Software stuff
Math software
- Macaulay 2 -- software for commutative algebra and algebraic geometry.
- LiE -- software for representations of semisimple Lie algebras
- GAP -- software for group theory.
- Stembridge's packages -- MAPLE packages for symmetric functions, posets, and Coxeter groups.
- polymake -- software for convex polyhedra and related objects
Files I find very useful
General PDF stuff
- Rotate even pages -- A bash script to rotate
the even pages of a document. Can be modified to do odd pages. I found this
script here.
- pdfoutline -- command line utility to add bookmarks to a pdf file.
man page
- Removing the password from an encrypted PDF:
gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=unencrypted.pdf
-c .setpdfwrite -f encrypted.pdf
I got this from
here.
LaTeX
Here are some LaTeX packages that I like to use:
- tabmac—A
macro for typesetting Young tableaux, more flexible than youngtab.
According to the file, it's incomplete, but I've found it very useful.
Here are some various LaTeX nuances that I have had to find out by searching
google. I make them available here in the hopes that it helps someone.
- By default, LaTeX will only allow a matrix to have at most 10 columns. This
can be changed with the command \setcounter{MaxMatrixCols}{n} where n
is any number you want.
- One approach to left exponents is to use the macro
\newcommand{\leftexp}[2]{{\vphantom{#2}}^{#1}{#2}} so that
\leftexp{a}{b} produces b with a as its exponent on the left. The
\vphantom is to match the height of the argument. Replace the ^ with _
for left subscripts. You can also combine them: unfortunately, this solution
breaks down if you want left exponents and left subscripts, since they will
left-align on an invisible object instead of right-aligning.
- A really useful shorthand for \rightarrow is \to.
Similarly, a shorthand for \leftarrow is \gets.
- When you want to write "f: X->Y", it's best to use f \colon X \to Y
because the command \colon produces different spacing from just using
the character :
- When doing a citation in a Theorem, the following will cause an error:
\begin{theorem}[\cite[Theorem 1]{ssam}], and a fix is
\begin{theorem}[{\cite[Theorem 1]{ssam}}]. Another fix is to use
\cite{ssam}*{Theorem 1} instead.
- I feel that the enumerate, itemize, description
environments used up too much space when using the article document
class. The package paralist provides alternative environments which
give space-saving and better looking output. A description of this package can
be found
here.
- I like to end remarks, examples, etc. with a box just like the proof
environment. When an example ends with a displayed equation, it would be good
to be able to use \qedhere to get the box on the same line as the
equation. One way to define an example environment that lets you do this is
\newtheorem{eg}{Example}
\newenvironment{example}[1][]{\begin{eg}[#1]\pushQED{\qed}}{\popQED \end{eg}}
- Forcing \ref on renamed items to use the new names: link
- To fix an issue with hyperlinks and tables / figures / etc. where clicking the link leads to the caption rather than the table or figure, load the package \usepackage[all]{hypcap} after hyperref. Source.
This website has a lot more LaTeX
miscellany.
If you have any other suggestions, let me know.
Firefox
-
Open in Browser
-- useful for displaying text files (such as source code or .tex files) in firefox
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