My paper templates and tricks

Posted on In

This post keeps what I have Googled and what my friends have shared with me.

My latest paper templates are here: https://github.com/yishilin14/paper-template

Maintaining paper and its technical report (full version)

I most cases, in order to “tweak” a paper to fit within the page limit, I have to move some parts of the paper to a technical report (full version of the paper). It is hard to maintain and proof-reading two versions of the same paper in two sets of separated files.

I define some commands so that I don’t have to maintain two sets of LaTeX files. Command “\ignorespaces” prevents LaTex from inserting spaces between sentences.

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% Is this a technical report?
% \def\techreport{true}
% Papertech mode? (output \onlypaper and \onlytech in different colors)
% \def\papertech{true}

% Tech report or paper?
\ifx\papertech\undefined
  \ifx\techreport\undefined
    % Paper
    \newcommand{\onlytech}[1]{\ignorespaces}
    \newcommand{\onlypaper}[1]{#1}
  \else
    % Technical reports
    \newcommand{\onlytech}[1]{#1}
    \newcommand{\onlypaper}[1]{\ignorespaces}
    \pagenumbering{arabic} % add page number
    \makeatletter
    \def\@copyrightspace{\relax}
    \makeatother
  \fi
\else
  % papertech mode
  \newcommand{\onlytech}[1]{{\color{blue}[(TECH ONLY) #1]}}
  \newcommand{\onlypaper}[1]{{\color{olive}[(PAPER ONLY) #1]}}
\fi

The usage of the two defined commands (\onlypaper and \onlytech) are as follows.

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\onlypaper{This sentence only appears in the paper.}
\onlytech{This sentence shows in the tech report only.}

Fonts

  • Change fonts for texttt
  • Using “Times” could further squeeze the paper
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% Fonts (load times before others)
% - Using Times could further squeeze the paper (should be used with caution)
% \usepackage{times}
% - Change texttt fonts
\makeatletter%
\@ifclassloaded{acmart}
{}{
  % for non-acmart template
  \usepackage{substitutefont, newtxtext} % texttt
}
\makeatother
  • Redefine common colors such as “red” and “blue”. I don’t like the original colors.
  • Redefine the style of hyperlinks (remove boxes, change colors)
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% Colors
\definecolor{red}{HTML}{E51400}  %red
\definecolor{blue}{HTML}{0050EF} %cobalt
\definecolor{green}{HTML}{008A00} %emerald
\definecolor{purple}{HTML}{AA00FF} %violet
\definecolor{dark-red}{rgb}{0.4, 0.15, 0.15}
\definecolor{dark-blue}{rgb}{0.15, 0.15, 0.4}
\definecolor{medium-red}{rgb}{0.5, 0, 0}
\definecolor{medium-blue}{rgb}{0, 0, 0.5}
\definecolor{light-red}{rgb}{0.7, 0, 0}
\definecolor{light-blue}{rgb}{0, 0, 0.7}

% Styles of hyperlinks
\hypersetup{
  colorlinks,
  linkcolor={medium-red},
  citecolor={medium-blue},
  urlcolor={medium-blue}
}

Windows Theme colors: http://www.creepyed.com/2012/11/windows-phone-8-theme-colors-hex-rgb/

Algorithms

  • Change the color of comments
  • Don’t print semicolons
  • Define the “\algrule” (a horizontal line in pseudo-codes)
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\newcommand\mycommfont[1]{\textcolor{medium-blue}{#1}}
\SetCommentSty{mycommfont}
\DontPrintSemicolon
\SetKw{And}{and}%
\SetKw{Continue}{continue}%
\SetKwProg{myproc}{Procedure}{}{}%
\SetKwProg{myalgo}{Algorithm}{}{}%
% \algrule (a horizontal line in pseudo-codes)
\makeatletter
\newcommand{\algrule}{\par\vskip.2\baselineskip{\color{black!30}\hrule}\par\vskip.2\baselineskip}
\makeatother

Equations

How to rescale equations formatted using ‘align’

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\noindent
\resizebox{.95\columnwidth}{!}{
\begin{minipage}{\columnwidth}
\begin{align*}
x &= y \\
x &= y
\end{align*}
\end{minipage}
}

Ref: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22734142/how-to-rescale-equations-formatted-using-align-resizebox-doesnt-appear-to-wo

Tables

Table captions

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% Table caption
\def\tablename{Table}
\renewcommand{\thetable}{\arabic{table}}  % numbering

Resizing the width of a table

The command “\resizebox” is useful for resizing other things too.

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\begin{table}
\centering
\caption{..}
\resizebox{\columnwidth}{!}{
\begin{tabular}.....
\end{tabule}
}
\end{table}

Theorems & Proofs

Package: Moveproofs

“A LaTeX package for auto-moving proofs to the appendix of a document.” https://github.com/thisisdhaas/moveproofs

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% Moveproofs adapted from https://github.com/thisisdhaas/moveproofs
% - Move proofs to the appendix
\usepackage[location=appendix]{sty/moveproofs}
% - Proof appears at its original location
% \usepackage{sty/moveproofs}

Packages: thmtools, thm-restate

This package is useful when I have to restate theorems in the appendix.

Documentation: http://mirror.unl.edu/ctan/macros/latex/exptl/thmtools/thmtools.pdf

The proof environment

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\renewcommand{\proofname}{\rm\bf{Proof:}}
\renewcommand\qedsymbol{\rule{1.8mm}{2.5mm}} % a slim balck square

The Appendix

Displaying the appendix in the technical report only.

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\ifx\techreport\undefined
% Paper, ...
\else
% Tech report
\clearpage
\appendix
\setcounter{section}{1}
\input{appendix_file}
\fi

Tikz

Manual: http://ftp.yzu.edu.tw/CTAN/graphics/pgf/base/doc/pgfmanual.pdf

Common line types

solid, (densely loosely) dotted, (densely loosely) dashed, (densely loosely) dashdotdotted

https://www.ubuntu-user.com/Magazine/Archive/2014/22/Creating-vector-graphics-with-LaTeX-and-TikZ/(offset)/2#article_f3)/2#article_f3))

Squeezing the paper

Squeezing the space between theorems and the main text

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\makeatletter
\def\thm@space@setup{
\thm@preskip=0.8\topsep
\thm@postskip=\thm@preskip % or whatever, if you don't want them to be equal
}
\makeatother

Squeezing the space between figures and their caption

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\usepackage[skip=4pt,font={bf}]{caption}
\captionsetup[subfloat]{captionskip=2pt}

Squeezing other spacing

Put these commands after “begin document”.

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\ifx\techreport\undefined
  % % Squeeze the paper (should be used with caution)
  % \setlength{\textfloatsep}{1\textfloatsep}
  % \setlength{\dbltextfloatsep}{1\dbltextfloatsep}
  % \setlength{\floatsep}{1\floatsep}
  % \setlength{\dblfloatsep}{1\dblfloatsep}
  % % \setlength{\abovediplayskip}{1\baselineskip} % undefined for IEEEtrans
  % \setlength{\belowdisplayskip}{1\baselineskip}
  % \captionsetup[subfloat]{captionskip=2pt}  % shrinking
\fi
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\ifx\techreport\undefined
\else
\makeatletter
\def\@copyrightspace{\relax}
\makeatother
\fi

Squeezing Space in LaTeX: http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/textprocessing/squeeze.html#Contentsandbibliography

What commands are there for horizontal spacing?: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/74353/what-commands-are-there-for-horizontal-spacing

I believe that conference templates are the best teachers… But I confess I’ve never studied the codes carefully…

Demos of my template

(Using the ACM template)