Author: V.H. Belvadi
Webpage: http://vhbelvadi.com/latex-lecture-notes-class/
Description: A LaTeX document class built for lecture notes for classes/seminars, entire courses or brief talks. A detailed article about this class can be found on the author's website. The same data condensed into brief notes about working with this class, for those who are familiar with this sort of thing, can be found below.
Download: To work with this class the absolute minimum requirements are the .cls and .sty files, but this repository has several other files too. The easiest approach is to download the latest release and manually extract the two required files. Alternately, you can use svn or git sparse checkouts.
Simply drop the .cls
and .sty
files into your LaTeX document tree.
On UNIX systems this is usually ~/texmf/
and is C:\Users\user_name\texmf\
on Windows.
Although not necessary, it is highly recommended that you place these files inside their own folder with the tree .../texmf/tex/latex/folder_name
for better package management1.
MikTex does things differently2: C:\Users\user_name\Appdata\Local\MikTex\###\tex\latex\local\
.
On a Mac navigate to ~/Library/texmf/
using the option key once you are in the Go menu on any Finder window.
There are several resources online that can help you in greater detail when it comes to installing .cls and .sty files. Once you figure out where they should be placed in your TEXMFHOME tree, just make sure the two files reside together in the same folder.
Your documents based on this lecture class must adhere to the following blueprint:
\documentclass[options]{lecture}
\title{}
\subtitle{}
\shorttitle{}
\ccode{}
\subject{}
\speaker{}
\spemail{}
\author{}
\email{}
\flag{}
\date{}{}{}
\dateend{}{}{}
\conference{}
\place{}
\attn{}
\begin{document}
\end{document}
The document class lecture
calls this class file. Options for the class are as outlined below.
Most of the data such as subtitle, course code, speaker, author etc. are optional. These are used to set up the head of your document, headers of your pages and pdf attributes. (The subject data, for example, is only for the metadata of your pdf output file.)
Take a look at the Sample.tex file for an example of how these lines are used in a source file and for details of exactly what each command does. Also look at the Sample.pdf output file to see how (great) things will look in the end.
The following are primary options that must compulsorily be included. Pick one from each set below:
- The language of your document:
english
french
italian
(see acknowledgements and the road ahead)
- The type of your lecture notes:
seminar
usually for single class/session/seminar/lecture periodcourse
for a collection of lectures (over a semester or over a few days)talk
for brief notes for speakers (or any other use you can think of for condensed, two-column layouts)
NB Please delete all aux files and then compile if you decide to change languages halfway through. Compile twice to update TOC in case of course
type documents.
You can also include secondary options for your document. Again, pick one from each set below:
- Customise page headers as needed:
headertitle
to display the main title/short alternative titleheadersection
to display the current/next section as appropriateheadersubsection
to display the current/next subsection as appropriateheaderno
for a blank header (footers still display page numbers)
NB The default behaviour is to display current/next sections and subsections.
- Customise theorem numbering as needed:
theoremnosection
theoremsection
theoremsubsection
- Choose if you want to start every new section on a new page/new right-hand page:
cleardoublepage
nocleardoublepage
- Optimise your document for printing:
oneside
twoside
- Choose between one- and two-column layouts:
onecolumn
twocolumn
There are some additional commands you can use inside your document, i.e. within \begin{document}
and \end{document}
, besides those which are already part of the blueprint given above:
\lecture[duration]{dd}{mm}{yyyy}
for use incourse
type documents for providing information about lectures in the margin\separator
for use intalk
type documents to draw a visually helpful horizontal separator line\tosay{message}
for use intalk
type documents to print messages inside a box to help recall important data\margintext{message}
to make useful notes in the margin
hyperref
mathtools
csquotes
microtype
amsmath
booktabs
multirow
kpfonts
fancyhdr
mparhack
tikz
mathdots
xfrac
faktor
cancel
babel
- 1.2 French language support
- 1.1 Improved default headers
- 1.0 Initial release
- Translations are welcome and appreciated.
- General suggestions for improvement are welcome as well.
Either fork this project and submit a pull request or, only in case of translations, drop me an e-mail with the relavant translations and specify how you wish to be credited.
Not specifying a custom page header results in ugly defaults.Using theheaderno
option messes up page header text dimensions.
- The
headerno
and a couple of other options with minor errors will be corrected over time. - A .gitignore will be added at some point just to make it simpler to clone this repo.
- An option system that lets users specify if they prefer to use various packages regardless of pdfTeX support and then loads certain packages accordingly.
- Errors that crop up from time to time will be set right (since I use this class myself to teach at University) and this will go on so long as I keep using it.
- Package dependencies will not reduce. This type of collaboration is what LaTeX packages are for and they're free. When (and if) some package drops support we can think of bridging the code.
This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE.md file for details.
Thanks to Stefano Maggiolo for initially helping me kickstart this and for his Italian translations. See the release article for more.
- See Stefan Kottwitz's answer on TeX SE for more details.
- Stefan again on MikTex on TeX SE.