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 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 JPEG or another type of image to
EPS embedded in LaTeX
Don't use JPEG but juse
PNG to get lossless images, see here.
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}
%%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
- 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.
- An
“orphan” is a word or short
section of a line
isolated at the bottom of a paragraph or a page. Occasionally reports
will have orphan headings - that is, headings which are at the bottom
of the page, with the text that follows them on the next page.
- A
“widow” is a word or sentence isolated at the top
of a page (especially an otherwise blank page).
- 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
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