{\listoffigures} (list of figures) and a
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\mintinline{latex}{\listoftables} (list of tables). The captions of your
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figures and tables will appear within those indices.\footnote{cf.
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\cref{sec:graphics} (Graphics) and \cref{sec:tables} (Tables) for more
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information on captions}
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