[OS X TeX] memoir class, Table questions, position of floats, line numbering

[George Ghio]

While you are on the subject I use the memoir class and am quite fond 
of it. Bit sad lately. Up graded to a new mac and OS10.3. Installed 
from texlive dvd and it works well. Sort of, maybe. Have not been able 
to load the Memoir package.  Tex was installed to

/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local

according to query of machine.

Question. where do I put the files for Memoir? Have tried every thing I 
can think of to no avail. Help would be appreciated. TIA

George
On 11/06/2004, at 12:57 PM, Will Robertson wrote:

>
> On 11 Jun 2004, at 11:39 AM, Denis Chabot wrote:
>
>>
>> One first question that comes to my mind is: why does the sample 
>> document use the memoir class, which is not described on most LaTeX 
>> guides? I found a 300 p document on memoir, but before digging into 
>> it (it is not light reading...), I'd like to know if there are 
>> significant advantages over the article class which would make this a 
>> good time investment.
>>
>
> The memoir class is like an amalgamation of the book class and the 
> article class and a bunch of often-used packages. The reason I 
> recommend it is *because* of the 300 page manual --- note that the 
> first half is typesetting fundamentals, and not specific to 
> typesetting in LaTeX.
>
> It provides an *integrated* way of customising your document. Rather 
> than with the article class, if you want to change the section 
> heading, you go and find a package that does this, read its manual 
> work out how to use it. Repeat ad nauseum if you want to edit the 
> headers/footers, page margins, table of contents formatting, etc etc.
>
> Your mileage may vary. If you just want a lightweight class that 
> provides the basics, but all means start off with the article class. 
> It's certainly more simple.
>
>
>> I had to make a few tables. I noticed that if you choose the Table 
>> macros in TeXShop, you get the elements of a Table pasted into your 
>> document, and the first line is:
>>
>> \begin{table}[htdp]
>>
>> What does the d do? I only found the description for h, t, b and p, 
>> not d.
>>
>> To continue with Tables, is there a way to merge two cells vertically?
>
> I didn't know TeXShop came with a table template! Anyway, that d is a 
> typo. You are correct, the only ones you can choose are h t b & p. You 
> can use ! to tell LaTeX to try really hard to do what you want, at a 
> slight expense to good looks.
>
> Unfortunately, there's no way to merge cells vertically.
>
>>
>> I had to trim the column headings quite a bit to get a table to fit 
>> within the width of the text. Maybe I could have reduced the font 
>> size (maybe this will be ugly, but I'd like to try). Is there a way 
>> to reduce font size for a whole table? Maybe the same technique would 
>> allow me to make headings of a table bold, but the rest plain, when 
>> journals want this style?
>
> To make everything smaller, you can use a \small command at the same 
> place as the \centering command. As for styled headers, I'd make a new 
> command in the preamble like \newcommand{\head}[1]{\textbf{#1}} and 
> use that for all of your table headings --- if you ever need to change 
> them all, just edit the command definition to however you like.
>
>>
>> I found how to center headings that happened to be multicolumn, but 
>> how do you center a column heading when you want the remainder of the 
>> column to be right aligned?
>>
>> Anyway, my tables worked quite well for a first attempt, but I must 
>> say it is slower to make a table this way versus a graphical 
>> interface.
>
> There is probably a more elegant solution, but this came to mind 
> immediately: (it also shows the bold header thing)
>
> \documentclass{article}
> \newcommand{\head}[1]{\hfill\textbf{#1}\hfill}
> \usepackage{booktabs}
> \begin{document}
> \begin{table}[htbp]
>    \small
>    \centering
>    \begin{tabular}{@{} llr @{}} % Column formatting, @{} suppresses 
> leading/trailing space
>       \toprule
>       \multicolumn{2}{c}{Item} \\
>       \cmidrule(r){1-2}
>       \head{Animal}    &  Description & Price (\$)\\
>       \midrule
>       Gnat      & per gram & 13.65 \\
>                 & each     &  0.01 \\
>       Gnu       & stuffed  & 92.50 \\
>       Emu       & stuffed  & 33.33 \\
>       Armadillo & frozen   &  8.99 \\
>       \bottomrule
>    \end{tabular}
>    \caption{An example of a table generated with the \textsf{booktabs} 
> package:}
>    \label{tab:booktabs}
> \end{table}
> \end{document}
>
>
>> I love not having to worry about where my figures end up (one of my 
>> main beef with Word). But many ended up alone on a page, when I 
>> thought there was enough space for a few lines of text on the same 
>> page. I have a very small sample size, remember, but it looks to me 
>> that text will be placed with my floats only if whole paragraphs can 
>> fit. Is there a way to have parts of paragraph accompany floats on a 
>> page, or if this a behavior that insures better looking document and 
>> I should not mess with it?
>
> To quote epslatex.pdf:
>
> <<
> 1. Don’t handcuff LATEX. The more float placement options are given to 
> LATEX, the better it handles float placement. In particular, the 
> [htbp] and [tbp] work well. See Section 16.2.
>
> 2. Many people find the default float parameters are too restrictive. 
> The following commands
>   \renewcommand{\textfraction}{0.15}
>   \renewcommand{\topfraction}{0.85}
>   \renewcommand{\bottomfraction}{0.65}
>   \renewcommand{\floatpagefraction}{0.60}
> set the float parameters to more-permissive values. See Section 17.2.
> >>
>
>>
>> Finally, although I don't need this right now, in biology we often 
>> have to submit documents that have lots of space between the lines 
>> within paragraphs (double interligne in French). It is not pretty, 
>> but journals want the manuscripts that way. How would you do this? 
>> And if the journal also wants line numbers to appear in the left 
>> margin, can this be done with LaTeX?
>
> For the first, look at
>
> http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=linespace
>
> That something I think I forgot in my sample document. The TeX FAQ 
> *will* have answers to almost anything you have questions about. Find 
> it at the link about.
>
> For the second:
>
> http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=linenos
>
> Hope that helps!
>
> Will
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