LaTeX Tips and Tricks

• Interactively setting a variable

  Add similar lines before \documentclass

  \typeout{Please enter a value for var}
  \typein{\var}{var=}
  

• Including pages from other PDF documents

  \usepackage{pdfpages}
  ........
  \begin{document}
  \includepdfset{pages=-}
  \includepdf{cv.pdf}
  \includepdf{pubication1.pdf}
  \includepdf{pubication2.pdf}
  

  pdfpages provides lot of flexibility with selective
  inclusion of pages, landscape mode, etc.

• Adding directories to package search path
  (from Paul Jolly)

  % The trailing colon indicates the standard search
  % path should be appended to the user specified
  % TEXINPUT variable
  
  % Paths are ':' separated
  export TEXINPUTS=".:~/path/to/add:"
  export TEXINPUTS=".:~/path/to/add:/second/path/to/add:"
  
  % Trailing '/' for directories is optional
  export TEXINPUTS=".:~/path/to/add/:"
  
  % double trailing slash indicates this directory is
  % to be search recursively
  export TEXINPUTS=".:~/path/to/add//:"
  

• Input files with relative path

  \input and \include are well known commands for
  preparing larger documents from smaller files. However, if
  these smaller sections of text are organized within a
  directory with its own \input, \include,
  \includegrapics, etc., \input won’t work. For such
  cases, LaTeX package import can help.

  \usepackage{import}
  \import*{/play/act1/}{act.tex}
  

  On encountering \input{scene1.tex} in act.tex, LaTeX
  will now search for scene1.tex in /play/act1/ in addition to
  the local directory

• Embedding fonts

  Give -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress option to ps2pdf and
  verify final output with pdffonts

  In my case, gnuplot was the culprit that was not
  embedding the fonts in figures. A more effective but
  time-consuming way of correcting it is to specify tex
  font file to gnuplot as specified
  here
  or in more details here

Firefox Tips and Tricks

• Editing textarea with your favorite editor

  Very often one would prefer to write in a text area on the web using
  ones favorite editor. For example, if you use Gmail you might like to have
  the power of vim or emacs while composing mails. You can do that with
  It’s All Text that displays an edit button that pops up your
  favorite editor.

  • Getting it to work with cygwin and vim
    Create a file gvim.bat (in notepad) with the following text

    @echo off
    C:\cygwin\bin\run.exe -p /usr/X11R6/bin gvim -display
    127.0.0.1:0.0 %*
    

    set editor to C:\path_to_gvim.bat

• Quickly accessing commonly used bookmarks

  Use keyword bookmarking. Access any bookmark’s property ( Ctrl+Shift+B
  and then the bookmark you are interested in or right click toolbar
  bookmarks and then Properties) and set keyword for any character or
  sequence of characters. Now you can access this bookmark by pressing
  Alt+D or Ctrl+L (to jump to the address bar) character [Enter].
  Further customization with string substitution is possible. However,
  using keyword with bookmarklet is still an issue.
  More Information

Vim Tips and Tricks

• Replacing text in a set of files

  :args
  :argdo %s/search/replace/ |w

SVN Tips and Tricks

• Avoid typing long svn commands by defining appropriate function in your
  .bashrc

  export SVN_PATH="svn+ssh://path_to_svn/trunk"
  function sl () { svn ls ${SVN_PATH:?"SVN_PATH is not unset
  or empty"}/${1:?"Insufficient arguments"}}
  

  You can now list trunk/projects as

  sl projects
  

Bash Tips and Tricks

• Using CDPATH can save a lot of keystrokes. CDPATH is to cd what
  PATH is to command completion. For example,

  export CDPATH=.:/home/joe/projects:
  

  will allow you to cd into a directory /home/joe/projects/wordpress from
  any directory using

  cd wordpress
  

• $'STRING' can help you print anything you wish. In STRING escape
  ' by \'

  $> echo $'foo\'bar'
  foo'bar
  

• Check variables as

  ${VAR_NAME?"VAR_NAME is not defined"}
  ${VAR_NAME:?"VAR_NAME is not defined or empty"}
  

• bash_completion allows you to go beyond command completion to listing
  options available for the command. For example, on the latest version of
  unbuntu (8.04) add source /etc/bash_completion to your .bashrc. If
  subversion is installed on your machine then $> svn <tab> will
  list all possible options in svn as:

  add        co         -h         log        pedit      proplist   rm
  annotate   commit     help       ls         pget       propset    status
  blame      copy       --help     merge      plist      pset       switch
  cat        cp         import     mkdir      praise     remove     unlock
  checkout   delete     info       move       propdel    rename     update
  ci         diff       list       mv         propedit   resolved   --version
  cleanup    export     lock       pdel       propget    revert
  

  It supports many other commands. It’s auto-completion of
  directories on a remote server for scp is really useful.

• Prevent annoying ssh disconnection by

  alias ssh='ssh -o TCPKeepAlive=no -o ServerAliveInterval=15
  -o ServerAliveCountMax=10'
  

  Alternatively, you can set these options in your ssh_config ($>
locate ssh_config) file. You can also try

  alias ssh='ssh -o TCPKeepAlive=yes
  

  But it didn’t work for me. For further information and for putty
  settings see
  http://drupal.star.bnl.gov/STAR/comp/sofi/facility-access/ssh-stable-con

• Bash has some lesser know command that provides exactly what you might
  sometimes be looking for. A quick read of info coreutils is recommended.
  Few such commands are

  • pr can help you paginate or columnate text. For example,

    pr -2 <filename>
    

    will generate a two column output of the text with page boundaries
    delimited with page headers and footers

  • paste to concatenate files vertically

  • tac to concatenate files in reverse order.

    tac <filename>
    

    to print file <filename> in reverse order

  • Get a quick directory overview to a depth of <n>

    tree -L <n> <dir_name>