Hello, 2024! I'm writing this while it is still some time before the new year, but I realised just now (a few weeks ago for you), that I never blogged about the LaTeX templates I have been maintaining for a few years by now.

It's no secret that I do all of my formal academic writing in LaTeX - a typesetting language that is the industry standard in the field of Computer Science (and others too, I gather). While it's a very flexible (and at times obtuse, but this is a tale for another time) language, actually getting started is a pain. To make this process easier, I have developed over the years a pair of templates for writing that make starting off much easier.

A key issue (and skill) in academic writing is properly referencing things, and most places have their own specific referencing style you have to follow. The University of Hull is no different, so I knew from the very beginning that I needed a solution.

I can't remember who I received it from, but someone (comment below if you remember who it was, and I'll properly credit!) gave me a .bst BibTeX referencing style file that matches the University of Hull's referencing style.

I've been using it ever since, and I have also applied a few patches to it for some edge cases I have encountered that it doesn't handle. I do plan on keeping it up to date for the forseeable future with any changes they make to the aforementioned referencing style.

My templates also include this .bst file to serve as a complete starting template. There's one with a full page title (e.g. for thesis, dissertations, etc), and another with just a heading that sits at the top of the document just like a paper you might find on Semantic Scholar.

Note that I do not guarantee that the referencing style matches the University of Hull's style. All I can say is that it works for me and implements this specific referencing style.

With that in mind, I'll leave the README of the git repository to explain the specifics of how to get started with them:

https://git.starbeamrainbowlabs.com/Demos/latex-templates

They are stored on my personal git server, but you should be able to clne them just fine. Patches are most welcome via email (check the homepage of my website!)!

For the longest time, I didn't think it was possible to syntax highlight code in LaTeX, but I was proven wrong a few months ago when I stumbled across the minted package, which uses pygments under-the-hood. Even better, it ships with texlive by default!

Recently, I had need to put it to use once more, and I encountered a bug in which my source code was too long for the line, but minted did not wrap it on to the following line. The solution was quite simple but definitely non-obvious, so I thought I'd make a quick post about it here.

To start with, minted works a lot like the lstlisting you might have used before:

An example block of syntax highlighted Javascript:

\begin{minted}{javascript}
"use strict";

export default async function(x, y) {
    return x + y;
}
\end{minted}

Pretty easy, right? But if you have a really long line (or lots of indentation), then it might overflow the edge of the page without wrapping. Thankfully there's an easy way to fix it that I discovered after digging around for a bit:

\begin{minted}[breaklines,breakanywhere]{javascript}
"use strict";

export default async function(x, y) {
    return x + y;
}
\end{minted}

....by adding [breaklines,breakanywhere] directly after \begin{minted}, we can get it to wrap onto the next line! Even better, we can use the same trick to also add line numbers for easy referencing later:

\begin{minted}[breaklines,breakanywhere,linenos]{javascript}
"use strict";

export default async function(x, y) {
    return x + y;
}
\end{minted}

The linenos option here causes minted to draw line numbers before each line of code. This also respects wrapped lines too, so they don't get all out of sync. Here's a sample of all of these tricks put together in action:

I hope this helps someone out, because I know I find it very useful. I'll hopefully be posting another PhD update blog post soon for those who are eagerly await it - I know it's overdue!

Post a comment below if you have anything specific you'd like me to cover, and I'll do my best to make a post about it.