path: root/docs/user/latex.txt

================================
 Generating LaTeX with Docutils
================================

:Author: Engelbert Gruber
:Contact: grubert@users.sourceforge.net
:Revision: $Revision$
:Date: $Date$
:Copyright: This document has been placed in the public domain.

.. contents::


Introduction
============

Producing LaTeX code from reST input can be done in at least two ways:

a. Transform the internal markup into corresponding LaTeX markup.
   For example, a section title would be written with the LaTeX section
   command: ``\section{this section title}``.

   This can be constrained by the LaTeX document class
   and may require hacking around bugs/features in LaTeX,
   but it produces a readable LaTeX file.

   If you prefer this approach, try ``rst2latex``.

b. Use LaTeX as a typesetting system to produce the desired document structure
   without bothering with the usual LaTeX idioms for representing
   document structure information.

   This is not constrained by a particular LaTeX document class
   and therefore requires hacking around bugs/features in LaTeX.
   But it produces a hard to read LaTeX file.

   ``rst2newlatex`` adds a lot of LaTeX macros and uses LaTeX as a typesetter
   without caring about producing readable LaTeX files.


Options
=======

Configuration can be done in two ways:

1. Options to the docutils tool: e.g. language selection.
2. Options to LaTeX via a stylesheet file.

The generated LaTeX documents should be kept processable by a standard
LaTeX installation (if such a thing exists), therefore the document
contains default settings. To allow *overwriting defaults* the stylesheet
is included at last.

Run ``rst2latex.py --help`` to see the command-line options, or have look in
config documentation.


=====================  ================================================
Configuration Issue    Description
=====================  ================================================
papersize              Default: a4paper. Paper geometry can be changed  
                       using ``\geometry{xxx}`` entries.

                       Some possibilities:

                       * a4paper, b3paper, letterpaper, executivepaper,
                         legalpaper
                       * landscape, portrait, twoside.

                       and a ton of other option setting margins.

                       An example::

                         \geometry{a5paper,landscape}
---------------------  ------------------------------------------------
paragraph indent       The default LaTeX behavior in most document classes
                       is the following: indent the first line in 
                       a paragraph unless it is the first line of 
                       a chapter, section, subsection, or 
                       subsubsection.

                       This is configurable.  For example, you could 
                       use the following lines to set paragraph 
                       indentation to zero but add a vertical space 
                       between paragraphs.::

                         \setlength{\parindent}{0pt}
                         \setlength{\parskip}{6pt plus 2pt minus 1pt}
---------------------  ------------------------------------------------
admonitionwidth        The width for admonitions.
                       Default: 0.9*textwidth, this can be changed 
                       e.g.::

                         \setlength{\admonitionwidth}{0.7\textwidth}
---------------------  ------------------------------------------------
docinfowidth           The width for the docinfo table.
                       Default: 0.9*textwidth, changed to e.g.::

                         \setlength{\docinfowidth}{0.7\textwidth}
---------------------  ------------------------------------------------
rubric style           The header contains the definition of a new
                       LaTeX command rubric. Inserting::

                         \renewcommand{\rubric}[1]{\subsection*{
                           ~\hfill {\color{red} #1} \hfill ~}}

                       sets rubric to subsection style in red.

                       Default: subsection style italic.
---------------------  ------------------------------------------------
line spacing           Is done with package *setspace*, which gives
                       singlespace, onehalfspace and doublespace 
                       commands. To get documentwide double spacing, 
                       add this to your stylesheet ::

                         \usepackage{setspace} 
                         \doublespacing

                       Another way ::

                         \linespread{1.55}

                       And yet another, add ``doublesp`` to the
                       documentoptions and e.g. ::

                         \setstretch{1.7}

                       for bigger linespacing.
---------------------  ------------------------------------------------
font selection         see below
=====================  ================================================

PDF generation
--------------

LaTeX offers three ways

pdflatex :
  Generates a PDF document directly from the LaTeX file. As always one
  might need to call it twice (thrice) to get internal references correct.

latex dvipdfm :
  Use ``latex`` to generate a dvi file and ``dvipdfm`` to produce a pdf file.
  If you will take this approach, specify ``documentoptions=dvipdfm``.

latex dvips ps2pdf :
  Produce a dvi file with ``latex``, postscript with ``dvips`` and pdf with
  ``ps2pdf``.

see next section for font selection.


Font selection
--------------

When generating pdf-files from LaTeX, use the pdflatex command, the files
are a lot smaller if postscript fonts are used. This *was* fixed by putting 
``\usepackage{times}`` into the stylesheet. 

It is said that the typewriter font in computer modern font, the default
LaTeX font package, is too heavy compared to the others. There is a package
or some commands too fix this, which i currently cannot find.

Some people diagnose a similar unbalance for the postscript fonts, the
package to fix this is ``\usepackage{pslatex}``.
pslatex in contrast to the standard LaTeX fonts has a bold typewriter font.

As ``times`` does not use the appropriate mathematical fonts and ``pslatex``
does not work with T1 encodings one should use::

  \usepackage{mathptmx}
  \usepackage[scaled=.90]{helvet}
  \usepackage{courier}

*font encoding* can be selected with option "font-encoding". Default
uses package "ae" for old style font encoding use "OT1". 

Hyphenation
-----------

The amount of hyphenation is influenced by ``\hyphenpenalty``, setting it to 
10000 almost prevents hyphenation. As this produces lines with more spcea 
between words one should increase LaTeX's ``\tolerance`` for this.

E.g. try ::

  \hyphenpenalty=5000
  \tolerance=1000

Unicode
-------

The generated LaTeX documents are in the input encoding per default. 

If the source document is in utf-8 encoding (or
``--output-encoding=utf-8`` is set), LaTeX needs unicode support
(the ``ucs`` package). If this is not available, specify
a different output-encoding, e.g. ``latin1``.

If LaTeX issues a Warning about unloaded/known characters adding ::

    \PreloadUnicodePage{n}

where *n* is the unicode pagenumber, might help.

.. _LaTeX unicode: http://www.unruh.de/DniQ/latex/unicode/

Table of figures
----------------

A table of figures can be generated by a command directly to LaTeX::

  .. raw:: latex

     \listoffigures

LaTeX also has a command ``\listoftables``.

Section numbering
-----------------

The options ``--section-numbering`` and ``--use-latex-toc``, both 
influence section numbering.

* If ``--use-latex-toc`` is specified the latex-writer generates 
  LaTeX output, so that LaTeX generates a table of contents and
  generates section numbers. Usually one does not want to have 
  section numbers generated by docutils in this case, therefore
  ``--no-section-numbering`` should be specified.

  The advantage is that LaTeX does put page numbers into the
  table of contents, but the section depth is limited by the 
  used LaTeX-documentclass, usually to three levels.

* If section numbering and LaTeX table of contents is used LaTeX and 
  docutils will number sections. To switch off displaying of LaTeX's
  numbers one has to add following lines to the stylesheet ::

    % no section number display
    \makeatletter
    \def\@seccntformat#1{}
    \makeatother
    % no numbers in toc
    \renewcommand{\numberline}[1]{}

  This enables to have the same section numbers as in other docutils-
  writers and page numbers in the table of contents.

Number pages by chapter
-----------------------

This can be accomplished with ::

  \usepackage{chappg}

From the documentation 

  Basic operation of the package is to redefine ``\thepage`` to be
  ``\thechapter-\arabic{page}``, and to cause the page number to be reset
  (to 1) at the start of each chapter.  So the pages of chapter 3 will
  be numbered 3-1, 3-2, ..., and the pages of appendix B will be
  numbered B-1, B-2, ...

See documentation for details and other possibilities.

Images
------

Images are included in LaTeX by the graphicx package. The supported
image formats depend on the used driver (dvi, dvips, pdftex, ...).

If pdf-image inclusion in pdf files fails, specify
``--graphicx-option=pdftex`` or ``--graphicx-option=auto``.


Commands directly to LaTeX
==========================

By means of the reST-raw directive one can give commands directly to 
LaTeX, e.g. forcing a page break::

  .. raw:: latex

     \newpage


Or setting formulas in LaTeX::

  .. raw:: latex

     $$x^3 + 3x^2a + 3xa^2 + a^3,$$


Or making a colorbox: If someone wants to get a red background for a textblock,
she/he can put \definecolor{bg}{rgb}{.9,0,0} into style.tex and in
reStructuredText do something like this::

  |begincolorbox|
  Nobody expects the spanish inquisition.
  |endcolorbox|

  .. |begincolorbox| raw:: latex

     \\begin{center}
     \\colorbox{bg}{
     \\parbox{0.985\\linewidth}{

  .. |endcolorbox| raw:: latex

     }}
     \\end{center}


Custom title page
-----------------

Currently maketitle only shows the title and subtitle, date and author are shown 
in the docinfo table.

To change the titlepage layout, e.g. see fancyhdr, one must redefine the
maketitle command in the stylesheet::

  \renewcommand{\maketitle}{
    \begin{titlepage}
      \begin{center}
      \textsf{TITLE \@title} \\
      Date: \today
      \end{center}
    \end{titlepage}
  }

``\@title`` contains the title.

Problems
========

Open to be fixed or open to discussion.

footnotes and citations
-----------------------

Initially both were implemented using figures, because hyperlinking back
and forth seemed to be impossible. Later images were put into figures.

This results in footnotes images and figures possibly being mixed at page 
foot.

* Use LaTeX footnotes and citations for printing or more complex layout.
* Footnotes and citations done with figures might excell in hyperlink
  support.

If ``use-latex-citations`` is used a bibliography is inserted right at
the end of the document. *This should be customizable*.

Tables
------

:Tablewidth: reST-documents line length is assumed to be 80 characters. The
             tablewidth is set relative to this value. If someone produces
             documents with line length of 132 this will fail.

             Table width is tried to fit in page even if it is wider than
             the assumed linewidth, still assumed linewidth is a hook. 

* In tools.txt the option tables right column, there should be some more spacing
  between the description and the next paragraph "Default:".

  Paragraph separation in tables is hairy. 
  see http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=struttab

  - The strut solution did not work.
  - setting extrarowheight added ad top of row not between paragraphs in
    a cell. ALTHOUGH i set it to 2pt because, text is too close to the topline.
  - baselineskip/stretch does not help.
* Should there be two hlines after table head and on table end ?
* Table: multicol cells are always {l}.
* The contents of a rowspan cell do not influence table height.
  (Maybe if we put a tabular inside ?)
* Table heads and footer for longtable (firstpage lastpage ..).
* Table cells with multirow and multicolumn
* literal-blocks in table cells: 

  - If verbatim or flushleft is used one gets vertical space above and below.
  - This is bad for the topmost paragraph in a cell, therefore the writer
    uses raggedright. 
  - Ragged right fails on followup paragraphs as the vertical space would be
    missing.

Notes
~~~~~

* table-style booktabs: booktabs.sty 1.00 does not work with longtable.
* If default table-style is not booktabs, but the document contains a table 
  with class booktabs, one has to add the latex package booktabs. That means
  put the line ::

    \usepackage{booktabs}

  into your latex-style.

Miscellaneous
-------------

* Selection of LaTeX fontsize configurable.
* Assumed reST linelength for table width setting configurable.
* literal-block indentation configurable.
* recognize LaTeX and replace by ``\LaTeX``.
* Support embed-stylesheet.
* Sidebar handling.
* Maybe add end of line after term in definition list. see
    http://roundup.sf.net/doc-0.5/features.pdf
* Pdfbookmark level 4 (and greater) does not work (might be settable but OTOH).
* center subsection{Abstract} gives a LaTeX error here.
  ``! LaTeX Error: Something's wrong--perhaps a missing \item.``
  Committed a HACK: centering by hfill.
* Document errors are also too silent.
* Use optionlist for docinfo, the table does only work for single page.
* Consider peter funk's hooks for TeXpert:
  
  * Define his own document preamble (including the choice to
    choose his own documentclass.  That would make the ``--documentclass``
    option superfluous).  I suggest to call this option ``--preamble``
  * Use two additional hooks to put additional stuff just behind the 
    ``\begin{document}`` and just before the ``\end{document}`` macros.
    Typical uses would be ``\tableofcontents``, ``\listoffigures`` and
    ``\appendix``, ``\makeindex``, ``\makeglossary`` and some such 
    for larger documents.

* The indentional problematic error in docs/user/rst/demo.txt is not
  referring anywhere.
* Footnotes are not all on the same page (as in
  docs/user/rst/demo.txt) and do not link back and forth.
* No link to system errors.
* Hyperlinks are not hyphenated; this leads to bad spacing. See
  docs/user/rst/demo.txt 2.14 directives.
* Meta keywords into PDF ?
* Pagestyle headings does not work, when sections are starred.
* For additional docinfo items: the field_body is inserted as text, i.e. no
  markup is done.
* Multiple author entries in docinfo (same thing as in html).
* keep literal-blocks together on a page, avoid pagebreaks.

  failed experiments up to now: samepage, minipage, pagebreak 1 to 4 before
  the block.