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GettingStartedLaTeX.md

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Getting started with a LaTeX document

After reading this document, you will know how to use BSD Owl Scripts to support you in the preparation and maintenance of LaTeX documents and especially:

  • How to produce a PDF file out of your manuscript.
  • How to prepare a document using a bibliography.
  • How to prepare a document featuring METAPOST figures.

This covers only the simplest use cases, the guide “Production of LaTeX documents” gives a deeper exposition of the features found in BSD Owl Scripts and their use.

Produce a PDF file out of our manuscript

We assume that we just created a manuscript mylastarticle.tex and will now prepare our system to let BSD Owl Scripts prepare the final PDF file.

Along with our file mylastarticle.tex we create a Makefile with the following contents:

DOCS=       mylastarticle.tex
.include "latex.doc.mk"

Then we can make our document and make clean after this.

Prepare a document using a bibliography

If our document requires a bibliography prepared by bibtex we just need to add USES+=bibtex to our Makefile:

DOCS=       mylastarticle.tex
USES+=      bibtex
.include "latex.doc.mk"

This will automatically process our bibliography database with bibtex. If our bibliography database does not lie in the same directory as our article, we should tell BSD Owl Scripts where that database is located. For this, we use the BIBINPUTS variable:

DOCS=       mylastarticle.tex
USES+=      bibtex
BIBINPUTS=  ${HOME}/share/texmf/bib
.include "latex.doc.mk"

Note that make clean will not remove the compiled bibliography, so that we can clean your directory before sending it to an editor or the arXiv. To get rid of the compiled bibliography, we can use the more powerful make realclean mantra.

BSD Owl Scripts can also take care of our METAPOST figures. If we use the grahicx package in LaTeX. all we need to do is to enumerate our metapost source files in the FIGS variable:

DOCS=       mylastarticle.tex
FIGS=       desargues.mp
FIGS+=      conics.mp
.include "latex.doc.mk"

The next time we make our document, METAPOST will be called automatically. Please note that BSD Owl Scripts runs METAPOST with the following options:

-s 'prologues=3'
-s 'outputtemplate="%j-%c.mps"'

With a similar intent as for bibliographies, making clean will not remove your pictures but making realclean will.