Though a few webpages have print friendly option, many webpages lack this feature. When printing such pages we may want to remove some unwanted elements for efficient printing.
http://www.printfriendly.com/ is a good option to do this.
Category Archives: ResearchLife
Changing font while using ‘url’ package in Latex
The default font used in url package is ‘tt’.
If you want to same font used in the text, simply use \urlstyle{same}, anywhere in your Latex document.
You can switch back to the default mode by using \urlstyle{tt} .
See url.sty for more options.
Organizing Research Docs with Dropbox and Mendeley
Dropbox and Mendeley are two tools which help to organize research related docs in an efficient manner.
Dropbox initially gives 2GB free cloud storage which can be extended to 16 GB easily (by their referral scheme and other policies; visit dropbox.com for more details.). You can join dropbox using this link.
Mendeley helps to organize your pdf files, search inside your pdf collection, annotate the pdf files, etc.
You may read more about dropbox and mendeley from here.
Here, I’ll discuss how to efficiently combine these tools to take the full advantage especially when you are accessing docs from multiple computers.
Mendeley free version has 1 GB storage. Instead of using this space, we’ll store all the pdf files inside dropbox where you have more space. Mendeley has an in-built facility to sync the annotations and newly added pdf files across many computers. But the scheme is not really efficient.
I propose an alternate option: Store all pdf files inside some directory inside Dropbox directory. Use this directory as a watch folder for Mendeley. I prefer specifically NOT to use the ‘File Organizer’ option in Mendeley.
Now, we will store all the Mendeley database realted files inside Dropox folder. Dropbox will sync these files across multiple PCs without any issue. To make this scheme work, we should have a similar folder structure in all PCs.
I assume that Dropbox and Mendeley are already installed in the system (off-course, I assume a linux based system; mine is Ubuntu 12.04, 64-bit).
1. Create a Folder ‘Mendeley’ in Dropbox folder
mkdir ~/Dropbox/Mendeley
2. Create another folder to store the Mendeley database files.
mkdir ~/Dropbox/Mendeley/db
3. Remove the mendeley database: (caution: it will remove all the annotations already marked)
mv ~/.local/share/data/Mendeley\ Ltd./Mendeley\ Desktop ~/Dropbox/Mendeley/db
4. Create a symoblic link to the Mendeley database folder:
ln -s /home/sooraj/Dropbox/Mendeley/db/Mendeley\ Desktop/ ~/.local/share/data/Mendeley\ Ltd./
Now, all the annotations and other database files related to Mendeley will be synced in different PCs using Dropbox.
Latex Tips
Use ‘\tilde’ sparingly in your latex code before \cite, \ref etc. It will avoid annoying line breaking before a reference or an equation number. Similarly we should use ‘\’ after a period (‘.’), where the period symbol is not meant for ‘full stop’. For example, etc., e.g. Otherwise, latex will interpret it as a full stop and will give more space between the words.
Title case problem with Bibtex
Using Jabref, a front end for bibtex, we can solve this problem quickly.
Q: BibTeX converts uppercase characters to lowercase in my title field. I know this can be prevented by wrapping uppercase letters in braces, e.g. “{T}he life cycle of {A}tlantic salmon”, but this is too much work. Can JabRef help?
A: JabRef has a setting that will automatically wrap all capital letters for certain fields in { } – this will make sure they are preserved in the LaTeX output. Under Options -> Preferences -> General -> File -> “Store the following fields with braces around capital letters”, make sure the title field is included. To do this for several fields, write e.g. “title;abstract” (without the quotes). This setting automatically adds braces when saving the bib file, but you won’t see the braces within JabRef.
Common Bugs in Writing
Here, I’ll post a few links which discuss about the common mistakes while writing a paper.
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.
Statistical Signal Processing (SSP) Lab, IISc 