Common Bugs in Writing

Here, I’ll post a few links which discuss about the common mistakes while writing a paper.

• Common Bugs in Writing
• Editorial Rules

Margin Issue in Latex

Today, while submitting my work in TENCON through edas.info, I faced an issue with the bottom margin.

Edas complained that the 3rd page has only 0.92 inch bottom margin where the minimum requirement was 1 inch.

I tried many things ……and wasted my time.

Then I found that TENCON asked for A4 paper and by default ieeetran gives LETTER format.

I simply changed \documentclass[conference]{IEEEtran} to \documentclass[a4paper,conference]{IEEEtran}, and the problem was solved!

Embedding All Fonts in PDF file

When we submit/send a pdf file, it is a good idea to embedd all fonts used, in the pdf file.

To embed all fonts in your pdf file use this command in terminal and create the pdf file from ps file.

ps2pdf -dEmbedAllFonts=true -dSubsetFonts=true -dEPSCrop=true -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress FILENAME.ps

This will create a pdf file with name FILENAME.pdf

Hard word wrapping in gedit

gedit is a handy option for dealing ‘.txt. files.

Unfortunately, gedit does not contain any hard word wrapping plugin.

1. Open gedit
2. Navigate to Edit -> Preferences -> Plugins
3. Enable “External Tools”and press “close”
4. Now, go to “Tools” -> “Manage External Tools”
5. Press “New” (press ‘+’ sign) and enter “Line Break at Col 80″ (or any name you like)
6. Paste the following script in the “command(s)” text area (you can choose to leave out the #comments, these are only here as a reminder in case you want to modify it to fit your needs):

#!/bin/sh
BREAK=80
# fmt [-WIDTH][OPTION]… [FILE]…
# –uniform-spacing — one space between words, two after sentences
# –split-only — split long lines, but do not refill
# –width=WIDTH — maximum line width (default of 75 columns)
# when FILE is -, read standard input
fmt –uniform-spacing –split-only –width $BREAK –

7. Choose “Current selection” as Input
8. Choose “Replace current selection” as Output
9. At this point, you can choose to create a shortcut key such as “ctrl+m” for easy access.
10. Close “External Tools Manager” by pressing the “Close” button
11. Now this script is executable under the “Tools” menu. Alternatively, you can use your shortcut key for quick access.

My gedit version: 3.4.1, OS: Ubuntu 12.04 (64-bit)

Speeding Up Matlab

The performance of the linear algebra operations in any machine ultimately depend on the efficient BLAS implementation available on the machine and Matlab is not an exception!

By default, Matlab uses a version of Intel MKL which they upgrade with every release.

But usually the default option will not be optimal for the particular machine.

Luckily, Linux version of Intel MKL is free for non-commercial use.

We may download and install it to improve the performance.

I could install it on  my machine today. But linking Intel MKL with Matlab is not completed yet.

I’ll update it once I complete the job.

Nice tables using Latex

Here, we’ll show how to improve the default appearance of a table in .

The following commands will produce the default style table in . (Refer Table I)

\begin{table}[htbp]
\caption{Default Table}
\label{Tab:SRNRValues}
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|}
\hline
\multirow{2}{1.5cm}{Method}& \multicolumn{3}{p{5cm}|}{\centering Measurements} \\
\cline{2-4} & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{Clean} & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{SMNR=15 dB} & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{SMNR = 10 dB} \\ \hline
Type1 & 27.54 & 13.23 & 6.80 \\
Type2 & 29.55 & 9.61 & 6 \\
Type3 & 25.99 & 11.49 & 6.15 \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\end{table}

* The following modifications will make the table look more attractive. (Refer Table II).

You need to include additional packages using commands

\usepackage{multirow}
\usepackage{bigstrut}

\renewcommand{\multirowsetup}{\centering} %to align center inside the table
\setlength{\tabcolsep}{10pt}
\begin{table}[htbp]
\caption{A Nice Table}
\label{Tab:SRNRValues}
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|}
\hline
\multirow{2}{1.5cm}{Method}& \multicolumn{3}{p{5cm}|}{\centering Measurements} \bigstrut \\
\cline{2-4} & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{Clean} & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{SMNR=15 dB} & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{SMNR = 10 dB} \bigstrut \\ \hline
Type1 & 27.54 & 13.23 & 6.80 \bigstrut \\
Type2 & 29.55 & 9.61 & 6 \bigstrut \\
Type3 & 25.99 & 11.49 & 6.15 \bigstrut \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\end{table}

Bibliography in Beamer (Latex Presentation)

Beamer put an icon before every bibliography item listed, by default.

The following code does this job.

——————————————————————————————————————–

\begin{frame}[allowframebreaks] %allow to expand references to multiple frames (slides)

\frametitle{References}

\scriptsize{\bibliographystyle{acm}}

\bibliography{references} %bibtex file name without .bib extension

\end{frame}

——————————————————————————————————————–

We will get the normal bibliography style (number or text instead of icon) by including the following code in the preamble of the document.

(Before \begin{document})

\setbeamertemplate{bibliography item}[text]

 

Ref: http://ininweb.uprm.edu/nambiar/latex/Latex-Tips005.html

 

Annotating PDF files under Linux

Annotating PDF files under linux is a tough job due to some issues related to GNU PDF.

‘Okular’ is a good option, if you always use a single machine.

Okular stores the annotations in ‘.kde/share/apps/okular/docdata/’.

If you move the pdf file to some other system then all the annotations will be lost.

One solution is to move all the data from the above mentioned folder to your new system.

But this folder contains meta data from all pdf files you opened so far.

Another problem with Okular is that even if you rename your pdf file, your annotation is gone!

One solution is to use the Okular custom archive file type ‘.okular’. But this file can be opened only using Okular.

One effective solution I found is to use some windows application with wine.

It Seems that PDF-XChange Viewer is a good option to use with wine.

Hence temporarily let me work like this, though I don’t really like to work with windows 🙂

How People in Science See Each Other!

Here is an interesting picture! (Copied from here )