Working with multibib, Bibtex started failing me after a recent reinstallation of texlive on xubuntu. On
bibtex <project-path>/src.aux
I got:

bibtex: Not writing to <project-path>/src.blg (openout_any = p). I couldn't open file name `<project-path>/src.blg'

To get rid of the error, open texmf.cnf, which resides in /usr/share/texlive/texmf/web2c through
sudo...   READ MORE

I have not needed it so far, but I’m sure the day will come where someone insits, so this howto might come in handy: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1033441

Today I found a second way to achieve a strikethrough in LaTeX (what is done by »line-through« in css: strike out text). If you want to put a line across text, your choices are »ulem« and »cancel«:

Strikethough in LaTeX using »ulem«

\usepackage{ulem} in the preamble...   READ MORE

In short: To avoid the standard pixel bitmap fonts and go for smooth, scalable post script ones, use one of the following:

\usepackage{palatino}
\usepackage{times}
\usepackage{bookman}
\usepackage{newcent}

or, for standard post script fonts

\usepackage{pslatex}...   READ MORE

In css there is the handy absolute positioning. Today I found out how to do it in LaTeX:

In the preamble

\usepackage{textpos}

In the document

\begin{textblock}{2}[0,0](8,1.5)     Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet \end{textblock}

The arguments are as follows:

\begin{textpos}
    {<width>}
...   READ MORE

I left biting marks in the table on this one. I don’t know if it’s a general issue or just my document. Anyway:

I wanted to have footnotes from inside sections, subsections, and subsubsections. They work similar to footnotes in tables, you...   READ MORE

By default LaTeX starts the footnote counter at zero for each chapter when you use the class {book} or {scrbook}. If you want to avoid that and have a continuous enumeration, here is how it works:

Create a folder <remreset> in your local package...   READ MORE

There are various possibilities to include Greek text in your LaTeX document. The three ones I found are these:

1. $\Gamma\rho\varepsilon\varepsilon\kappa$ gets you Γρεεκ allright, but it looks clumsy and lacks all the accents etc.
2. betababel. It does not work with my customised control sequences, and I am too lazy to change them and learn them all anew.
3. polutonikogreek. Neat, slim, worked straight away.

Nos. 2 & 3 use ngerman, so make sure they don’t start a fight with german.

update

I had a slight problem with polutonikogreek and titletoc. Whenever I used something like

\greek{p’olemos}

which referred to this entry in the preamble:

\newcommand*{\greek}[1]%    {\selectlanguage{polutonikogreek}{#1}%    \selectlanguage{german}}

the .toc-file looked like this at the corresponding place:

[…] \contentsline {section}{\numberline {1.1}KAPITEL-1.1}{14} \contentsline {subsection}{\numberline {1.1.1}UNTERKAPITEL-1.1.1}{14} \select@language {polutonikogreek} \select@language {german} \select@language {polutonikogreek} \select@language {german} \contentsline {subsection}{\numberline {1.1.2}UNTERKAPITEL-1.1.2}{20} […]

Wherever \select@language appeared in the toc, the styling of my toc entries of the subsection level was being messed up. I style subsection entries in the toc in a way that they all get written in a single line. It looks like this:

\titlecontents*{subsection}[3.5em]
   {\vspace{-0.5mm}\itshape\footnotesize}{}%
   {}{\dots\normalfont\footnotesize%
   \thecontentspage.\enspace}%
   [\itshape][\vspace{1mm}]

There are two solutions.

Ignore the problem, compile your document, open the .toc-file, delete all \select@language entries and compile again (but only once). Use the following specifications in your preamble:

\usepackage{ucs}
\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
\usepackage[polutonikogreek,german]{babel}
\newcommand{\gdir}%

...   READ MORE

How it does work:

Here is what we do: We define the counter

\newcounter{MyCounter}

then we add

\renewcommand\theMyCounter{\roman{MyCounter}}

after it, and it works. Thanks to Axel for his help on this.

How it does not work:

When you define a new counter like this

\newcounter{MyCounter}

And later use it like this

\refstepcounter{MyCounter}\label{example} \roman{MyCounter}. Beispiel eins

And then reference it like this:

And now I reference an example \ref{example}. \end{document}

Then LaTeX still interprets it as...   READ MORE

While working on a somewhat larger scale document I always end up with numerous prints, .dvis, .pdfs and so on and so forth. Once, I lost...   READ MORE