I have quite a few collaborative writing projects going on in parallel now. One side-benefit of collaborating is that you learn neat LaTeX macros that your co-authors have developed that end up saving lots of time (or making the TeX equations more readable). Some people invent a whole set of macros for each paper (so that the macros stand for semantic concepts like “input variable”), but I do that mainly for small stuff, like different epsilons. What I do have are macros for are
- font types and weights : using \mathrm{}, \mathcal{}, etc. is for the birds
- functions : KL-divergence, mutual information, conditional mutual information etc. I get in trouble sometimes because I use the
instead of
for mutual information, but we can change that in the macro!
- norms, inner products : these are just functions anyway
- epsilons : this helps keep different epsilons clearer, actually, and makes debugging proofs a little simpler.
I somehow never get around to making macros like \cX for \mathcal{X}, but maybe that would make my life easier. The nice thing about macros for functions is you can put in auto-sizing delimiters in the macro, saving some \left and \right‘s. What are your favorite things to make into macros?
An Ergodic Walk 
heh. usually it’s just two things:
\noindent
\texttt
well, we all know how hardcore you are…
2 words: Scientific Workplace.
For the most part WYSIWYG and inserting math in so easy but I am sure die-hard latex editing types will never like it :).
Lazily yours,
L.
To suck all the extra space out of an itemized list:
\def\listOPT{
\topsep=0mm\partopsep=0mm
\itemsep=0mm\parsep=0mm\parskip=0mm
\@topsepadd=0pt\@topsep=0pt
} %% END \def\listOPT
Usage:
\begin{itemize}\listOPT
\item First item
\end{itemize}
Its very useful if your NeTS proposal is due in two days and 15 pages is problematic.
I also use a newcommand for PDFs and CDFs, PMFs etc. Something like
\newcommand{\pdf}[2]{f_{#1}\paren{#2}}
\newcommand{\ipdf}[1]{\pdf{\uppercase{#1}}{\lowercase{#1}}}
I admit I am sometimes disconcerted that $\ipdf{X}$ and $\ipdf{x}$ produce the same output.
Lalitha: I think we’ve already debated the merits of Scientific Workplace. Once again, you have ignored my gentle advice 🙂
Expectation is my favorite! You get to use \left[ and \right], and the \mathbb{E} is so pretty!
\newcommand{\expect}[1]{\mathbb{E}\left[{#1}\right]}
makes iterated expectations so darn nice as well.
The indicator function is a must-have. And I also have different macros for log_2 and ln (with \left and \right of course, and that makes fractions in logs easy as well):
\newcommand{\lo}[1]{\log_2\left(#1\right)}
\newcommand{\lon}[1]{\ln\left(#1\right)}
I just shorten it to \expe. Those two extra letters are too much!
I use \E but I dohave to hold the shift key for that. In some cases of inline math like $\E{\tilde{X}}$, the \left and \right cause the brackets to be too big and the line gets additional unattractive vertical whitespace.
Ken Thompson was once asked what he would do differently if he were redesigning the UNIX system. His reply: “I’d spell creat with an e.”
* Kernighan, Brian W.; Pike, Rob (1984). The UNIX programming environment. Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0139376992. OCLC 10269821. , p. 20
A macro for the commutative diagram of a double vector bundle is essential for me.