Monday, November 8, 2010

Tunning your Latex in a Linux box

Whenever I install Latex, in particular the texmf installation that comes with Ubuntu, I always end up missing some style, class and bibliography files. In order to fix this, I always do the following:

  1. Copy the files' directories that I'm missing to /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/ for styles (*.sty) and classes (*.cls); and to /usr/sare/texmf/bibtex/bst/ for bibliographic styles (*.bbt, *.bst)
  2. Make sure the directories are accessible for all users: chmod 755 -r /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/ /usr/sare/texmf/bibtex/bst/
  3. Reload texmf with: sudo texhash
This always works for me whenever I do a fresh install and have to install the proprietary classes and styles from OSA, IOP and APS.

Revtex 4.1 needs particular attention in Ubuntu, as the natbib package in the current distro is the old natbib. In order to make available the new natbib I do the following:

  1. Download natbib.ins and natbib.dtx and all the .bst files from http://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/natbib/
  2. Compile the instaler: latex natbib.ins
  3. Copy the result to a natbib folder in /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/ for styles (*.sty) and /usr/sare/texmf/bibtex/bst/ for bibliographic styles (*.bbt, *.bst)
  4. Make sure the directories are accessible for all users.
  5. Reload texmf with: sudo texhash

Now, everything should be ready to use the nice features of natbib in Revtex4-1 like \cite{SomeCite, *SomeOtherCite} in order to put SomeCite and SomeOtherCite in the same reference number without having to do it by hand.

I hope you find this helpful.

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