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Style/class tutorials

I am a newbie at LaTeX. But I need start from my own text style in LaTeX. I want to setup page format, margins, paragraphs style, fonts, etc. Can you please give me a link to the guide or show me your simple class? I was searching through the internet and I have not found any good tutorials for beginners.

Community
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itun
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    Before you starting to write your own document class you should learn the basics of LaTeX. – Marco Daniel Apr 02 '12 at 12:40
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    Can you elaborate on why you need to write your own document class? It is probably sufficient to load a ready made one and use packages to tweak it. In any case, it's not a great idea to do this before you've had a reasonable amount of experience. – qubyte Apr 02 '12 at 12:40
  • OK, Can I setup my own margins and fonts in document class article.? – itun Apr 02 '12 at 12:42
  • @itun Yes you can. One way is to use the geometry package. There are also many other "article" type of classes provided by the various journals for example revtex4. – yannisl Apr 02 '12 at 12:46
  • There are many packages out there. For margins, let's see the geometry package. For fonts, you usually include a package specifically for a font you want to use. – yo' Apr 02 '12 at 12:46
  • I can see how to setup margins at Tobi's answer. What about my font, like Tahoma, Arial, or Times New Roman? – itun Apr 02 '12 at 12:47
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    I recommend reading The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX2e, or some other text listed at http://tex.stackexchange.com/q/11/4012 – doncherry Apr 02 '12 at 12:58

1 Answers1

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Have a look at

  • the clsguide about macros for package/class writers, and how to setup own classes
  • the dtxtut about how to pack your file as most package/class authors do
  • the LaTeX Companion about writing own classes

Since you are a beginner it is maybe preferable to start with an easy \input file and not writing a class. Just create a file (e.g.) header.tex

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[margin=2cm]{geometry}
% ...

and us it like

\input{header}
\begin{document}
   Hello World!
\end{document}

To make you file available for multiple project you can save it in the user texmf tree. To find the right path call kpsewhich -var-value=TEXMFHOME in your terminal. It is possible that you must create the path first. then store your header.tex at <TEXMFHOME>/tex/latex/header.tex

David Carlisle
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Tobi
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  • I don't see making header.tex as a good idea, because when you change this header.tex file, some of your documents might stop working. I believe that a copy-paste method is more proper here. (I mean, when you start a new document, you take the headers from the previous one and modify what has to be modified.) – yo' Apr 02 '12 at 12:49
  • That’s the same with an own (and even possible but seldom with a public) class … – Tobi Apr 02 '12 at 14:13