Adding an at '@' symbol to LaTeX

I love Tex but sometimes you just bang your head against a wall because it just doesn't work. Here a little tip, if you need an "at" symbol in your file just adding @ will not work neither will \@. Some people say you have to \makeatletter @ \makeatother what seams stupid to me. There is a simple solution go into math mode

$@$

should do the trick.

detex for CentOS

So another little porting effort. This time it is detex

DeTeX is a filter program that removes the LaTeX (or TeX) control sequences from the input so that the real content can be passed to a spell or diction checker.

I am using this for my dissertation to count the words used
detex dissertation.tex | wc
Quite a useful little tool. When I get time I might rewrite it in perl to make it more portable.

Download the [RPM]

[SRPM] and spec file:

Summary: Strips Tex and LaTex commands from a file
Name: detex
Version: 2.8
Release: 1
License: BSD
Group: Applications/Text
URL: http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/trinkle/detex/

Source: http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/trinkle/detex/%{name}-%{version}.tar
BuildRoot: %{_tmppath}/%{name}-%{version}-%{release}-root

Patch0: mallocandtroff.patch

BuildRequires: flex
BuildRequires: groff

%description
DeTeX is a filter program that removes the LaTeX (or TeX)
control sequences from the input so that the real content can be
passed to a spell or diction checker


%prep
%setup
%patch -p0

%build
%{__make} detex man-page prefix="%{_prefix}" CFLAGS="%{optflags} -DNO_MALLOC_DECL"

%install
%{__rm} -rf %{buildroot}
#%{__make} install DESTDIR="%{buildroot}"
%{__install} -Dp -m0755 detex %{buildroot}%{_bindir}/detex
%{__install} -Dp -m0644 detex.1 %{buildroot}%{_mandir}/man1/detex.1

%clean
%{__rm} -rf %{buildroot}

%files
%defattr(-, root, root, 0755)
%doc %{_mandir}/man1/detex.1*
%{_bindir}/detex

%changelog
* Tue Apr 21 2009 Hoffmann Geerd-Dietger  - 2.8-1
- Initial package.

You will also need the little patch file

--- Makefile.orig 2009-04-21 01:50:44.735919044 +0100
+++ Makefile 2009-04-21 01:51:18.237692007 +0100
@@ -49,7 +49,7 @@
# Compile time flags, just uncomment the necessary lines
# Some say GNU make does not correctly handle += -- you may have to use :=
#
-DEFS =
+DEFS += -DNO_MALLOC_DECL
#
# Add -traditional for GNU cc on ISC 386/ix system and possibly others
# (reported by pinard@iro.umontreal.ca)
@@ -116,7 +116,7 @@
mv detex.c lexout.c

man-page:
- troff -man detex.1l
+ nroff  -man detex.1l > detex.1

# If you want detex available as delatex, uncomment the last two lines of
# this target

Howto have a long itemize or enumerate split over many pages

I think it is time I start blogging about all the LaTex stuff I discover all the time. This one was a little tricky. I had a 3 page long enumeration that was bound to a table. So in latex:

\begin{longtable}{|p{\textwidth}|} \hline
\begin{enumerate}
\item ....
\repeat 500 times
...

But of course the enumeration could not be split so it just went off the bottom. What to do? After some thinking I came up with this bodge. If you know a nicer way of doing this please tell me. 

I defined a new command \breaktable

\newcommand{\breaktable}{%
 \setcounter{enumi_saved}{\value{enumi}}
 \end{enumerate}\\
 \begin{enumerate}
 \setcounter{enumi}{\value{enumi_saved}}
}

which I now enter every time I see a sort of logic end to the enumeration. This saves the current counter stops the enumeration adds a new cell and starts the enumeration with the correct value again. You have to define

\newcounter{enumi_saved}

somewhere. Works quite nicely.