Overview

rntztex is a collection of tools I (Michael Arntzenius) use for my LaTeX projects. It contains:

1. A Makefile for LaTeX projects that's short and fairly generic. It uses Austin Clements' wonderful latexrun tool, which is included; no installation necessary. You will need Python 3 installed, however.

2. rntz.cls, a document class based on extarticle with some formatting changes. Most notably, it puts section numbers into the left-margin.

3. rntzfont.sty, which chooses between some nice font combinations.

4. rntzgeometry.sty, which sets margins etc. appropriately for common paper sizes.

5. narrow.sty, which sets up a one-column layout with extra width for figure* and fullwidth environments.

Using rntztex

The easiest way to use this repo is to clone or copy it, put some .tex files in it, and run make. That's all it takes!

Alternatively, you can keep rntztex in its own directory. This keeps your work separate from mine, and lets you update rntztex easily. In this case, you should copy the included Makefile to your source directory and update its RNTZTEXDIR variable to contain the path to rntztex.

If you use git, you could use rntztex as a submodule, but submodules are a bit complicated and beyond the scope of this README. Good luck!

Licensing

This repo is currently MIT-licensed; see the LICENSE file. If you want to reuse my code but you're worried about licensing issues, send me an email or a pull request; I want this to be useful to as many people as possible.

Files

Makefile

Should be fairly self-documenting. Let me know if you have any trouble with it. Useful targets:

• make all: Makes PDFs for every .tex file in its directory. Does not look in subdirectories.

• make watch: Watches for changes and recompiles on-the-fly. Uses inotifywait, which is in the inotify-tools package on Ubuntu.

• make foo.pdf: Makes a PDF from foo.tex.

• make foo-book.pdf: Makes a zine-style "booklet" from a regular PDF. For example, if foo.pdf is formatted for A5 paper, foo-book.pdf will be A4, with two pages per side. You can print it out, cut or fold down the middle, and staple the pages together. Needs the pdfbook tool.

• make foo-2up.pdf: Like make foo-book.pdf but makes a 2-up version. Needs the pdfjam tool.

• make clean: Runs latexrun --clean-all and also removes latex.out (where latexrun stores intermediate files).

rntz.cls

Based on extarticle, and supports most of its options. Notable differences:

1. Section & sub-section numbers go into the left margin.
2. Sections & sub-sections headings are smaller.
3. Sub-sub-sections are un-numbered; I use them sparingly if at all.
4. Redefines \maketitle and the abstract environment.

It also has a somewhat random grab-bag of other features I happen to use:

5. Requires and configures hyperref, url, and cleveref.

6. Requires amsmath & amsthm, and defines theorem, conjecture, lemma, definition, and corollary environments. It sets them to share a single running counter.

7. Defines some colors, taken from acmart.cls: ACM{Blue,Yellow,Orange,Red,LightBlue,DarkBlue,Green,Purple}.

rntzgeometry.sty

Sets the page geometry to have "reasonable" margins. Options indicate paper size: a5, b5, a4, letter. Default is a4.

narrow.sty

This sets your body text in a single narrow column, but defines a fullwidth environment that expands to "full width". It redefines figure* to use full width as well.

Options:

• width=LEN: The width of the main text column. Default 345pt.

• fullwidth=LEN: The width for figure* and fullwidth environments. Default is \textwidth, i.e. the width the text would have been before you loaded narrow.sty.

rntzfont.sty

This chooses from a set of fonts, with matched x-heights and reasonable line spacings. The text font options are named by the serif font they choose. Most load Biolinum for sans-serif, and all load Inconsolata for monospace. The text fonts are:

• alegreya for Alegreya Serif and Sans, a strongly-flavored, rather angular font.

• baskervald for Baskervald, a Baskerville variant. Nice in print, acceptable on screen.

• charter for Bitstream Charter with Source Sans Pro. Charter is very legible, even at low DPI.

• cochineal for Cochineal. Cochineal is an old-style font, pleasant in print and tolerable on screen.

• libertine for Linux Libertine. Libertine has similar metrics to Times New Roman. It works well with newtxmath.

• librebaskerville for Libre Baskerville, a Baskerville revival designed for screen use. It lacks small caps and has "faked" bold italics.

• palatino for Palatino, an elegant font that still displays well on screen. Palatino and Euler are both designed by Hermann Zapf, and match nicely.

• pt for PT Serif and Sans. PT Serif is very readable on screen and at low DPI. However, its LaTeX package is missing some features, such as small caps and straight quotes.

• source for Source Serif Pro with Source Sans Pro. Source Serif is a very legible font, similar to Charter, with more fine details in print. However, the version distributed with TeX Live 2018 (and prior) lacks italics.

You can also choose between three families of math fonts:

• euler for Euler, a somewhat calligraphic upright math font.

• newmath for newtxmath (or its relative newpxmath), using whichever variant most nicely matches the text font choice.

• nomath leaves the math font unchanged.

The defaults are charter with euler.

Many thanks to Michael Sharpe, who maintains the Baskervaldx, cochineal, inconsolata, newtx, newpx, and xcharter packages; and to Bob Tennent, who maintains the alegreya, librebaskerville, and libertine packages.

example.tex

A simple example document showing off rntz.cls, rntzgeometry.sty, and rntzfont.sty.

xheight.tex

A test document used to check x-heights are aligned across different fonts.