Ask Nelly
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Customizing lists
Dear Nelly,
In my document I often use the main three list environments of LaTeX: enumerate, description and itemize. Unfortunately, I'm not always pleased with the results I get, especially the spacing. Is there a way to customize these lists?
Sincerely,
Alex
Dear Alex,
Actually, there is. LaTeX has a built-in system of parameters that can be adjusted by the user. Not all LaTeX books discuss these fine-tuning issues. A place where you can find a complete discussion is, of course, the LaTeX Companion.
I would recommend, however, another way. I think you should use the package enumitem, by Javier Bezos, available from CTAN. You simply have to load the package with a
\usepackage{enumitem}
command. The parameters of the lists become optional parameters of the corresponding environment. See the package documentation for the list of parameters. For instance, if you want to adjust the separation of items and the left margin of an itemize list, you just begin the environment with a command of the form:
\begin{itemize}[itemsep=0.5ex,leftmargin=1.2cm]
Best regards,
Paul (on behalf of Nelly)
The above question was answered by Paul Blaga, a member of the editorial board of this journal. He can be reached at pracjourn at tug dot org.
Producing logos
Dear Nelly,
I've seen documents and books with logos for different "components" of LaTeX, for example Metafont, BibTeX, AMS-LaTeX. How are they produced?
Sincerely,
John
Dear John,
It depends. Some of them are built-in. For instance, we use
\LaTeX
for producing the LaTeX logo or
\AmS-\LaTeX
to produce the AMS-Latex logo. For other logos, however, you have to load various packages. A package that contains many logos is texlogos, by Jacek Ruzyczka, available from CTAN. It has no documentation, so you will have to look into the style file to figure out what's in it. It includes redefinition of some of the logos of the LaTeX world, but also, for instance, logos for some international currencies. Other sources of useful logos are the files ltugboat.cls and ltugcomm.sty, also available from CTAN. These two files also include a logo for XeTeX, which is not present in texlogos.
Best regards,
Paul (on behalf of Nelly)
The above question was answered by Paul Blaga, a member of the editorial board of this journal. He can be reached at pracjourn at tug dot org.
