144 lines
10 KiB
TeX
144 lines
10 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:
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We call the first commands within our \LaTeX{} document the \emph{preamble}.
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It specifies global properties of 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 of our document, i.\,e., the things that we will later see in our generated \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 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 \code{latex}{\textbackslash documentclass[<para- meter>]\{<document class>\}}.
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The most commonly used document classes that are supported by default are \pkg{article} for short documents, and \pkg{report} for longer ones.
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Furthermore, you can use \pkg{book} for books, \pkg{beamer}\footnote{We do not cover making presentations in \LaTeX{} in this tutorial. However, if you are interested in the topic, we recommend this introduction on Overleaf: \url{https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Beamer}} for presentations, and \pkg{letter}\footnote{We also do not cover letters in this script. An introduction can be found on WikiBooks: \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 been developed.
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They provide alternatives to the document classes mentioned above:
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In lieu of \pkg{article} you can use \pkg{scrartcl}, \pkg{report} is replaced by \pkg{scrreprt},\footnote{Those vowels are indeed missing, do not try to insert them.} and \pkg{scrbook} can be used instead of \pkg{book}.
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As a replacement for \pkg{letter}, one can use \pkg{scrlttr2}.
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A complete list of all \acro{KOMA} script classes is available online.\footnote{Available at: \url{https://komascript.de/komascriptbestandteile}}
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By using \acro{KOMA} 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 US-American conventions
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whereas \acro{KOMA} classes adhere to European norms, e.\,g., for
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writing letters.
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Each \code{latex}{\textbackslash documentclass} command can hold optional parameters in
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square brackets.
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\code{latex}{\textbackslash documentclass[10pt,a5paper,landscape]scrartcl\}},
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for instance, configures a \acro{KOMA} script article and sets its font size to
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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.
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The language can be passed as an optional parameter, too (cf. \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[<options>]{<packagename>}
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\end{minted}
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Packages provide additional commands and functionalities that we can use within our \LaTeX{} source code.
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There are numerous packages for different use cases (e.\,g., typesetting formulas, lists, \textellipsis).
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In order to use a package, it must be included within the preamble.
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To do so, the above-mentioned command is used.
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The most important \LaTeX{} packages can be found in the Comprehensive \TeX\ Archive Network, short: \acro{CTAN}.\footnote{Available at: \url{https://www.ctan.org/}}
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You can also find documentation 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. \url{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_encoding}} determines the available character set.
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The standard encoding in \LaTeX{} is \acro{ASCII}.\footnote{cf. \url{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII}}
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It is an American character encoding and therefore does not contain German umlauts or most other special characters, which makes it unsuitable at least for non-english use cases.
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Instead, \acro{UTF-8}\footnote{cf. \url{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8}} can be used as a universal character encoding.
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In \LaTeX{}, we need to specify two character encodings:
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The input encoding (\mono{inputenc}), which refers to our source code, and the font encoding (\mono{fontenc}), which determines what the content of our \acro{PDF} document looks like.\footnote{Details on \mono{fontenc} can be found at: \url{https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/108417/font-encoding-in-latex}}
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\pkg{T1} is an encoding that tries to cover most European languages 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 \pkg{babel} provides language-specific information (e.\,g., on hyphenation, special characters, changing fonts, translation of labels\footnote{cf. \cref{sec:references}} like \enquote{Chapter,} \enquote{Table of Contents,} or \enquote{Figure.}
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The desired language can be passed as an optional parameter.
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\pkg{ngerman}, for instance, is used for the new German spelling.
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Some packages require that the language is already passed as an optional parameter in the \code{latex}{\textbackslash documentclass} command.
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In this case, just leave out the optional parameter for the language within the \pkg{babel} inclusion command.
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We can also use multiple languages in our document.
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To do so, we pass the languages, separated by commas, as an optional parameter to the babel inclusion command.
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Within our document, we can switch between languages with the \code{latex}{\textbackslash selectlanguage\{<language>\}} command.
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Alternatively, foreign-language text can be declared 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 \code{latex}{\textbackslash begin\{document\}} and \code{latex}{\textbackslash 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 continuous text.
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We can write it directly into our source code.
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Line breaks and multiple consecutive spaces are ignored by \LaTeX{}.
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Blank lines create a new paragraph, that is indented by default.\footnote{The automatic indentation of new paragraphs can be prevented by using the command \code{latex}{\textbackslash noindent}.}
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Manual line breaks can be enforced with two backslashes (\textbackslash\textbackslash).
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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, the percent sign.
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Using a percent sign tells the \LaTeX{} compiler to ignore the rest of the line, so the text after the percent character will not appear in the generated \acro{PDF} document.
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This is called a \emph{comment}\textit{,}
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and it can be useful to take notes while working on a document without affecting the document itself.
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There are a few more of these reserved characters, as we will see and learn to deal with in \cref{sec:more-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 sections and chapters.
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Needless to say, \LaTeX{} provides us with commands for that.
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The commands that are depicted in \cref{lst:headlines} can be used with any document class.
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\Example{lst:headlines}{basic-document-structure/headlines}{basic-document-structure/headlines_crop}{Heading Levels}
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Some document classes provide additional commands. In a \pkg{report}, you get \code{late}{\textbackslash chapter\{Chapter\}}, and in a \pkg{book}, additionally \code{latex}{\textbackslash part\{Part\}}.
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You can mark the command with an asterisk if you want to omit the numbering of a section and exclude it from the table of contents:\footnote{cf. \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 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 \code{latex}{\textbackslash maketitle}.
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The values to be inserted into the front matter must be specified within the preamble.
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Multiple authors are joined by \code{latex}{\textbackslash and}.
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If the date is not specified by the \code{latex}{\textbackslash date} command, the current date 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 \code{latex}{\textbackslash tableofcontents} generates an automatically numbered table of contents by making use of the above-mentioned commands for dividing our text into sections and chapters (this can bee seen in \cref{lst:main-file} on \cpageref{lst:main-file}).
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The numbering style and depth, and many other options can, of course, be specified manually.\footnote{We recommend the following blogpost: \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 compiled twice.
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Besides the table of contents, you can also generate a \code{latex}{\textbackslash listoffigures} (list of figures) and a \code{latex}{\textbackslash listoftables} (list of tables).
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The captions of your figures and tables will appear within those indices.\footnote{cf. \cref{sec:graphics} (Graphics) and \cref{sec:tables} (Tables) for more information on captions}
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