Tools and Tips for Writing
Papers
- TeXnicCenter
specific: Modes
to use
- You can read an
article
written by Qin Zhang and an
article
written by Bill Moss. In case they become broken links, you
can find the cached versions at our server
/home/public/docs/writingdocs.
- Normally when you are editing, use the
mode "LaTeX=>DVI", which is faster to use.
- When you try to generate PDF for
submission in the end, use the mode "LaTeX=>PS=>PDF". I
usually don't recommend you to use the mode "LaTeX=>PDF" (which
may not recognize EPS figures) unless "LaTeX=>PS=>PDF" doesn't
work.
- In any mode, always watch the console
output in the lower part of the application window. If you see some
red errors (even if you can successfully produce and view DVI or
PDF), you need to address these issues. You want to see in the end
of the console information: "LaTeX-Result: 0 Error(s) ...". You
shouldn't allow non-zero errors.
- If you don't see you have a list of profiles (including
LaTeX=>DVI, LaTeX=>PDF, LaTeX=> PS, LaTeX=> PS => PDF)
by clicking Build-> Define Output Profiles, you need to do the
following thing:
1. Download the following configuration that I exported from my
TeXnicCenter: http://www.csc.ncsu.edu/faculty/xie/publications/texniccenter.tco
2. Import it from a button "Import" in the above dialog.
Then you can see a list of profiles.
Note that in the profile for LaTeX=>PS=>PDF, I configured
correctly on producing a PDF that can pass IEEE PDF checking, which
normally would report missing fonts in your generated PDF file if you
don't follow my configuration.
In editing mode, you should use the "LaTeX=>DVI" profile (using the
pull-down menu on the shortcup menu list), and click Cltrl+F5 (or the
shortcut button "Build and View Output" to see the view the generated
DVI.
When you want to build a PDF to submit, choose the
"LaTeX=>PS=>PDF" mode.
- Use spell check features of
TeXnicCenter: In TeXnicCenter,
Tools->Options->Spelling tab-> enable all checkbox options in
that tab including "Check spelling while typing". You
can see that those words that cannot pass spell checks are
underlined with red lines. To enable those special words such as
"pointcut", right click the words and click "Add" to add the words
to the dictionary. Then later on the same words won't be underlined.
Normally you should make these red underlines disappear unless in
some code snippet where you will have a lot of red unerlines (don't
bother to add those words there to dictionary).
- If I create
a PDF file using PS2PDF or PDFLaTeX the paper size is changed to
Letter instead of A4 (the generated PDF has a narrow top margin) (or the other way around when the prefered
size is letter)
TeXnicCenter specific (1beta
6.31):
- You can configure the
PS2PDF command line options at menu "Build->Define Output
Profiles..." Click LaTeX=>PS=>PDF on the left-size list box,
then click Postprocessor tag, click the "Ghostscript (ps2pdf)" entry
in the list box on the right. The "Arguments" box on the bottom
should be put with the following command line options:
-sPAPERSIZE=a4 -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite
-dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dSubsetFonts=true
-dEmbedAllFonts=true -sOutputFile="%bm.pdf" -c save pop -f "%bm.ps"
where "-sPAPERSIZE=a4" specifies that A4 size is generated.
- If your preferred size is letter
instead of A4, you need to replace the "
-sPAPERSIZE=a4" above with "-sPAPERSIZE=letter".
In
addition, add "-t letter" to the command line argument for dvips.
Note that you don't need to put
\pdfpagewidth=8.5in
\pdfpageheight=11in
to the document preamble as some guideline suggests.
WinEdt
specific: (from LaTeX
FAQs)
If you use
WinEdt's default settings and run PDFLaTeX or PS2PDF on a A4 sized LaTeX
document, the resulting PDF file might have page size Letter (8.5 x 11
inch). To fix this do the following:
- PS2PDF users: when you create a
PostScript file using DVIPS, a dialog is displayed in WinEdt. In
this dialog you should change the "Generic Parameters" to -P
pdf -t A4 -z (instead of the default -P pdf).
WinEdt will remember this setting.
- PDFLaTeX users: add the a4paper
option to the \documentclass command, usually the first
line in your LaTeX document.
Example:\documentclass[11pt,twoside,a4paper]{article}
- In WinEdt, click on "Wrap" at the
bottom of the screen to turn off automatic line wrapping whenever
you are dealing with program listings! That is, if you are about to
paste in a listing from the clipboard, turn off wrap first. If your
cursor is anywhere in the listing, turn
off wrap. For normal text, you typically have wrap turned on, but
not for listings.
- How to
configure WinEdt or TeXnicCenter to pass IEEE PDF eXpress when error
reports said "Font XXX is not embedded"? (from UNC
thesis
FAQs) i.e., How to embed ALL fonts (including the times
family) in a PDF file?
TeXnicCenter Specific (1beta 6.31): (if
you have configured PS2PDF's command line like the above when
addressing the issue of A4 Size, you shouldn't have problems in the
missing font issue)
- You can configure the
PS2PDF command line options at menu "Build->Define Output
Profiles..." Click LaTeX=>PS=>PDF on the left-size list box,
then click Postprocessor tag, click the "Ghostscript (ps2pdf)" entry
in the list box on the right. The "Arguments" box on the bottom
should be put with the following command line options:
-sPAPERSIZE=a4 -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite
-dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dSubsetFonts=true
-dEmbedAllFonts=true -sOutputFile="%bm.pdf" -c save pop -f "%bm.ps"
where "-dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dSubsetFonts=true
-dEmbedAllFonts=true" specifies that all embedded fonts are included
in PDF.
- If your preferred size is letter
instead of A4, you need to replace the "
-sPAPERSIZE=a4" above with "-sPAPERSIZE=letter".
In
addition, add "-t letter" to the command line argument for dvips.
Note that you don't need to put
\pdfpagewidth=8.5in
\pdfpageheight=11in
to the document preamble as some guideline suggests.
WinEdit 6.0 Version Specific:
Please see here for
more tips.
WinEdit
5.5 Version Specific:
- Open WinEdt
- Select: Options, Execution Modes
- Select ps2pdf
The Command Line Switches for gswin32c.exe
are
-
-dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -r600 -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4
Add the following switches to this
line:
-dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dSubsetFonts=true -dEmbedAllFonts=true
WinEdit
Past Version Specific:
- The ps2pdf batch file has to be
changed. Assuming winedt is used, the batch file is typically under
C:\Program Files\WinEdt Team\WinEdt\Bin. Open the batch file and add
the option -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -dSubsetFonts=true
-dEmbedAllFonts=true -dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dCompatibilityLevel=1.3
for gswin32c. This approach has been tested with
Ghostscript 8.13. Note that the typical options, -dSubsetFonts=true
-dEmbedAllFonts=true, do not work without the pdf
setting.
It is possible however to tell PS2PDF to embed the fonts: (copied
from
here)
From now on PS2PDF will embed all fonts.
- How to
recognize EPS figures?
TeXnicCenter specific (1beta
6.31):
- When you use choose "LaTeX=>PDF"
in the shortcut box or in menu "Build->Select Output
Profiles...", you cannot successfully compile a LaTeX source file
including eps type figures. The reason is that "LaTeX=>PDF"
uses "PDFLaTeX", which doesn't support eps. More details can be
seen here.
To address this issue, you can use the following solution:
- Solution 1: Don't
use "LaTeX=>PDF" but use "LaTeX=>PS=>PDF"! When
you are editing the LaTeX source, you can use "LaTeX=>DVI".
When you want to produce a PS/PDF version to submit, choose
"LaTeX=>PS=>PDF" or "LaTeX=>PS".
- Solution
2: Try to install the MiKTeX 2.4.1705 version,
which is available at our research server:
/home/public/tools/miktex/small-miktex-2.4.1705.exe
WinEdt Specific:
- Don't use the "PDF LaTeX" button in the
botton bar. In order to generate PDF, following this action
sequence: first click "LaTeX" to generate the DVS file, then click
"DVIPS" button to generate the PS file, and finally click "PS2PDF"
to generate the PDF file.
- Space saving in LaTeX
- PDF
Files Created with LaTeX: The font looks blurry
- Converting a MS
PowerPoint slide/Word Image to EPS embedded in LaTeX (here is
another trick: convert
ppt
to eps)
Option 1 (recommended):
- Download and install OpenOffice
- Open a Powerpoint slide or Word with
OpenOffice
- Export it as a EPS file
(File->Export->Choose EPS file type)
- Open the generated EPS file with GhostView, and turn
on menu "Option->EPS Clip and EPS Warn". Choose the menu
"File->PS to EPS", allow the bounding box to be automatically
calculated, and save with a different filename, say,
figure_final.eps.
- You may import figure_final.eps into
a LaTeX document like
\begin{figure}[t]
\centerline{\includegraphics[scale=0.8,clip]{figure_final.eps}}
\mycaption{Figure name}{Figure.}
\label{fig:figure}
\end{figure}
Option
2: Please follow the steps below:
Download and install: wmf2eps;
this tool will provide you WMF2EPS Color PS L2 printer (I found MS
Windows' default postscript printer is not perfect for printing eps
files to nicely fit into LaTeX)
- Download WMF2EPS to a temporary directory in your hard
drive. Expand the downloaded file ("wmf2eps1.2.zip") to the
directory of your choice, for example, "c:\Program Files\wmf2eps".
- You may install the
(pseudo)-printer-definition file shipped with the program,
"WMF2EPS2.PPD", which uses the built in standard PostScript driver
of Windows 2000.
- Double-click on "Add printer"
under "Settings", "Printers" in the Start menu. Add a local
printer and select "FILE:" as the port. Then select "Have
disk" and click on the "Browse" button to point to "c:\Program
Files\wmf2eps\PSprint\Win2000\Standard\W2kPrint.INF". Windows
will display the name of the selected printer (WMF2EPS Color
PS L2). Click on "next". Windows will allow you to change the
name of the printer and also if the printer will be the
default ("No" should be selected). In the next two screens,
select "Do not share this printer" and do not print a test
page.
- "WMF2EPS Color PS L2" appears now
in the list of printers. Right-click on its icon and select
"Properties" from the context menu. In the "General" tab,
select "Printing Preferences" and scroll down to "Document
Options", "PostScript Options". Under "PostScript Output
options" select "Encapsulated PostScript (EPS)". Click on "OK"
to apply the change and close the properties dialog box.
Download and install: emftoeps
Save your PPT slide or other word images into Enhanced Metafile Format
(EMF) such as figure.emf
Run the emftoeps tool; within the tool, open the EMF file you just
saved
Choose menu "Edit->Preferences" (specify Resolution as default
300dpi) and choose WMF2EPS Color PS L2 printer as your printer. In
"print
setup->properties->paper/quality->advanced->postscript"
option, change postscript output option's value from "optimizing for
speed" to encapsulated postscript". Also change paper size's value
from A4 to postscript custom page size. These configurations are
important to display your later exported eps file correctly in your
LaTeX. You may also configure your printer's orientation as landscape.
Choose "Convert" from the menu to do either all files or those
selected by you. Then the files are saved in the same directory, with
the extension of ".eps", e.g., figure.eps.
Open the generated EPS file with GhostView,
and turn on menu "Option->EPS Clip and EPS Warn". Choose the menu
"File->PS to EPS", allow the bounding box to be automatically
calculated, and save with a different filename, say, figure_final.eps.
- You may import figure_final.eps into
a LaTeX document like
\begin{figure}[t]
\centerline{\includegraphics[scale=0.8,clip]{figure_final.eps}}
\mycaption{Figure name}{Figure.}
\label{fig:figure}
\end{figure}
- Converting a PNG or
another type of image to EPS embedded in LaTeX
Don't use JPEG but use PNG to get lossless images, see
here.
Note that it is bad to convert your Powerpoint or Word figures to PNG
images first and then convert the PNG images to EPS. You should
convert Powerpoint
or Word figures to PDF and then to EPS (see the
instruction above). But for screen snapshots, you may have to capture
the screen and then paste it inside a picture-editing software tool
(such as Windows Paint) and then save it as a PNG image. Then
following the steps below to convert a PNG image to EPS. See more tips
here.
Option 1: (Recommended)
- Download and install a free ImageMagick
tool set. Run "convert XXXX.png XXXX.pdf" in your command line to
convert your PNG file to a PDF file. (Please don't use the convert
command there to convert your PNG file to a EPS file directly!) See
the instruction on the convert command here.
- Then use your PDF reader (such as Adobe Acrobat) to open the PDF
file and then save it as a EPS file.
Option 2:
Please follow the steps below:
- Download an evaluation version of
Paint Shop Pro at www.jasc.com.
Althogh the site says it expires in 30 days, the software works
pretty much the same way beyond that period.
- Use Paint Shop Pro to open jpeg
- File-> Save As, then choose the
"Save as type": Encapsulated Postscript (eps)" and then click Save
button.
- Use GSview to open the eps
file.
- File-> PS to EPS
- A dialog pops up and you check the
checkbox of "Automatically calculate Bounding Box" and then click
Yes button
- A dialog pops up and ask you what
file you want to save the new eps. After you specify a new file
name and click Save button, you are done.
- Merging multiple
tex files and bib files into a single tex file for final submission
- Sometimes some camera ready versions
require you also submit your single LaTeX file besides your PDF and
PS files. But usually you put different sections as different LaTeX
source files and bib as a single file. Here is what you can do,
first copy your main LaTeX file into another file with the name as
expected by the camera ready submission. Then you start commenting
out \input{XXX} by adding "%" before it ot delete the line. Then you
replace the line with the content that you copy from the XXX.tex
file. A bit tricky is about the bib file. Assume in your original
main tex source file:
\bibliographystyle{abbrv}
\bibliography{yangtse}
- Assume your main tex file is
oopsla.tex, then you can find oopsla.bbl in the same directory,
which is the bibitem file compiled from your yangtse.bib file. Then
you can copy the content in oopsla.bbl to replace the line
"\bibliography{yangtse}" You can see the
single
source tex file that I produced for my
SIGPLAN
SRC 04 paper. Note that there I do some tricks to make the
bibitems with a smaller font size; you don't need to do that if you
have enough space.
- Note that you should compile the
resulting single tex file to see whether the generated PDF file is
the same as the one you earlier generate from multiple tex files.
Sometimes you may make mistakes in manually merging multiple tex
files into a single tex file.
- For example you can use the preceding
way to fulfill the requirement
from ACM
OOPSLA
06: "Please include all text (including
references from the .bbl file) into your .tex file to
make one complete .tex document. We do not want a directory of
multiple files, just one file with all text from your
submission. We do not need the figures. We are not recompiling
your submission, only using the one (single-complete) source
file to extract text and data that we need to make the metadata
for ACM's digital library."
- Managing bibtex
database
- Technical Publishing with
Microsoft Word
- Managing references: EndNote
+ Bibutils
(which converse bibtex items to endnote format)
- Drawing figures using
xfig
- Drawing figures
using Dia (download Dia here)
- Dia is a free open source tool that implements nice features of MS
Visio (like the way that OpenOffice
implements nice features of MS Office)
- To export to LaTeX/EPS format, right-click on the diagram and select
Export (or click menu File->Export), then select extension
type Encapsulated Postscript (EPS).
- Here are some
more
tips on tools for drawing figures and some
other
tips
- Drawing figures
side by side (from
tips here)
- To place to figures side by side, you could use minipage like this:
\begin{figure}
\begin{minipage}[b]{0.5\linewidth} % A minipage that covers half the page
\centering
\includegraphics[width=6cm]{bild1.eps}
\caption{En liten bild}
\end{minipage}
\hspace{0.5cm} % To get a little bit of space between the figures
\begin{minipage}[b]{0.5\linewidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=6cm]{bild2.eps}
\caption{En liten bild till}
\end{minipage}
\end{figure}
With minipage, you get
two different figures. Another way to do it is to use the package subfigure (\usepackage{subfigure} in the preamble). You
will then get two subfigures inside one figure.
\begin{figure}
\centering
\subfigure[Bild a.] % caption for subfigure a
{
\label{fig:sub:a}
\includegraphics[width=4cm]{bild_a.eps}
}
\hspace{1cm}
\subfigure[Bild b.] % caption for subfigure b
{
\label{fig:sub:b}
\includegraphics[width=4cm]{bild_b.eps}
}
\caption{Bild a och b.}
\label{fig:sub} % caption for the whole figure
\end{figure}
When you use subfigure
you only get one figure, i.e figure 3. When you refer to the
subfigures, they are called figure 3(a) and figure 3(b).
- Making project
schedule with MS Visio (copied from MS Visio Help)/Converting Visio
to EPS
- Simple solution for Viso -> EPS (copied
from
here): export as WMF from Visio, then use wmf2eps (http://www.wmf2eps.de.vu/)
to convert to EPS.
- Hide a data column: In a Gantt chart,
click the column heading of the column you want to hide. On
the Gantt Chart menu, click Hide Column.
- Redisplay a hidden data column: If you
hide a column in your Gantt chart, you can display it again with the
data preserved. Right-click the column to the right of where you
want the hidden column to reappear, and then click Insert Column. In
the Column type list, click the column type you previously hid, and
then click OK.
You cannot hide the ID column in your Gantt chart.
- Convert Visio to EPS (copied
from
here)
- 1. In Visio, Save As... a Windows MetaFile
- 2. Import the MetaFile into a program that can handle it, such as
Adobe InDesign or PageMaker. (Alternative: use ACDSee [using
PaintShop or other picture editting software seems to get
low-quality PDF] to open the Windows Metafile and print it to a PDF
using tools such as PDF FactoryPro with resolution as high as
600dpi)
- 3. Save as (or export to) a PDF.
- 4. Use Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader) to export as an EPS.
- 5. Use GSView to clean-up the bounding box (although Acrobat can
do this too, just not as accurately).
- Tricks in writing
LaTeX source
- Preparing preprint
versions for different conference styles (in preprint version,
you can put the conference info on the top of the paper's first page
and add page numbers to the paper
- For LNCS style:
%keep your original style file
\documentclass{llncs}
- For IEEE style: (download and use ieee.cls, ieee.bst)
%replace your original document class with ieee
\documentclass[preprint]{ieee}
...
%replace your original bib style with ieee
- For ACM style: (download and use sig-alt-release2.cls)
%replace your original document class with sig-alt-release2
\documentclass{sig-alt-release2}
- Then for either of these styles, add
the following after the line of "\documentclass...."
%the following are the new added lines
\usepackage{fancyheadings}
\renewcommand\headrulewidth{0pt}
\lhead{\scriptsize{\hspace*{0.2in}Appears in \textit{Proceedings
of XXXXX (XXXX 04), Seattle, WA}}
\pagestyle{plain} \setcounter{page}{290}
...
add the following line after the line of "\maketitle"
%the following is the new added line
\thispagestyle{fancy}
...
- Making Lyx exported
LaTeX file to work with conference style file (and produce
preprint version):
- In Lyx, click menu Layout ==>
Document, in Document Setting dialog, put the following in the
preamble:
\usepackage{LaTeX8}%this is ieee style file
\usepackage{times}
%the following is added if you want to produce a preprint
version
%with conference info on the top of the first page and add page
numbers
\usepackage{fancyheadings}
\renewcommand\headrulewidth{0pt}
\lhead{\small{\hspace*{0.3in}Preliminary version. To appear in
\textit{Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on
Software
Engineering (ICSE 05)}}}
\pagestyle{plain} \setcounter{page}{1}
- In Lyx, move mouse to the place after
the "Abstract", click menu Insert ==> Tex, then enter:
\thispagestyle{fancy}
- Counting
words
- dvips -o - substra.dvi | ps2ascii |
wc -w word-count
- Adding
"A/B/C/D/.."
before page numbers in LaTeX (format required in proposals at least
to DoD agencies)
- Step 1: Put the following in preamble
of your tex files:
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy} \cfoot{\sectionname-\thepage} \fancyhead{}
\cfoot{\sectionname-\thepage}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}
\newcommand{\sectiontitle}[1]{%
\pagenumbering{arabic}
\def\sectionname{#1}
}
- Step 2: Put \sectiontitle{D} in the
beginning of the part that you want the page numbers to start with
A/B/C/D...
If
you want to output your proposal title and "D. Project Description"
in the beginning of your proposal, you can use the following steps:
- Step 1: Put the following in preamble
of your tex files:
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy} \cfoot{\sectionname-\thepage} \fancyhead{}
\cfoot{\sectionname-\thepage}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}
\newcommand{\sectiontitle}[3][Your proposal title]{%
\pagenumbering{arabic}
\def\sectionname{#3}
\begin{center}
\Large{\textbf{#1}}\\*[3mm] \Large{\textbf{\textsc{#2}}}
\end{center}
}
- Step 2: Put \sectiontitle{D. Project
Description}{D} in the beginning of the part that you want the page
numbers to start with A/B/C/D...
- Information
on the Use of Designated Fonts in NSF Proposals More NSF
Guidelines are here
- Using Arial in
LaTeX
- Read
about NSF guide on using LaTeX (click "Next Page" till you
read all the pages of instruction)
- Note that for LaTeX users, you DON'T need to do anything special in
your LaTeX source file to accomodate the font requirement, since the
defaultLaTeX font is Computer Modern, exactly required by NSF. For
more see this
article
- You need to make sure "All pages of
the proposal must be numbered, including the 1 page summary."
- But what you (as a LaTeX user) need to make sure is to make your
proposal "margins, in all directions,
must be at least an inch.". Based on LaTeX
help for NSF proposal writers at MIT Math, you can put the
following lines in the begining of your proposal to make sure your
margines to be exactly an inch:
\documentclass[11pt,letterpaper]{article}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\pagestyle{plain}
%%
%%%%%%%%%% EXACT 1in MARGINS
%%%%%%%
%%
\setlength{\textwidth}{6.5in}
%%
%%
\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{0in} %% (It is recommended that
you %%
\setlength{\evensidemargin}{0in} %% not change these
parameters, %%
\setlength{\textheight}{8.5in} %% at the risk
of having your %%
\setlength{\topmargin}{0in}
%% proposal dismissed on the basis %%
\setlength{\headheight}{0in} %% of
incorrect formatting!!!) %%
\setlength{\headsep}{0in}
%%
%%
\setlength{\footskip}{.5in}
%%
%%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%%
\newcommand{\required}[1]{\section*{\hfil
#1\hfil}}
%%
\renewcommand{\refname}{\hfil References
Cited\hfil}
%%
\bibliographystyle{plain}
%%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
- Presentation Slides
- Creating effective poster presentations
- Jon
Doyle's NCSU
Beamer
Style (LaTeX
Beamer class)
- Peng
Ning's NCSU
CS
Powerpoint Template
- NCSU
CS Powerpoint Template 2
- Marie
Davidian's Presentations
using seminar.sty
(User's
Guide
for seminar.sty by Van Zandt) and the LaTeX
source code to create the slides (and the additional figure)
(in a
course on Preparation for Statistical Research offered at NCSU
Stat Dept.)
- Andreas
Zeller's LaTeX
style for presentations (short
intro in Germany). Visit his
course
web to see what generated PDF slides look like.
- Slidesshow
(making slides with DrScheme)
- Enable PowerPoint to typeset
sentences and equations using the power of TeX: Texpoint
TeX4PPT
- A Few Tips on How to Use PowerPoint for
Mathematical Presentations
- Converting MS Powerpoint slides to a Google Slides file in Google
Docs (if you fail to go through the normal exporting/importing way,
try the following one):
- Step 1. Change slides in my Powerpoint slides to use slides to
emulate animation (you can use the following free tool to
automatically do that: http://www.dia.uniroma3.it/~rimondin/downloads.php)
- Step 2. Create a Google Slides file fresh in Google Docs
- Step 3. For each slide in my Powerpoint slides, I select all
entities in the slide and press "Ctrl+C" to copy them, and then
press "Ctrl+V" to paste these entities to the editor browser
window for the Google Slides file. Note that such entities are
pasted as an image instead of editable entities in the Google
Slides file. Indeed, I need to do some position and size
adjustment on some images to make the images aligned well.
- If you want to collaborating with
others on making slides or maintain your own slides in CVS, you
might prefer to have a format that is in text form. The
text-form requirement seems to leave MS Powerpoint out of the
game. See more discussion below (the discussion includes thoughts
and experiences from Darko
Marinov)
- You can use LaTeX
Beamer class
and then make PDFs to show, but it may be painful to draw
figures.
- You can use Slidesshow
(making
slides with DrScheme) but if you are not comfortable
with DrScheme, it might not be a good choice.
- The other option is to use some
open-source replacement for PowerPoint, e.g., OpenOffice
or StarOffice.
Those
programs have better representation for slides (such as its ODP
format
written in XML) and thus can be stored in CVS. They can
also read Powerpoint files and convert them to their own text
formats but note that OpenOffice and StarOffice sometimes may
not correctly show some slides. It is good to use but it
doesn't seem as good as PowerPoint (or even as controllable as
LaTeX).
In order to compare two XML files from ODP, you need to split
them in lines; you can use the following:
sed 's/>/>\
' file.xml >file-with-line-breaks.xml
- Reference formats
- Organizing Thoughts
and Keeping Track of Peer Research
-
The info listed below on Things to do on finishing up a paper won't
be maintained. Please refer to Checklist
for Preparing Camera-Ready Versions, whose last part includes
and evolves the info below.
Things to do on finishing up a paper (here are some more
tips: Instructions
for
the Preparation of a Camera-Ready Manuscript in LaTeX, Form
&
Style, Rules
to
write a good research paper).
- 1. Turn on the spell check feature of your LaTeX editor (like
TeXnicCenter) to show the real time warning as red underlines
like in Microsoft Word. In TeXnicCenter,
Tools->Options->Spelling tab-> enable all checkbox options in
that tab including "Check spelling while typing". Then before you send
your paper for me to review or submit it to somewhere, make sure you
don't have red marks except for those words from the program source
code like method names or variable names. You can add those
special words (such as "AspectJ") that are not in dictionaries but are
ok in spelling to avoid their being marked with red underlines later
on.
- 2. Run the style-check on your LaTeX source files before you send me
your paper for me to review or submit it to somewhere. The
instructions of using style-check can be found here.
You should create style-check patterns as regular expressions based on
common errors that I pionted out on your writing in the past.
- 3. Print out your paper draft and go through it on hardcopy,
identify errors, and fix them before you send me your paper for me to
review or submit it to somewhere. Relying on screen reading is very
inefficient in spotting out writing errors. I don't do review on
screen but on hardcopies. In addition, don't revise your draft while
you are still in the middle of reviewing it; revise your paper only
after you finish reviewing the whole draft or at least a good portion
of your draft.
- More other steps before you submit
a paper:
- Use spell checker features of your
editing software and fix typos.
- Use style-check to scan through your
tex files (instructions are below) and fix
any warnings that you think need to be fixd. Especailly pay
attention to those warnings including ASE, which are created inside
the ASE group.
- Check the top margine of your generated
PDF. If they are too narrow, follow the
instructions here
- If you are submitting to an IEEE
conference, they usually provide an IEEE PDF eXpress interface for
you to check the compatibability of your generated PDF. One common
issue of generated PDFs is missing embeded fonts. Here are some
instructions on dealing with the issues.
- Some layout/format styles to follow:
- Try to arrange all figures or all
tables on top of the page rather than in the middle or bottom
of the page. If you have only one single-column figure/table, try
to arrange it on top right-column.
-
In addition,
don't make a table out of powerpoint or word and then
transform it to an EPS figure. You should directly write
the table in LaTeX formats. There are several advantages: they
look nicer; their content can more easily modified in
LaTeX; most importantly, you can use LaTeX macros to
automatically update the contents by using a (Perl) script to
transform the raw experimental data to the data entry data. See
my
ASE
04 LaTeX source example in making tables.
- Make sure all items in your
bibliography are consistent. For example, make sure all references
have page numbers (except for references on books or URL
resources). If you use the format of "In Proc. International
Conference" then stick to it for all references. If you use
the abbreviation of conferences/workshops, then put abbreviations
for all possible references.
- Look out for widow or orphan. You
should try to avoid these, as they disrupt your layout, are
unattractive, and can be confusing. To adjust space for avoiding
them, put \vspace*{-5.0ex} (changing 5.0 to other numbers as you
need; change - to + if you want to expand the space) below or above
figures, tables, or their titles.
- Balanced Columns on Last Page
- Thanks to Conference
Publishing Solutions: LaTeX: In
order to balance the columns of the last page to the same length,
insert the following command into the LaTeX source before
\begin{document} :
\usepackage{balance}
and the following in the text that would appear as first column of
the last page without balancing:
\balance
(Alternatively, \usepackage{flushend} might work as well.)
- Headline-Style Capitalization (Thanks to Conference
Publishing Solutions)
- Capitalize:
- first and last word, first word after a colon (subtitle)
- all major words (nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives,
adverbs)
- Lowercase:
- articles (the, a, an)
- prepositions (regardless of length)
- conjunctions (and, but, for, or,
nor)
- to, as
- Hyphenated Compounds:
- always capitalize first element
- lowercase second element for articles, prepositions,
conjunctions and if the first element is a prefix or combining
form that could not stand by itself (unless the second element
is a proper noun / proper adjective)
- Font Embedding (Archive PDF, als known as PDF/A-1a, cf. AIIM's
PDF/A Committee) (Thanks to Conference
Publishing Solutions)
- Some conferences may require you to
submit a single tex file including everything. But usually you have
multiple tex files for a paper. Here you can find the
guidelines of merging multiple tex files and bib files into a
single file.
- Using
style-check
in our research server
- I have installed style-check
in our research server. To use it, you need to go to your home
directory, type in:
ln -s /home/public/tools/stylecheck/.style-censor
.style-censor
This command generates a symblic link to the ASE group common
ruleset for checking. You only need to type in this command once.
Next time when you log in, the link is still there.
- You
upload your tex files to a directory under your home directory in
the server.
- Go
to the directory, type in the command line:
style-check.rb -v *.tex
If you want to save the checking results, you can type in:
style-check.rb -v *.tex > checklog.txt
- You
can view the log either in Linux or download it to your local
machine.
- Try
to search the line starting with "(matched". Then the line above it
is the verbose description of what the problem is. The line fruther
above is the place where the problem is found and the end of the
line shows the matched phrase.
- You can focus on those version
descriptions that start with " ASE "
- You
are encouraged to add more rules that you think you often violate
in to the rule set!
- To update to the rule set, you can
modify ~\.style-censor and add whatever rules that are specific to
you. Your group members can also get to share them automatically..
- Note that if you plan to add more
rules here, please put comments and put " ASE " in the beginning
of your comments so that we know the rules are created by our NCSU
ASE group and warnings related to them should be paid more
attention. Note that after "%" you need to specify a class
(syntax, capitalize, phrase, spelling, or ignoredcommand) and then
put your comments. More details on them can be found at here.
- To read how the existing rule sets
are written. You can take a look at the files located at
/etc/style-check.d/ and the rule set inside our ASE
group: /home/public/tools/stylecheck/.style-censor. When you
directly modify your ~/.style-censor in your home directory, the
changes shall be reflected on the one shared by us because of the
symbolic link you created earlier.
- I have incorporated many guidelines
in my Common
Technical
Writing Issues slides. But some of them may not be
easily incorporated. You shall take a look at the slides.
- Reference
formats
- Make sure you have consistent format for the references. I usually
use the following format:
D. Shepherd, J. Palm, L. Pollock, and M. Chu-Carroll. Timna: a
framework for automatically combining aspect mining analyses. In Proc.
20th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software
Engineering, pages 184-193,
2005.
To save space, you don't need to put conference locations, months,
publishers, or "(Proc)eedings of the". The items in the above format
are mandatory. But if you do want to include any of them in your
references, include them **consistently** for all references.
- If you copy bib entries from ACM Lib, you often need to turn the
first character of the words in the conference title to upper cases.
- In my bib file, I usually put the id for a bib entry with
AuthorlastnameYear:FirstConcreteWordOfTitle like "sen06:cute" for the
entry below.
- If some characters of some words in your reference paper title
should be upper case, you need to do special things as below. Bibtex
automatically turns the words (except for the first character of the
the first word) into lower cases. To force some words in the generated
title to maintain their original upper cases, you should put {} around
these words.
For example, you may have title like:
@inproceedings{sen06:cute,
author = {Koushik Sen and Gul Agha},
title = {CUTE and jCUTE : Concolic Unit
Testing and Explicit Path Model-Checking Tools},
booktitle = {Proc. 18th International Conference on
Computer Aided Verification},
year = {2006},
pages = "419--423",
note = {(Tool Paper)},
}
Then the
generated reference would include a title like "Cute and jcute:
Concolic ...". To generate "CUTE and jCUTE: Concolic ...", you need
to put {} around "CUTE and jCUTE" in the bib file like:
title
= {{CUTE and jCUTE} : Concolic Unit Testing and
Explicit Path Model-Checking Tools},
- Uploading
publications in the NSF
reporting system (e.g., for perparing your yearly report or final
report). Instead of manually entering your publication information, the
steps below enable that you can reuse your existing bib entries and your
publication lists from each previous year when preparing your final
report.
- Create your publication list in the bib format.
- Replace each "@inproceedings" with "@ARTICLE" and replace each
"booktitle" with "journal" (since the NSF reporting system allows only
journal publications but no conference publications, you need to
change your conference papers' format to journal format)
- Install and use the bib2endnote
tool to import the bib file and save it as an EndNote XML file (note
that this XML file doesn't seem to be recognized by the NSF system and
you need to do the subsequent steps)
- Use the Endnote software to
import the EndNote XML file to an EndNote library.
- Export the EndNote library as an XML file
- Upload the XML file in the NSF reporting system: the box below
"Upload Journal Publication citation(s) from your EndNote
library: (Note: To successfully perform a
file upload, all EndNote libraries must be exported in XML format
and include the following required fields: Author(s), Title,
Journal, Year.)"
- Disabling
PDF
Display in Firefox or using Foxit
Go
to the “Tools -> Options” menu
Select the “Downloads” tab
Open “View and Edit Actions…”
Enter “pdf” in the “Search” box
Select “Change Action…”
Change the selection from “Use this Plugin” to “Open them with the default
application”, which should point to Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Acrobat Reader,
or your favorite PDF viewer
Advice Collection on Technical Writing in Tao Xie's
comprehensive Advice Collections
Software
Engineering Conferences
Queens'
U
Graduate Resources
Chinatex.org
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