Math hints for TeX/LaTeX and HTML

TeX/LaTeX hints

• BIBGET: the shell script for building the BIBTeX databases from MathSciNet. (See also Connecting to MathSciNet from home.)
• A dash or hyphen in math formulae in TeX/LaTeX can be generated by \mbox{-}. For example, the strong or weak limit can be typed as $s\mbox{-}\lim$ or $w\mbox{-}\lim$.
• Inverted question marks in an article may come from sending the TeX files as an email attachment. Sendmail agent prepends "From " with ">"; running TeX on a corrupted file results in the inverted question mark.
• The right way to create PDF files, so that the PDF file is searchable, the fonts look nice, and figures are preserved:

  1. dvips -f -Ppdf file.dvi | ps2pdf - file.pdf

     You can also use this conversion if you have the pictures in PS or EPS format, or if your DVI file already includes Postscript pictures incorporated from TeX files. For example, the latter is the case if you had the GNUPLOT-generated files that start with the line

     % GNUPLOT: plain TeX with Postscript

     
     Note: running dvips with the option -Ppdf seems unnecessary if dvips -v gives This is dvips(k) 5.95a or greater.
  2. Alternatively, you can use pdflatex or pdftex if you want to use pictures in JPEG (JPG) or PNG format.
• The right way to include graphics files: Prepare your picture and gzip it, creating, say, spectr.eps.gz. Issue the following command:

  zgrep BoundingBox: spectr.eps.gz > spectr.eps.bb
  

  and make the following latex file:

  
  \documentclass[10pt]{article}
  \usepackage{graphicx}
  \begin{document}
  \begin{figure}
  \begin{center}
  \includegraphics[height=6cm]{spectr.eps.gz}
  \end{center}
  \caption{Spectrum.}
  \end{figure}
  \end{document}
  

• The binary `convert' (included in the imagemagick package) allows convertion into most (a.k.a. all) graphics formats.
• If latex reads multiple input and font files and runs too slowly, there is a way to make it run faster without modifying the file. Create a file like this:

  %% This is a file asdf.ini
  \documentclass[10pt]{article}
  %% We will need to disregard the \documentclass command that will be in your file:
  \renewcommand{\documentclass}[2][anything]{}  
  %% Add all packages you use and all .fd files that latex reads:
  \usepackage{latexsym,bm}
  \input ulasy.fd
  \dump
  

  Create the format file asdf.fmt by running the following: tex -ini \&latex asdf.ini
  A faster way to process your latex file: tex \&asdf file.tex

HTML hints

• The character "less than or equal to", encoded in HTML by ≤ works in Mozilla etc. but disrupts the Lynx behavior. The way around (courtesy of Andrew Schretter, Duke University):

  <script>document.write('&le;')</script><noscript>&lt;=</noscript>
  

  Here is an example.
  • Common way (this breaks down in lynx): sin(x) ≤ 1
  • Lynx-friendly way: sin(x) 1

Written by Andrew Comech

The latest version lives at http://www.math.tamu.edu/~comech/tools/hints/