A Standard LaTeX Paper Template

Every time I set up a new LaTeX project, I need to copy over my usual Makefile, set up a git repo, create an empty document, and relearn BibTeX. That's tedious.

Cloning this repo is much easier.

Prerequisites

I've used this setup successfully on Macs, FreeBSD, and a few Linuxes. It might work on Cygwin, but I haven't tested it.

You'll need:

• LaTeX
• make
• git

Installation

git clone https://github.com/hrs/latex-paper-template.git YOUR_PROJECT_NAME

I've creatively named the default project paper. If you want to change that, rename the paper.tex and paper.bib files, fix the bibliography reference in paper.tex, and change the value of the project variable in the Makefile.

Usage

make : Build the project, generating a pdf.

make clean : Deletes files created by LaTeX (aux, dvi, pdf, etc.)

make fresh : Delete intermediate files and rebuild. Equivalent to make clean && make

IEEEtran

I often need the IEEE document class. If you're not working somewhere on the EECS spectrum, you probably don't, and you may as well remove IEEEtran.cls immediately and adjust your document class to use article or something. Ain't no thang.

However, if you're interesting in learning to use the IEEEtran class, you'll probably spend some time consulting the HOWTO [pdf].

"This is stupid, why don't you just..."

Nah, I like my setup. Shush.