Latex


Using Nomenclature in TeXstudio

Recently, we were compiling a Latex document that was using the nomencl package to create a nomenclature list. The tool that we were using was TeXstudio. We noticed that the nomenclature was not in the final document and no error was generated to indicate so.

To fix the issue, we had to manually execute the makeindex command which would create the necessary meta-files. To avoid using a terminal each time we wanted to update the nomenclature, we defined a custom command in TeXstudio which would make the process a bit more easy for us.

In the following video you will see the following steps:

  1. Going to Options menu.
  2. From there selecting the Configure TeXstudio option.
  3. From the popup window, we switched to the Build tab by clicking on the appropriate button on the left side column.
  4. In the group User Commands we clicke on the + Add button which created a new entry for us.
  5. In the new entry we filled:
    1. The menu name of the command: user0: Make Nomenclature
    2. The actual command to build the files needed for the nomenclature: makeindex -s nomencl.ist -t %.nlg -o %.nls %.nlo
  6. Then we clicked on the OK button to close that window.
  7. To test that the command works as expected, we went to the Tools menu.
  8. From there to the sub-menu named User, where we found our new command listed as 1: Make Nomenclature.
    This command produced all files necessary for the makenomenclature command to work.
  9. Finally, we clicked on the Build & View button to verify that everything is OK.

Package pdftex.def Error: File `xyz-eps-converted-to.pdf’ not found: using draft setting. [Ubuntu]

Recently we were struggling with the following error whenever we were trying to use an eps figure with the pdflatex compiler.

Package pdftex.def Error: File `xyz-eps-converted-to.pdf' not found: using draft setting.

After trying several online remedies which all failed, we tried to convert the eps figure to pdf manually on the shell and we got the following error:

$ epstopdf
Command 'epstopdf' not found, but can be installed with:
sudo apt install texlive-font-utils

Following the advice on the shell, we installed texlive-font-utils and guess what? After compiling our Latex document again, the error was gone and the eps figure was successfully converted to a pdf!!


Latex/Beamer: Notes page would not use whole space when in 16:9 aspect ratio

In a recent presentation we did, we added a lot of long notes…
At the specific document we had changed the aspect ratio to 16:9 using the following documentclass.

%[aspectratio=169] changes aspect ratio for slides from 4:3 to 16:9, should be better with columns
\documentclass[aspectratio=169]{beamer}

When we compiled the presentation showing the notes on the second screen, we noticed that the notes were not utilizing all of the white space. There was a huge empty column to the right, most probably it was the space that was added after changing the aspect ratio from 4:3 to 16:9.

The template we were using for the notes page was plain. To fix this issue we used the following commands to create a new version for the plain template, called wideplain.

\makeatletter
\defbeamertemplate{note page}{wideplain}{
	\vskip.25em
	\nointerlineskip
	\begin{minipage}{.9\paperwidth}
		\insertnote
	\end{minipage}
}
\makeatother

After we used this new template, the notes became wider and they used all of the available space.

%Enable to produce notes
\usepackage{pgfpages}
\setbeameroption{show notes on second screen=right}
\setbeamertemplate{note page}[wideplain]

Note:

In the code we defined the new template, initially we used \textwidth instead of \paperwidth which resulted in the same result as the plain template. So we assume that there is an issue somewhere that the notes template does not adapt its \textwidth properly when changing the paper aspect ratio.


Latex/Beamer: Do you type too many notes?

We most certainly do!

For that reason we needed to make the template for the notes as simple as possible. To avoid developing our own template for the notes page, we used one of the three basic predefined templates named plain.

Using plain we got an empty slide in the notes page which allowed us to add a lot more content!

The basic 3 template options for the notes slide are the following

  1. default The default template shows the last slide in the upper right corner and some information that should help you match a note page to the slide that is currently shown (e.g. title of section and subsection).
  2. compress The option produces an output that is similar to the default, it fits more content onto each note page at the price of legibility.
  3. plain An empty page to add notes to.

Usage example:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{pgfpages}
\setbeameroption{show notes on second screen=right}
\setbeamertemplate{note page}[default]
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
Some content.
\note{Some note for the content}
\end{frame}
\end{document}