ART OGAWA
TeX Consultants
Three Rivers CA 93271, USA
ogawa@teleport.com
Abstract: The American Physical Society has just released a new version of their
REVTEX authoring package, REVTEX version 4.0. The revtex4 document
class for LATEX2e is completely new code, not a rewrite of REVTEX
version 3.1. Those preparing electronic submissions to APS journals, like
Physical Review, to American Institute of Physics journals, or to Optical
Society of America journals will use revtex4, available via
http://publish.aps.org/revtex4 and on CTAN.
The revtex4 document class allows the user to prepare a LaTeX document that will be suitable for electronic submission to any of the subscribing journals, without further alteration. The formatting details connected with a particular target journal are entirely taken care of by a single document class option. For example, a submission to Physical Review Letters would contain the simple statement:
\documentclass[prl]{revtex4}
If targetting the Reviews of Modern Physics, the ``prl'' is changed to ``rmp''. Within the document itself, the syntax is unaltered.
Version 4 contains most of the features of the considerably outdated
REVTEX 3.1, with considerably more powerful formatting. It is capable
of all of the features of LaTeX's twocolumn style, but in addition allows
switching to or from a one-column page layout anywhere on the page. A
number of bugs in LaTeX have been fixed, among them the infamous
``eqnarray'' spacing problem. Title page information, in the past
restricted to, e.g.,
\author, \title and \thanks, now accomodate all of
the required features of academic journals.
The document class has been expressly designed for compatability with the longtable package, and fixes a number of that package's limitations, such as its inability to work in a multicolumn page layout. REVTEX is also compatible with such popular LATEX extensions as hyperref, url, and array. Patrick Daly's natbib package is always loaded by revtex4, and his custom-bib package has been used to create BibTEX styles for APS journals.
The revtex4 class incorporates two new LATEX packages, ltxutil and ltxgrid, which are available separately for public use under the LATEX Project Public License (LPPL). The latter package, based on code developed by William E. Baxter, provides a completely rewritten output routine for LATEX, one that has far fewer limitations, and which fixes many of LATEX's bugs.
The revtex4 class is adaptable far beyond APS and OSA journals; users in our beta testing program have employed it for submissions to other journals, for the production of monographs, conference proceedings, and more. As well, the revtex4 document class provides an extensible architecture for other societies and journals to use: all of its APS-specific features are collected into a ``sub-package'', called aps.rtx. Those wishing to customize revtex4 to their own journals are encouraged to write their own .rtx file.
The revtex4 document class is the responsibility of the American Physical Society's Mark Doyle; the first draft was written by David P. Carlisle.