Latex Expert

Overview

Use this skill to create, format, and debug LaTeX documents. It provides modern best practices for structure, bibliography management (biblatex), and mathematical typesetting (mathtools).

Document Structure & Compilation

Standard Structure

Follow this structure for maintainable documents:

\documentclass{article}
% Preamble: Import packages and define macros
\usepackage[style=authoryear,backend=biber]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{references.bib}

\title{Title}
\author{Author}
\date{\today}

\begin{document}

\maketitle

\section{Introduction}
Text goes here.

\printbibliography

\end{document}

Compilation (latexmk)

Always use latexmk for compilation. It automates multiple runs for cross-references and bibliographies.

• •Compile to PDF: latexmk -pdf document.tex
• •Clean build artifacts: latexmk -c

Mathematical Typesetting

Use the mathtools package (an extension of amsmath) for all math.

• •Equation Environment: Use align for multi-line equations. Avoid eqnarray.
• •Sizing: Manually size delimiters (\big, \Big) when automatic sizing (\left, \right) looks poor.
• •Reference: See references/math.md for detailed math commands and environments.

Bibliography

Use biblatex with the biber backend. Avoid legacy BibTeX.

• •Setup: \usepackage[backend=biber]{biblatex}
• •Database: Keep references in a .bib file.
• •Citation: Use \autocite{key} for context-aware citations.

Packages

• •Common: graphicx (images), booktabs (tables), hyperref (links), cleveref (better references).
• •Reference: See references/packages.md for a curated list of modern packages.

Templates

• •Standard Template: Use assets/template.tex as a starting point for new documents.