Talk:LaTeX/Page Layout

Is this a semi protected page?
I don't see the lock icon, but my 2 edits so far gone into a pending state, awaiting review. Is this standard practice for wikibooks that have reached a fairly high level of quality like this one? Just trying to understand how wikibooks works...Paulgush (discuss • contribs) 18:20, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

question: lastpage
Page n of m

Question: what if I dont want the LastPage to be a hyperlink? \pageref{LastPage} creates a hyperlink but this is not desired. How does one make it just normal nonlinking text? 76.119.228.130 (talk) 21:03, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Answer: Use \pageref*{LastPage} to get the LastPage without it being a hyperlink.

setlength vs renewcommand
I'm pretty sure you should use \setlength instead or \renewcommand for "sizes" such as \headrulewidth. --Christiandaven (talk) 07:07, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * As far as I know, you may be able to use both, but just about all the official documentation suggests \renewcommand, especially for the rule widths. --Jb-adder (discuss • contribs) 14:48, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Definitely not. is a macro, not a length. -- Johannes Bo (discuss • contribs) 19:39, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

One inch offset
Is the 1-inch offset shown in the figure (legend items 1 and 2) really a LaTeX feature? I have recently encountered a very similar problem in Gnuplot: In postscript terminal, try setting the canvas size to the exact paper size (e.g. A4 = 21.0 cm wide and 29.7 cm high or vice versa in landscape mode), and set the plot margings to match the canvas. Then the whole plot is offset by about an inch downward and to the right, so that part of it is off-canvas.

I vaguely remember that there is a Postscript standard describing this which has been adopted by LaTeX. But I didn't yet find appropriate google keywords to search (at least, I've found this Wikibook this way).--SiriusB (talk) 12:57, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Marks for starred chapters
Should something be written in here regarding "starred" chapters and sections, and the fact that you have to manually mark them in order for them to appear in the headers/footers (i.e. appear "marked")? --Jb-adder (discuss • contribs) 14:34, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * No, this has nothing to do with page layout, but with marks. --Johannes Bo (discuss • contribs) 18:18, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Page Layout
There is a discrepancy in the \marginparwidth measure. If the text says that one inch has 72 points and the left margin has more than one inch, the size of 35 points stated below the page drawing is incorrect. Taking a look at The not so Short Introduction to LaTeX, that measure is 106 points. Which makes much more sense. 189.62.16.159 (discuss) 23:10, 20 January 2012 (UTC) Alessandro Antonello

Number of letters in one line
I counted the number of letters in one line for two scientific academic books, and find that the number is close to 80.

I also found that in these academic books they never have blank pages between chapters, and a chapter is allowed to start on even pages. Personally I find blank pages annoying and it is a waste of paper (when printed out).

Adding information for the iPad Age
I have added a paragraph for information for the people who want to make LaTex documents for reading on iPads. I have spent a lot of time on the issue of document sizes as the newly elected publisher of Volume 63 of the Case Western Reserve Law Review. The information I provide is helpful, albeit not properly formatted. I urge those considering the revision to modify it as necessary to comply with the style requirements while keeping the substance. The truth is epub and Word don't work for academic publishing on iPads, and LaTex is, like Obi-Wan, our only hope. The use of the Supreme Court documents size is because it is the only standardized paper size that is close to the iPad screen.

The layout of this page could be reconsidered
One of the main issues faced by non-American authors, particularly those new to LaTeX, is page sizes. The insistence of using a local standard, US Letter, instead of the almost universal A4 as the default paper size, gets messy for people who do not know. Many such have never run into the non-A4 standards, per se, and can find it difficult to make their first attempts at writing TeX work as they want it. I know it can be argued that there is sufficient information around to easily overcome that issue, and there is, but it is sometimes obscured or overshadowed by the order in which these things are placed on a page. Where I suggest that a full explanation of page sizes should be the first thing, it is usually supplanted by margins. In this page, it is done a little better, Page dimensions, then Top Margin then Page Size issues. What is the difference between Page Dimensions and Page Sizes? Can this be reordered perhaps, to be a little more consistent? I would suggest that Page size issues needs be discussed before dimensions.

The other thing is that when discussing page layouts, margins always use the same, single, confusing, over-detailed diagram. For most people this is going to be OK, but for the Spatially challenged it is actually quite unintelligible. Could this be replaced with a number of smaller, maybe even color coded, diagrams? I suggest that it would be made a lot clearer. --Henry Tallboys (discuss • contribs) 21:11, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

The a4wide package
By a qiuck google search it seems to me that the a4wide package is obsolete. This is mentioned as one option in the text and should perhaps be altered? NillaAR (discuss • contribs) 14:53, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

I have changed the text. I write that it is not recommended, and give an example of the geometry package that is nearly equvivalent to the a4wide package. I find these parameters here. If someone has better parameters to the geometry package to imitate a4wide, please change it. -- Harp (discuss • contribs) 20:24, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

fancyhdr
Some of the content in the page styles under Standard Page Styles is actually added by fancyhdr. For example, the command \thetitle is added by fancyhdr, and the page style fancy is also added by fancyhdr. That content should be moved to the section customizing with fancyhdr.

List of commands placed incorrectly:

\thetitle \thechapter \thepage \thesection

66.41.138.150 (discuss) 02:03, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Should the layout of this wikibooks page itself be reconsidered?
If the authors of this claim really believe in it: "Studies have shown[2][3] that it's easier to read text when there are 60–70 characters per line—and it would seem that 66 is the optimal number." Wouldn't they also direct their concerns of line length to this wikibook itself? --Njk (discuss • contribs) 04:24, 17 February 2016 (UTC)


 * You cannot do that by simple means on one wiki only. You could enforce this to mediawiki in general (i.e. also wikipedia) and change the viewing experience of millions of people. In other words, this is a web page, not a printed document. One of the great challenges of our days is to create a system, which reliably outputs pdf (for printing) and ebook formats and html pages to suit everybodies needs. --Johannes Bo (discuss • contribs) 07:45, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

I created 75 percent of the pdf versions currently available on the english wikibook with my own conversion tool. The number of characters per lines is much lower that in the wiki, typically of the order of 80. The sourcecode of the system is available as well as binary releases for the most popular operating systems. I recommend to look at the pdf version of the latex wikibook book for example. Yours Dirk Hünniger (discuss • contribs) 12:22, 20 February 2016 (UTC)