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Wed, 01 Oct 2008

Writing a J.UCS paper in LaTeX

Formatting a paper for J.UCS in LaTeX has proved quite painful, mainly because of the slightly unconventional formatting requirements (e.g. in bibliography and citation styles) and the exactingness of the editorial process. To make things easier for future authors, here are a few useful tricks.

• Here is the bibliography style file I used. I generated it using makebst. It's not perfect, but could be tweaked to become so. I'm hoping it will eventually be provided alongside the J.UCS LaTeX style file, saving authors a lot of hassle. The natbib package is recommended; I haven't tested anything on this page with any other bibliography package (not even the default LaTeX one).
• In conjunction with the bibliography style file and the natbib package, the following commands are necessary to get the correct citation style. The hack to add citation keys to bibliography entries is due to Ulrike Fischer (posted to comp.text.tex), with thanks!

  \usepackage{prettyref}
  \newrefformat{sec}{[Section~\ref{#1}]}
  \newrefformat{fig}{[Fig.~\ref{#1}]}
  \newrefformat{tab}{[Tab.~\ref{#1}]}
  
  % based on advice found in Ulrike Fischer's post to comp.text.tex, July 2008
  % http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Comp/comp.text.tex/2008-07/msg00540.html
  % Note the disgusting hack of an extra 17pt hspace: this is to compensate
  % for the strange reduction in left margin that occurs otherwise.
  % 
  % the following redefines natbib internals to add a \citep like label
  % for authoryear citations in the bibliography, as a side-effect the
  % labels are links to themselves if hyperref is used.
  \makeatletter
  \def\@lbibitem[#1]#2{%
  \if\relax\@extra@b@citeb\relax\else
  \@ifundefined{br@#2\@extra@b@citeb}{}{%
  \@namedef{br@#2}{\@nameuse{br@#2\@extra@b@citeb}}}\fi
  \@ifundefined{b@#2\@extra@b@citeb}{\def\NAT@num{}}{\NAT@parse{#2}}%
  \item[\hfil\hyper@natanchorstart{#2\@extra@b@citeb}\hspace{17pt}\citep{#2}%
  \hyper@natanchorend]%
  \NAT@ifcmd#1(@)(@)\@nil{#2}}
  \makeatother
  

• To insert references, use \citep{citation_key} (plain) or \citep[see][]{citation_key} ("see"...).
• To get the correct footnote style:

  % J.UCS footnoting style
  \makeatletter
  % commented are the default LaTeX definitions
  %\renewcommand\@makefnmark{\mbox{\textsuperscript{\normalfont\@thefnmark}}}
  %\renewcommand\@makefntext[1]%
  %	{\noindent\makebox[0pt][r]{\@thefnmark.\,}#1}
  
  % now the modified JUCS ones
  \renewcommand\@makefnmark{ [see \normalfont\@thefnmark]}
  \renewcommand\@makefntext[1]%
  	{[\@thefnmark]~#1}
  
  \makeatother
  

• If you are using the twoside option (useful in conjunction with dpfloat to ensure facing pages for figures/tables), you will need to undo the odd/even alternating margin sizes. I used the following hack for this.

  \usepackage{calc}
  \newlength{\totalmargin}
  \setlength\totalmargin{(\oddsidemargin+\evensidemargin)}%
  \setlength\oddsidemargin{(\totalmargin/2)}%
  \setlength\evensidemargin{(\totalmargin/2)}%
  

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