Publications by topic: On LaTeX2e Packages

The fewerfloatpages package

• Frank Mittelbach
• TUGboat 41:1, 2020
• Abstract

  LaTeX’s float algorithm has the tendency to produce fairly empty float pages, i.e., pages containing only floats but with a lot of free space remaining that could easily be filled with nearby text. There are good reasons for this behavior; nevertheless, the results look unappealing and in many cases documents are unnecessarily enlarged.

  The fewerfloatpages package provides an extended algorithm that improves on this behavior without the need for manual intervention by the user.

The dashundergaps package

• Frank Mittelbach
• TUGboat 39:3, 2018
• Abstract

  The dashundergaps package offers the possibility to replace material in running text with white space in order to build up forms that can be filled in at a later time.

  By default the gaps are underlined and followed by a gap number in parentheses, but many other designs are possible, e.g., dashes or dots instead of the underline, no gap numbers or a different format for them, gap widening for easier fill-in, etc. There is also a teacher’s mode which shows the normally hidden text in a special (customizable) format.

  This is another article in a series of TUGboat articles describing small packages to introduce coding practices using the expl3 programming language. See The widows-and-orphans package for the first article in the series. For more details on expl3 refer to the expl3 topic page.

The widows-and-orphans package

• Frank Mittelbach
• TUGboat 39:3, 2018
• Abstract

  The widows-and-orphans package checks page or column breaks for issues with widow or orphan lines and issues warnings if such problems are detected. In addition, it checks and complains about breaks involving hyphenated words and warns about display formulas directly after a page break —– if they are allowed by the document parameter settings, which by default isn’t the case.

  A general discussion of the problem of widows and orphans and suggestions for resolution is given in Managing forlorn paragraph lines (a.k.a. widows and orphans) in LaTeX.

Managing forlorn paragraph lines (a.k.a. widows and orphans) in LaTeX

• Frank Mittelbach
• TUGboat 39:3, 2018

This article discusses the typographical problem of widows and orphans, i.e., first and last lines of a paragraph that due to a page break are separated from the rest of the paragraph.

Practical advice is given how to best avoid these situations and how to manage and resolve them when they arise. The final part discusses the package widows-and-orphans that will help here by automatically identifying and highlighting the problematical place in a longer document, in fact not just for widows and orphans but also for words hyphenated across a page break or math displays that got separated from their preceding paragraph.

From the TUG Conference 2018 (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

A quarter century of doc (handouts)

• Frank Mittelbach
• TUG Conference 2018 (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
• Abstract:

In this talk I will re-examine my poor attempts at Literate Programming and how they have shaped (for the better or worse) the LaTeX world in the past decades. It’s about time to rethink some of the concepts invented back then—but can we still evolve?

Video of the talk recorded by IMPA on YouTube: What’s to stay, what’s to go – A quarter century of doc (I messed up the start so real talk starts at 00:02:30)

LaTeX table columns with fixed widths

• Frank Mittelbach
• Published paper, TUGboat volume 38, number 2, 2017

A short article discussing how to produce table columns with a fixed width using the array package. The interface as described is now integrated in the package.

From the TUG Conference 2013 (Tokyo, Japan)

The stony road to complex layout (slides)

• Frank Mittelbach
• TUG Conference 2013 (Tokyo, Japan)
• Digital Camera recording of the talk on YouTube: The stony road to complex layout

In this talk, Frank looks at the many and often conflicting user wishlists for automatic generation of complex layouts using the history and development of the multicol package through the years. What as been solved in this space and where are the typesetting challenges and what is simply not possible?

From the TUG Conference 2009 (Notre Dame, Indiana, USA)

Next steps for breqn (slides)

• Morten Høgholm
• TUG Conference 2009 (Notre Dame, Indiana, USA)
• Video of the talk: Next steps for breqn (via River Valley TV)

From the TUG Conference 2007 (San Diego, USA)

The breqn package: revised and revived

• Morten Høgholm
• TUG Conference 2007 (San Diego, USA)
• Video of the talk: The breqn package: revised and revived (via River Valley TV)

The trace package

• Frank Mittelbach
• Published paper, TUGboat, Volume 22 (2001), No. 1/2

This article describes the trace package that is useful when debugging complex (or not so complex) LaTeX code.