ThesisTeX Limitted Tutorials

Natbib

The Natbib package allows the use of the highly flexible \citep[pre][post]{reflist} (paranthetical citiation) and \citet{ref} (textual citation) commands in LaTeX. The references referred to in the \citet and \citep commands are kept in the bibliography environment at the end of your thesis. Each item is defined by a \bibitem command as shown below. The bibitem is followed by three different forms of reference.
\bibitem[Smith, Jones, \& Brown(1999)]{Smith99}
Smith, J. C., Jones, T. M., \& Brown, Q. R. 1999, \apj, 503, 221
The first, in square brackets, is what the reference will look like in the text. Note that the date is in parentheses and there is no space. This is important. The second reference, in curly brackets, is the internal reference used by your LaTeX code and is what is referred to by \citep and \citet. Finally, the long reference is what is listed in the actual bibliography.

The difference between \citep and \citet is that \citet calls only one reference at a time whereas \citep can be given a list of references separated by commas. In addition, \citep allows a prefix and a suffix in the square brackets. This is useful for adding text like 'and references therein' or 'see also'.

In a document, you would cite something as follows:

Important points with this package are that dates in the square brackets in the \bibitem command must be enclosed in parentheses and there must not be a space between the date and the characters immediately before it (see example above). If you have everything formatted correctly, the above code would compile into:

Deluxe Tables

These tables are a feature absent in LaTeX2e but added by AASTeX. They're very spiffy and can handle multi-page tables, footnoting, multi-column headers, cutin headers, and much more with great ease. Here are examples simple and more interesting deluxe tables:

Figures

Dealing with Figures takes lots of time, but putting them in your LaTeX code doesn't need to. The figure environment is much like any of the other environments in LaTeX with a beginning and and end. In the environment, figures are called by the \plotone and \plottwo commands which include a single figure, centered, and a pair of figures side by side. It is possible to call multiple \plotone or \plottwo commands within one figure. The \epsscale{} command governs the size of the figure. The default scale is 1 but some figures can be scaled down without hurting readability. I find that a scale of 0.5 to 0.8 works well in many cases.

Here is the code for a figure in its full glory: 


\begin{figure}[t]
  \epsscale{1}\plottwo{figs/lmc.ps}{figs/smc.ps}
  \caption[LMC and SMC maps]{The LMC and SMC Galaxies as viewed in radio waves.  Images courtesy \citet{Smith99}.}
  \label{maps}
\end{figure}
In this example, two postscript files are being called. The first part of the caption is a short version which will appear in the List of Figures. The second part is a longer description which will accompany the figure.

When referring to this figure in the text, I could simply say Figure 3.2. But as soon as different figures are added, I must change the numbering. It is far easier to define a label by which the figure will be known. LaTeX keeps track of these things and will fill in the appropriate numbers in the right spaces. The \label{map} command defines the label. In the text, I would refer to Figure \ref{maps}. The same can be done with tables or sections of text as well.

In all cases, it is important to define the labels after the numbering has been established. The \label command must come after the \caption, the \section/subsection command, or the text of the table to have the correct number.

Charles Danforth
Last modified: Thu Mar 20 14:56:34 EST 2003