More Quick Reference Cards

Remember that time when I was quick reference card happy [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]? Today, I accidentally found another good quickref card blog post by someone else (Refcards by Michael Goerz; see the original post for the source code and other versions of these cards):

• Fortran 90 (f90) Quick Reference Card
• Vim Quick Reference Card
• Python 2.5 Quick Reference Card
• Vim-LaTeX Suite Quick Reference Card
• Perl Quick Reference Card
• ASCII Quick Reference Card

He also includes a few quick reference cards not written by him (Subversion (SVN), GDB, GNU Emacs, MySQL).

Non-breaking Spaces in Word/OpenOffice Writer

I use LaTeX primarily for all of my printed document preparation, but I have to teach people how to write in Word/OpenOffice Writer, and so it still is interesting to me to find out how to do new things.

I've wondered how to make non-breaking spaces (NBSP) in Word for a long time, but I didn't force myself to actually look it up until recently. Evidently, if you type

Control+Shift+Space

in Word, you generate a NBSP. This same combination works in OpenOffice Writer, but I think only Control+Space is needed.

A non-breaking space tells the Word Processor to never break lines at that spot. That is, a non-breaking space can never end or begin an automatically wrapped line. You should use NBSP's to prevent

• periods at the end of lines that do not terminate sentences
• numbers or bullet-like symbols at the beginning of lines that do not initiate list items

For example,

• Replace "Mr. Jones" with "Mr.(NBSP)Jones"
• Replace "Figure 2" with "Figure(NBSP)2"
• Replace "Table 3.1" with "Table(NBSP)3.1"
• Replace "Equation (5)" with "Equation(NBSP)(5)"
• Replace "over there – in the hallway" with "over there(NBSP)– in the hallway"

That's how the big publishers do it. However, you never notice it because it's so subtle; when it's done right, you won't notice it at all.

Safari Books On-line: Searchable TLC2

Check out Safari Books Online:

• http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com/

It's pretty pricey to pay for a login, but requests that come from many universities (or libraries?) get a free login automatically. For example, from outside OSU, I can use my OSU login at:

• http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/

That is, I added ".proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu" to the end of the server name, which forces the request through the OSU library's proxy server.

There are lots of useful digital copies of reference books on-line. I think all of the O'Reilly books are available. More importantly (to me), you can find a digital (and searchable) copy of The LaTeX Companion (Second edition) by Mittelbach and Goossens. You can even copy and paste code samples directly out of the book!

LaTeX for generating Behavioral Ecology manuscript

UPDATE: Check out a more complete math-oriented template/example, that I posted as behavecol_math_template.tex. This is ready to use out of the box. It has comments. It is setup for AMS math. It has table, figure, and autoreferencing examples too.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If using amsmath environments, be sure to check out my information on making lineno compatible with amsmath environments.

UPDATE: I have put behavecol_template.tex and behavecol.bst on-line so that you don't have to do any of the following to get them.

The Oxford Journal Behavioral Ecology is not setup for LaTeX manuscript submissions. This baffles me.

So, I spent some time putting together some macros and a BibTeX style file to get up and running with this journal.

First, a template (that uses the article document class), which fixes incompatibilities between figcaps, caption, and anything that uses \ref (see behavecol_template.tex for what is below, or see behavecol_math_template.tex for a more complete example):

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\usepackage[paper=letterpaper,margin=1.5in]{geometry}
\usepackage{setspace}\doublespacing

\usepackage{graphicx}

\usepackage[%
            labelsep=newline,
            justification=RaggedRight,
            singlelinecheck=false,
            labelfont=bf,
            tableposition=top,
           ]{caption}
\captionsetup[table]{textfont=bf,position=above}
\makeatletter
\let\oldmakecaption\@makecaption
\makeatother

\usepackage[figon,printfigures]{figcaps}
\def\figurecapname{Figure legends}
\def\tablepagename{Tables}
\def\figurepagename{Figures}
 
\makeatletter
% This lets figcaps work with \ref
% However, forces \label outside of \caption
\def\phantomsection{\relax}
\let\oldfigurepage\@figurepage
\def\@figurepage{%
        \@ifundefined{tf@pof}{}{%
        \let\oldlabel\label%
        \let\oldinput\@input%
        \def\@input{\def\label{\oldlabel}\oldinput}%
        \phantomsection%
        \addcontentsline{toc}{section}{\figurepagename}}%
        \oldfigurepage%
        }
\let\@makefcaption\@makecaption
\let\oldtablepage\@tablepage
\def\@tablepage{%
        \@ifundefined{tf@pot}{}{%
        \clearpage%
        \phantomsection%
        \addcontentsline{toc}{section}{\tablepagename}}%
        \oldtablepage%
        }
\makeatother
\usepackage[subrefformat=subparens,labelformat=parens]{subfig}
\captionsetup[subfloat]{position=top}

\setcounter{secnumdepth}{0}

% Lines are numbered, starting at 1 
% (add pagewise to reset at each page)
%\usepackage[modulo,pagewise,mathlines]{lineno}
\usepackage[modulo,mathlines]{lineno}
\modulolinenumbers[1]
\firstlinenumber{1}
\linenumbers

\usepackage{natbib}
\bibliographystyle{behavecol}
\setcitestyle{%
        authoryear,round,semicolon,%
        aysep={},%
        yysep={,},%
        notesep={, }%
        }

\usepackage{tocbibind}
\def\tocbibname{\refname}

\usepackage{varioref}
\labelformat{equation}{\textup{(#1)}}
\labelformat{enumi}{\textup{(#1)}}

\usepackage[%
            pdftitle={},
            pdfsubject={},
            pdfauthor={},
            pdfkeywords={},
            pdfstartview=FitH,
            bookmarks=true,bookmarksopen=true,
            breaklinks=true,
            colorlinks=false,
            pdfpagelabels=true,hypertexnames=true,
            plainpages=false,naturalnames=false,
            %draft,
            ]{hyperref}

% \Autoref is for the beginning of the sentence
\let\orgautoref\autoref
\providecommand{\Autoref}
    {\def\equationautorefname{Equation}%
     \def\figureautorefname{Figure}%
     \def\subfigureautorefname{Figure}%
     \def\Itemautorefname{Item}%
     \def\tableautorefname{Table}%
     \orgautoref}
 
% \Autorefs is plural for the beginning of the sentence
\providecommand{\Autorefs}
    {\def\equationautorefname{Equations}%
     \def\figureautorefname{Figures}%
     \def\subfigureautorefname{Figures}%
     \def\Itemautorefname{Items}%
     \def\tableautorefname{Tables}%
     \orgautoref}
 
% \autoref is used inside a sentence 
% (renew of the standard autoref)
\renewcommand{\autoref}{\Autoref}
 
% \autorefs is plural for inside a sentence
\providecommand{\autorefs}{\Autorefs}

\let\oldsection\section
\newcommand{\uppercasesection}[2][]{%
    \oldsection[#1]{\MakeUppercase{#2}}}
\newcommand{\uppercasesectionstar}[1]{%
    \oldsection*{\MakeUppercase{#1}}}
\makeatletter
\def\section{%
    \@ifstar{\uppercasesectionstar}%
            {\@dblarg{\uppercasesection}}}
\makeatother

\hypersetup{%
        pdftitle=
        {The title},
}
\title{The title}
\author{}
\date{}
     
\begin{document}
    
\maketitle
     
\begin{abstract}
% ...The abstract...
        \textit{Key words:} Keywords separated with comma+space, 
                            List ends with period.
        \hypersetup{%
        pdfkeywords=
        {Keywords separated with comma+space, 
         List ends with period},
        }
\end{abstract}
\newpage
     
% ...The document...
     
% The following line loads the references
\bibliography{the_bib_database_name}
     
\end{document}

Of course, remember to put table captions before the actual table insertion. In fact, it is important that the inside of a table environment has caption first, then label OUTSIDE of the caption, then the actual table content. Additionally, subfigures should be inserted (within a figure environment) with something like:

\subfloat[]{
% ... something like an \includegraphics ...
\label{fig:a}
}

Also, when you're ready to submit, get rid of the % on the %draft, line of the hyperref options. This will turn off all hyper linking, which will prevent strange little unlinked boxes from being drawn in your autogenerated proof.

Next, the bibliography style file, which I may end up posting later separately. As of right now, it has to be constructed from pieces. First, save the following as behavecol.dbj (see behavecol_full.dbj for more details):

%% Driver file to produce behavecol.bst from merlin.mbs
%% Generated with makebst, version 4.1 (2003/09/08)
%% Produced on 2007/08/23 at 12:02
%% 
\input docstrip
 
\preamble
----------------------------------------
*** Bibliography style for _Behavioral Ecology_. ***
 
\endpreamble
 
\postamble
End of customized bst file
\endpostamble
 
\keepsilent
 
\askforoverwritefalse
\def\MBopts{\from{merlin.mbs}{%
  ay,nat,nm-rvx,ed-rev,jnrlst,keyxyr,dt-beg,yr-per,note-yr,jxper,%
  jttl-rm,thtit-a,vnum-x,pp-last,num-xser,btit-rm,bt-rm,add-pub,%
  pre-edn,in-col,pp,abr,ednx,ord,jabr,xand,etal-xc,nfss,}}
\generate{\file{behavecol.bst}{\MBopts}}
\endbatchfile

and then run latex behavecol.dbj. Next, save the following to behavecol.patch:

--- behavecol.bst 2007-08-29 12:07:40.000000000 -0400
+++ behavecol_new.bst 2007-08-29 12:08:01.000000000 -0400
@@ -89,7 +89,7 @@
 FUNCTION {output.nonnull}
 { 's :=
   output.state mid.sentence =
-    { ", " * write$ }
+    { ". " * write$ }
     { output.state after.block =
         { add.period$ write$
           newline$
@@ -144,6 +144,9 @@
 FUNCTION {add.blank}
 {  " " * before.all 'output.state :=
 }
+FUNCTION {add.semicolon}
+{  ";" * before.all 'output.state :=
+}
 
 FUNCTION {date.block}
 {
@@ -248,7 +251,7 @@
 { "in" }
 
 FUNCTION {bbl.pages}
-{ "pp." }
+{ "p." }
 
 FUNCTION {bbl.page}
 { "p." }
@@ -260,10 +263,10 @@
 { "Tech. Rep." }
 
 FUNCTION {bbl.mthesis}
-{ "Master's thesis" }
+{ "[Master's thesis]" }
 
 FUNCTION {bbl.phdthesis}
-{ "Ph.D. thesis" }
+{ "[PhD thesis]" }
 
 FUNCTION {bbl.first}
 { "1st" }
@@ -488,6 +491,16 @@
     }
   if$
 }
+FUNCTION {format.book.pages}
+{ pages "pages" bibinfo.check
+  %duplicate$ empty$ 'skip$
+  empty$ 'skip$
+    { add.semicolon 
+      add.blank 
+      pages "pages" bibinfo.check 
+      " " * bbl.pages * }
+  if$
+}
 FUNCTION {format.note}
 {
  note empty$
@@ -950,6 +963,10 @@
     }
   if$
 }
+FUNCTION {format.university.address}
+{ school "school" bibinfo.warn format.org.or.pub
+}
+
 FUNCTION {format.publisher.address}
 { publisher "publisher" bibinfo.warn format.org.or.pub
 }
@@ -1148,12 +1165,11 @@
   author format.key output
   format.date "year" output.check
   date.block
-  format.title
-  "title" output.check
-  new.block
+  format.title "title" output.check
+  add.blank
   bbl.mthesis format.thesis.type output.nonnull
-  school "school" bibinfo.warn output
-  address "address" bibinfo.check output
+  format.university.address output
+  format.book.pages output
   new.block
   format.note output
   fin.entry
@@ -1178,12 +1194,11 @@
   author format.key output
   format.date "year" output.check
   date.block
-  format.title
-  "title" output.check
-  new.block
+  format.title "title" output.check
+  add.blank
   bbl.phdthesis format.thesis.type output.nonnull
-  school "school" bibinfo.warn output
-  address "address" bibinfo.check output
+  format.university.address output
+  format.book.pages output
   new.block
   format.note output
   fin.entry

Then run

patch < behavecol.patch

from the same directory that you ran the DBJ command in. That should generate the behavecol.bst file that is needed for the above template to work.

Google School: Synonyms and Info

From Google School:

Google School: Rank Wikipedia articles in your results

If you want to get general background on something with Google, append the word "info" or "information" to your search term.

If your words appear in the title of a Wikipedia page, Google will list that article at the top of your results, for a convenient way to search both Google and the Wikipedia at once. --Gina Trapani

Also, from Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day, by Gina Trapani:

Synonyms (Chapter 9, p. 223)

Search for synonyms using the tilde (~) next to keywords. This comes in handy when you are searching for a concept rather than for a specific word or sequence. For example:

• ~nutrition ~information muffins returns exact matches as well as matches on Muffins Food Facts and Muffins Vitamin Information.
• ~car turns up information on trucks and vehicles.
• A search for ~pen yields pencils, graphite, and sketch.

The Quick Reference Site (Cards and Books)

UPDATE 3: I did find the source of that regular expression card at Gordon McKinney's Pro IT Blog. Well, it's not a LaTeX source, but it's at least in letter format.

UPDATE 2: I found another good list of quick reference cards at the plantOzh blog. It includes a a regexp card, Perl 5 booklet, and CSS cards (1.0, 2.0). Yes, these cards are archived at the blog, so all of the commentary below still applies.

UPDATE 1: It's also annoying when someone simply archives existing quick reference cards because sometimes those archives use A4 paper. If these were linked to their origins, the source code (perhaps LaTeX) might be available, making a conversion to letter paper easy.

Lately, I have been quick reference happy [1, 2, 3, 4]. I cannot explain why, but I suddenly want to surround myself with quick references.

I think I found a great new quick reference resource. It's The Quick Reference Site, which features quick reference cards, e-books, and other papers and tutorials. From the site:

Throughout the years I have collected a huge pile of documents that deal with almost every aspect of software development. The purpose of this site is to centralize this information and to make it available to everyone who may need it or shares my passion on this subject. There are still a lot of documents in my "archive" that I like to share with you all.
At the moment this site represents only a fraction of what I want to provide, so a lot of work still needs to be done. As a result, you should consider this site as a work in progress. I'll try to keep you updated on the most challenging, powerful and continuously evolving software technologies of the moment. I hope that especially Java and C++ fanatics (like myself) will find some valuable information over here.

As far as I can tell so far, the author archives quick references that he has found over time and links us, the readers, to those archives. The advantage of this is that it minimizes the chances of broken links. The disadvantage is that the archives may not be the most recent versions. Additionally, if this site ever goes down and our bookmarks point there, those bookmarks will be broken.

Some quick reference cards that I want to point out (if you go to his list, you can also read descriptions of these programs):

• Cascading Style Sheets 1.0


• CVS Quick Reference Card
• CVS Quick Reference Card (LG)


• PHP Cheat Sheet
• PHP 4 Reference Card


• The One Page Linux Manual
• UNIX commands reference card


• AMSTeX Reference Card 1.3


• vi Reference Card (HP)
• Vi Reference Card
• vi Quick Reference
• VIM Quick Reference Card


• GNU Calc Reference Card


• Bash Quick Reference


• LINUX System Call Quick Reference
• LINUX Admin Quick Reference


• Subversion Quick Reference Card
• Cheat Sheet Subversion


• MySQL-4.02a

So, that's fun.

On a slightly unrelated note, you can also check out Hawk Wings to find a QuickSilver quick reference and the QuickSilver user manual.

Tech. Cheat Sheets!

Check out the recent "Developer’s Alarm: 200+ Hotkeys To Boost Your Productivity" from Smashing Magazine for more hotkeys. This focusses on Windows apps, but there are some apps that have cross-platform support, and so this isn't an entirely worthless post.

In the spirit of previous posts [1, 2, 3], here are some more!

I found TechCheatSheets.com, which includes some nice reference sheets, and some broken links. However, it got me thinking about "cheat sheet," which got me searching, and I found these popular links:

• Mozilla Firefox Cheat Sheet (HTML, PDF)
• Mozilla Thunderbird Cheat Sheet (HTML, PDF)

That last one probably beats my Thunderbird quick reference (PDF, LaTeX). However, those do not replace my Camino quick reference (PDF, LaTeX).

My (Reference) Desk

Now that I have compiled all of these quick references [1, 2, 3], I can put them together to surround myself in easy-to-access information. In fact, I will. I did. Here it is! From left to right (pictures taken with my wonderful phone and stored in a flickr photoset)...

Hot Key References

NOTE: The two updates below may serve as good LaTeX examples featuring the use of multicol.

UPDATE 2: I have used the Thunderbird list to make a Thunderbird quick reference PDF (LaTeX source available).

UPDATE 1: I have used the Camino list to make a Camino quick reference PDF (LaTeX source available).

I have been posting about quick references a lot lately [e.g., 1, 2]. I found another good quick reference site, allhotkeys.com. It has lots of software hotkey quick references. For example,

• Mozilla Firefox hotkeys
• Mozilla Firefox extensions hotkeys
• Mozilla Thunderbird hotkeys
• Camino hotkeys
• Safari hotkeys
• Microsoft Word hotkeys
• Microsoft Excel hotkeys
• Microsoft PowerPoint hotkeys
• Remote Desktop hotkeys
• Mac OS X Keyboard shortcuts
• iTunes hotkeys
• GMail hotkeys
• UNIX and Linux hotkeys
• Command line keyboard shortcuts
• ...and lots more...

So that's potentially helpful. But right now the pages are really slow to come up, so I have no idea what they look like. Nor do I know if I can easily get them onto a landscape sheet of paper that I can tape to the wall somewhere...

MATLAB Quick Reference Cards (and more)

UPDATE: I list an AMSTeX reference card below. There is also an AMSLaTeX reference card available at refcards.com.

This is meant to be a follow-up to the "TeX Reference Card (and others)" post.

I found a list of a bunch more quick reference cards, which include applications/packages like MATLAB, MATLAB toolboxes, Perl, MFC, MySQL, Linux, UNIX, Vi, Vim, Windows, AMSTeX, TeX, and a bunch more...

However, I was just looking for MATLAB quick reference cards. So, here are these (some of which did not come from the above site):

• MATLAB quick reference
• MATLAB toolboxes quick reference
• MATLAB reference card meant for an ENG101 class
• MATLAB reference card
• An edited MATLAB reference card

So, that's nice. I recommend one of the bottom two [i.e., 1, 2].

TeX Reference Card (and others)

UPDATE 3: I found the source of the popular LaTeX cheat sheet. It includes a PS version, a PDF version, PNG views [Page 1, Page 2], and the LaTeX source. It's nice that the source is available. That makes it easier to shift from A4 to letter paper and back.

UPDATE 2: More reference cards can be found in the follow-up to this message.

UPDATE 1: Check out refcards.com and the old version old.refcards.com. There are lots of useful cards, including some of the ones I linked below. This TeX card and this Vim card look familiar. There are other EMmacs and Vim cards in the editors section. There is also a typesetting section that includes a LaTeX cheat sheet.

The Brown University Center for Fluid Mechanics, Turbulence and Computation (CFM) has a collection of computing tutorials. Buried in there somewhere is a useful Plain TeX reference card in PostScript format. I have generated a PDF version of this reference card.

I stress that this is a Plain TeX reference card, and so there are different ("better"?) ways of doing some of these things using other LaTeX macros (note TeX vs. Plain TeX vs. LaTeX differences: [1, 2, 3, 4, and more]). However, this is still a very useful reference card. It prints out as two landscape-oriented pages (weirdly sized: 11.7" x 8.3"). I plan on printing this out and taping it next to my desk at the office. I also found a useful longer Plain TeX reference sheet that may be helpful to some people. Of course, there are even longer Plain TeX reference documents also available.

Oh, I also found this AUC TeX reference card PDF with available source code. I don't use AUC TeX (I favor VIM-LaTeX), but maybe someone who does could use this. FYI, AUC TeX is a package for EMacs providing extra support for LaTeX (and others).

Speaking of Vim:

• Here's a cool set of multilingual Vim quick reference cards (again, PDF with 2 landscape-oriented pages) that include their sources and an HTML version.
• Here's a similar Vim quick reference card (PDF).
• Here's yet another Vim quick reference card (PDF).
• Finally, here's VIM-LaTeX's quick start introduction document.

So that's nice.