Category: latex

Changing the way natbib displays citations: punctuations

By default, when using citep with natbib, the output is something like (Author et al., 1999), where there is a comma after the author, before the date. This is not the same format like that of ApJ, where the extra comma is not included. Using aastex or emulateapj should usually take care of this, but if you need to use natbib alone, it is possible to change the format using the ”aysep={char}” option in ”setcitestyle”:

setcitestyle{aysep={}}

More info about this method here: gking.harvard.edu/files/natnotes2.pdf

More generally, you can use ”bibpunct” to change more of the punctuations. This command requires specification of six different components:

  1. the opening bracket symbol, default = (
  2. the closing bracket symbol, default = )
  3. the punctuation between multiple citations, default = ;
  4. the letter `n’ for numerical style, or `s’ for numerical superscript style, any other letter for author-year, default = author-year;
  5. the punctuation that comes between the author names and the year
  6. the punctuation that comes between years or numbers when common author lists are suppressed (default = ,);

The optional argument is the character preceding a post-note, default is a comma plus space. In redefining this character, one must include a space if one is wanted.

Example 1, bibpunct{[}{]}{,}{a}{}{;} changes the output of

citepjon90,jon91,jam92

into [Jones et al. 1990; 1991, James et al. 1992].

Example 2, bibpunct[; ]{(}{)}{,}{a}{}{;} changes the output of

citep[and references therein]{jon90}

into (Jones et al. 1990; and references therein).

See http://merkel.zoneo.net/Latex/natbib.php for more info. 

Using emulateapj: multi-page tables and deluxetable

emulateapj should work fine with deluxetable. For tables spanning one column use the normal deluxetable, while for tables spanning both columns use deluxetable*  

To use multi-page tables, follow the instructions given in http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~alexey/emulateapj/emulateapj.cls:


%% 3) Multi-page tables cannot be set properly inside the main text; you
%% need to move the table to the end of the paper (after the references) and
%% issue the command LongTables before it.

LongTable
begin{deluxetable*}
....
end{deluxetable*}

If you need to have landscape tables, you will also need to use the package lscape along with forcing emulateapj to use revtex4 in the preamble (using rotate inside of deluxetable will not work):


documentclass[iop,revtex4]{emulateapj}

You also must put the table at the end of file with the other tables. For example usage, see the following note from ”emulateapj.cls”:


%% 2) The {deluxetable} environment is re-implemented (the problem with the
%% the aastex's deluxetable is it does not float). There is also a new
%% environment {deluxetable*} (absent in aastex) to set a floating table
%% two-column wide. Known problems:
%% (a) rotate doesn't work (too difficult to implement). However,
%% you can use revtex's turnpage environment
%% - load package lscape (usepackage{lscape} in the header)
%% - move table at the end of the paper after references
%% - clearpage before the table
%% - LongTables if the table will span more than 1 page (see next item)
%% - put the table inside the landscape environment and clearpage
%% at the end:
%% clearpage
%% LongTables % optionally
%% begin{landscape}
%% begin{deluxetable}
%% ....
%% end{deluxetable}
%% clearpage
%% end{landscape}
%%

Using EPS files in PDFlatex

pdflatex is a good alternative to using the regular latex command because it bypasses the standard .dvi. to .ps to .pdf straight into making a PDF. It can also insert regular graphics files like JPEG, PNG, etc. However, it cannot by default handle postscript files like .eps files. Fortunately, most latex distributions will have the epstopdf package that can be used in conjunction with the graphicx package. Just include them in the header:


usepackage{graphicx}
usepackage{epstopdf}

More information can be found here.