Latex Tips

Tips on using Latex for Scientific Publishing

Latex tools:

• Plenty of WYSIWYG editors available: sharelatex for online editing and sharing, or texstudio or texmaker for local editing
• If you don't want to use a latex editor, I suggest a latex Makefile (e.g. Scolin's Makefile)

Packages:

• Use the "acronym" package to manage acronyms. It expands the first occurrence of an acronym automatically.

Referencing and bibliography:

• I tend to prefix references as follows: sec:section_name, fig:figure_name, tbl:table_name)
• Use "label" on all main sections (e.g. \label{sec:intro}) to reference them properly (e.g. \ref{sec:intro} in the table of contents
• Use rfc.bib to reference RFCs instead of crafting the references manually
• When using \cite{}, then please employ ~ when you want to "glue" the cited word and the cite together (e.g. RFC1234~\cite{rfc1234}) on the same line.

Version control:

• git is usually an overkill for version control, svn is usually sufficient enough
• Indent the text into e.g. 80 characters if you use version control and have multiple contributors. Just to avoid silly version control conflicts.