Creating a LaTeX Minimal Example
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1. today 1 Actually these days IIl just ask you to post your bug report on my bug report form end document Call this file say test tex and run TFX on it Have a look at the output The output looks fine so perhaps one of the other packages you have loaded has caused the problem One by one try each of the packages you have in your problem document in the same order If adding the package has no effect on the output then delete that package from the test file and go on to the next one For example the problem document loads the babel package so add that package to the test file using the same options that you used in your problem document The minimal example should now look like documentclass article usepackage french USenglish babel usepackage mmddyyyy datetime begin document today end document Now run it through I4TpX and check the result The output has changed to November 14 2008 instead of 11 14 2008 This test file now reproduces the error but is only six lines instead of several hundred or possible thousand lines What next Check the datetime documentation to see if it mentions the babel package The datetime documentation comes in both PDF and HTML format Most PDF and HTML viewers have a function that allows you to search the document or page for a given word so search for the word babel This should lead you to the sentence which states that the babel package must be loaded before the2. 10 FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE The Free Software Foundation may publish new revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns See http www gnu org copyleft Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number If the Docu ment specifies that a particular numbered version of this License or any later version applies to it you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been published not as a draft by the Free Software Foundation If the Document does not specify a version number of this License you may choose any version ever published not as a draft by the Free Software Foundation ADDENDUM How to use this License for your documents To use this License in a document you have written include a copy of the License in the document and put the following copyright and license notices just after the title page Copyright YEAR YOUR NAME Permission is granted to copy distribute and or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documenta tion License Version 1 2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation with no Invariant Sections no Front Cover Texts and no Back Cover Texts A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Fre
3. TeX or LaTeX error you don t understand end document It may be that you can now identify the problem but let s suppose you still don t know what s wrong The next thing to do is to remove unnecessary information in the preamble If you have defined any commands or environments in the preamble that aren t used in the problem paragraph then delete them This includes any new theorems or glossary entries and so on In this example the problem paragraph contains a glossary entry so keep the definition for that entry and delete all the others listfiles documentclass myuniversityscustomclass usepackage nonstandardpackage usepackage anothernonstandardpackage lots of other packages usepackage glossaries newglossaryentry minex name Minimal Example description A small document illustrating failing behaviour text minimal example begin document A gls minex is essential when encountering a TeX or LaTeX error you don t understand end document Now one by one remove any packages that aren t contributing to the problem Each time you remove a package run the test file through TFX If the error goes away then put the package back in If removing a package causes an Undefined control sequence error then remove the undefined command as well If the problem goes away add the command and package back again For example if I remove the line usepackage glossaries then I will
4. addition you must do these things in the Modified Version A Use in the Title Page and on the covers if any a title distinct from that of the Document and from those of previous versions which should if there were any be listed in the History section of the Document You may use the same title as a previous version if the original publisher of that version gives permission B List on the Title Page as authors one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version together with at least five of the principal authors of the Document all of its principal authors if it has fewer than five unless they release you from this requirement C State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified Version as the publisher D Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document E Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent to the other copyright notices F Include immediately after the copyright notices a license notice giving the public permission to use the Modified Version under the terms of this License in the form shown in the Addendum below G Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant Sections and required Cover Texts given in the Document s license notice H Include an unaltered copy of this License I Preserve the section Entitled History Preserve its Title and add to it an item stating at least the tit
5. be at most 5 words and a Back Cover Text may be at most 25 words A Transparent copy of the Document means a machine readable copy represented in a format whose specification is available to the general public that is suitable for re vising the document straightforwardly with generic text editors or for images composed of pixels generic paint programs or for drawings some widely available drawing edi tor and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup or absence of markup has been arranged to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent An image format is not Transparent if used for any substantial amount of text A copy that is not Transparent is called Opaque Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII without markup Texinfo input format LaTeX input format SGML or XML using a publicly available DTD and standard conforming simple HTML PostScript or PDF designed for human modification Examples of transparent image formats include PNG XCF and JPG Opaque formats include proprietary formats that can be read and edited only by proprietary word processors SGML or XML for which the DTD and or processing tools are not generally available and the machine generated HTML PostScript or PDF produced by some wor
6. datetime package Check the test file In this test file the babel package has been loaded first Now what In this case there is a FAQ for the datetime package http www dickimaw books com faqs datetimefaq htm1 so that s the next place to look This FAQ covers the most commonly used packages that I have written If you look at the table of contents for the datetime section you should see the entry The date is in another language or in the wrong format This fits the problem so click on that link and have a look at the answer The answer indicates that there was a bug in an earlier version of the datetime package that caused a problem when used in conjunction with the babel package but the bug has been fixed So the next thing to do is check which version you are using Add the command listfiles to the test file listfiles documentclass article usepackage french USenglish babel usepackage mmddyyyy datetime begin document today end document or more precisely it covers the packages that I get the most post about At the end of the log file there should now be a list of all the files that have been loaded along with their release dates and versions Check the version of the datetime package Is it the latest version If not download the latest version and try again If it is the latest version then send the author me in the case of the datetime package the test file and its log file If you check
7. get an error as neither newglossaryentry nor gls will be defined If I remove those commands the original error message will go away So I have to leave those commands in and keep the glossaries package in the test file Next try substituting the class file for the article or report class file If the error goes away then the original class file is contributing to the problem in which case put it back again If this class file is not publicly available for example it may be an in house class file such as a university thesis which has restricted access then contact the author of the class file and send the test file and log file Remembering of course to first search the documentation If you followed all of the above steps then the test file should now look like listfiles documentclass article usepackage glossaries newglossaryentry minex name Minimal Example description A small document illustrating failing behaviour text minimal example begin document A gls minex is essential when encountering a TeX or LaTeX error you don t understand end document In this example you should now be able to work out that there is a missing closing brace to the argument of gls If however you still can t work out the problem then assuming that you ve already read the documentation and searched relevant forums or newsgroup archives copy and paste the test file in a message to somewhere like TEX on Sta
8. law A Modified Version of the Document means any work containing the Document or a portion of it either copied verbatim or with modifications and or translated into another language A Secondary Section is a named appendix or a front matter section of the Doc ument that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the Document s overall subject or to related matters and contains noth ing that could fall directly within that overall subject Thus if the Document is in part a textbook of mathematics a Secondary Section may not explain any mathemat ics The relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters or of legal commercial philosophical ethical or political position regarding them 14 The Invariant Sections are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated as being those of Invariant Sections in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License If a section does not fit the above definition of Secondary then it is not allowed to be designated as Invariant The Document may contain zero Invariant Sections If the Document does not identify any Invariant Sections then there are none The Cover Texts are certain short passages of text that are listed as Front Cover Texts or Back Cover Texts in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License A Front Cover Text may
9. listed as many as fit reasonably on the actual cover and continue the rest onto adjacent pages If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100 you must either include a machine readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque copy or state in or with each Opaque copy a computer network location from which the general network using public has access to download using public standard network protocols a complete Transparent copy of the Document free of added material If you use the latter option you must take reasonably prudent steps when you begin distribution of Opaque copies in quantity to ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque copy directly or through your agents or retailers of that edition to the public It is requested but not required that you contact the authors of the Document well before redistributing any large number of copies to give them a chance to provide you with an updated version of the Document 4 MODIFICATIONS You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely 16 this License with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document thus licensing distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it In
10. of any Modified Version 5 COMBINING DOCUMENTS You may combine the Document with other documents released under this License under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions provided that you include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of all of the original documents unmodified and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license notice and that you preserve all their Warranty Disclaimers The combined work need only contain one copy of this License and multiple identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy If there are multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but different contents make the title of each such section unique by adding at the end of it in parentheses the name of the original author or publisher of that section if known or else a unique number Make the same adjustment 18 to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work In the combination you must combine any sections Entitled History in the various original documents forming one section Entitled History likewise combine any sec tions Entitled Acknowledgements and any sections Entitled Dedications You must delete all sections Entitled Endorsements 6 COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents released under this License and replace the individu
11. 8 TRANSLATION Translation is considered a kind of modification so you may distribute translations of the Document under the terms of section 4 Replacing Invariant Sections with trans lations requires special permission from their copyright holders but you may include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the original versions of these Invariant Sections You may include a translation of this License and all the license notices in the Document and any Warranty Disclaimers provided that you also include the original English version of this License and the original versions of those notices and disclaimers In case of a disagreement between the translation and the original version of this License or a notice or disclaimer the original version will prevail 19 If a section in the Document is Entitled Acknowledgements Dedications or His tory the requirement section 4 to Preserve its Title section 1 will typically require changing the actual title 9 TERMINATION You may not copy modify sublicense or distribute the Document except as expressly provided for under this License Any other attempt to copy modify sublicense or distribute the Document is void and will automatically terminate your rights under this License However parties who have received copies or rights from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance
12. Creating a LaTeX Minimal Example Nicola L C Talbot 17th January 2014 version 1 2 Abstract Debugging LaTeX errors often requires creating a minimal or minimum example This is particularly important when posting a bug report or request for help as it facilitates the diagnostic process Creating a minimal example will often help you identify the problem without having the hassle of posting your query and waiting until you get a reply This document illustrates how to create a minimal example See also Need More Help The home page for this document is http www dickimaw books com latex minexample The source code for this document is available as a ZIP archive Copyright 2008 Nicola L C Talbot Permission is granted to copy distribute and or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License Version 1 2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation with no Invariant Sections no Front Cover Texts and no Back Cover Texts included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License Contents 1 Introduction 2 Building Up 3 Hacking Down 4 Additional Files 5 Dummy Text 6 Where Do Find Package Documentation 7 Understanding Error Messages 8 GNU Free Documentation License A copy of the license is 10 11 11 13 1 Introduction A minimal example is the smallest possible complete document that illustrates a problem A minimal example file should not inc
13. a long rambling description of your project as it generally doesn t help to identify the problem and too much information can put people off reading your request It s also a good idea to first search the comp text tex archives or use the search box on sites like The ATRX Community TEX on StackExchange to find out if anyone else has asked the same question If you ask a frequently asked question you may get a curt reply from people who are tired of answering the same old question so check first 2 Building Up With the building up approach you start with the document documentclass article begin document end document and add to it until you encounter your problem If your problem requires the use of chapter then replace article with either report or book This section illustrates the building up approach with an example Suppose your problem document looks something like documentclass myuniversityscustomclass usepackage french USenglish babel usepackage mmddyyyy datetime usepackage nonstandardpackage usepackage anothernonstandardpackage lots of other packages that may or may not be standard lots of your own definitions author John Doe title Astounding Discoveries begin document maketitle tableofcontents listoffigures listoftables 300 or so pages of text graphics tables bibliography and sundry other stuff end document Let s suppose that your problem is that the
14. al copies of this License in the various docu ments with a single copy that is included in the collection provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all other respects You may extract a single document from such a collection and distribute it individ ually under this License provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted document and follow this License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of that document 7 AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium is called an ageregate if the copyright resulting from the compilation is not used to limit the legal rights of the compilation s users beyond what the individual works permit When the Document is included in an aggregate this License does not apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Docu ment then if the Document is less than one half of the entire aggregate the Document s Cover Texts may be placed on covers that bracket the Document within the aggregate or the electronic equivalent of covers if the Document is in electronic form Otherwise they must appear on printed covers that bracket the whole aggregate
15. blem is in the second half of the document In which case delete everything after begin document up to and including the first end document in your test file and repeat the process 3 Actually in this example it should print the line number in the error message since gls is a short command but not all runaway argument errors give a helpful line number so let s pretend it hasn t TAT RX will finish the document when it reaches the first end document and ignore everything that comes after it Continue the process until you only have one paragraph left in your document If this has an input or include command first remove or comment out the command If the problem goes away then the error is in that file in which case replace the input or include command with the contents of the relevant file in your test file and repeat the process Once you have finished it s a good idea to add listfiles Let s suppose we now have a test file that looks like listfiles documentclass myuniversityscustomclass usepackage nonstandardpackage usepackage anothernonstandardpackage lots of other packages usepackage glossaries lots of your own command and environment definitions newglossaryentry minex name Minimal Example description A small document illustrating failing behaviour text minimal example lots more glossary definitions begin document A gls minex is essential when encountering a
16. ckExchange or The ATEX Community or comp text tex 4 Additional Files You ve tried building up or hacking down a minimal example but the problem is caused by an additional file which you can t copy and paste into the minimal example file so what do you do If the file is a graphics file replace the command with a rule of the same dimension For example if your image is 4in wide by 3in high then replace includegraphics myImage with rule 4in 3in Alternatively the mwe package comes with some sample images that you can use instead For example you could replace includegraphics myImage with includegraphics height 3in example image There are other test images provided by that package See the mwe documentation for further details If the file is a BibTFX file then make a copy of the file and remove the entries one by one until you are left with the entry that causes the problem If the file is a CSV file make a copy of the file and remove the rows one by one until you are left with the problem row but keep the header row if there is one You can then send this abridged file with the minimal example or you can embed it in the minimal example file using the filecontents or filecontents environment This environment takes one argument which must be the name of the file For example documentclass article begin filecontents test bib article sample 5The starred form doesn t write extra commen
17. d processors for output purposes only The Title Page means for a printed book the title page itself plus such following pages as are needed to hold legibly the material this License requires to appear in the title page For works in formats which do not have any title page as such Title Page means the text near the most prominent appearance of the work s title preceding the beginning of the body of the text A section Entitled XYZ means a named subunit of the Document whose title either is precisely XYZ or contains XYZ in parentheses following text that translates XYZ in another language Here XYZ stands for a specific section name mentioned below such as Acknowledgements Dedications Endorsements or History To Preserve the Title of such a section when you modify the Document means that it remains a section Entitled XYZ according to this definition The Document may include Warranty Disclaimers next to the notice which states that this License applies to the Document These Warranty Disclaimers are considered to be included by reference in this License but only as regards disclaiming warranties any other implication that these Warranty Disclaimers may have is void and has no effect on the meaning of this License 15 2 VERBATIM COPYING You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium either commercially or noncommercially provided that this License the copyright notic
18. date on the title page looks like November 14 2008 but you are expecting it to appear in the form 11 14 2008 You have already checked that you used the option mmddyyyy when you loaded the datetime package so what s gone wrong Since you haven t used date the date on the title page is generated using today so the fault must lie in the definition of today It looks like it might be a bug in the datetime package so what should you do This happens to be one of my packages but if you send me your entire 300 page document plus several hundred graphics files and a large bibliography file I won t be best pleased Aside from filling up my inbox I don t have your university s custom class file nor am I likely to have the non standard packages installed on my system so I won t be able to test the document At which point you ll either get a request for a minimal example or Pll think forget that PI look at it some other day or words to that effect and then several days or possibly weeks later you ll get a request for a minimal example You ve already worked out that the problem must lie with the command today So that needs to go in the minimal example You want to use the datetime package to change the format of this command so that package needs to go in the minimal example with the package options you have specified in your original document documentclass article usepackage mmddyyyy datetime begin document
19. e Documentation License If you have Invariant Sections Front Cover Texts and Back Cover Texts replace the with Texts line with this 20 with the Invariant Sections being LIST THEIR TITLES with the Front Cover Texts being LIST and with the Back Cover Texts being LIST If you have Invariant Sections without Cover Texts or some other combination of the three merge those two alternatives to suit the situation If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code we recommend re leasing these examples in parallel under your choice of free software license such as the GNU General Public License to permit their use in free software 21
20. e any Warranty Disclaimers If the Modified Version includes new front matter sections or appendices that qualify as Secondary Sections and contain no material copied from the Document you may at your option designate some or all of these sections as invariant To do this add their titles to the list of Invariant Sections in the Modified Version s license notice These titles must be distinct from any other section titles You may add a section Entitled Endorsements provided it contains nothing but endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties for example statements of peer review or that the text has been approved by an organization as the authoritative definition of a standard You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front Cover Text and a passage of up to 25 words as a Back Cover Text to the end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified Version Only one passage of Front Cover Text and one of Back Cover Text may be added by or through arrangements made by any one entity If the Document already includes a cover text for the same cover previously added by you or by arrangement made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of you may not add another but you may replace the old one on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the old one The author s and publisher s of the Document do not by this License give permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement
21. entation is provided as a PDF file and if it is installed on your system it can usually be obtained using the texdoc application If you have a terminal or command prompt you can access it by typing texdoc followed by the name of the package For example to obtain the documentation for the datetime package run texdoc datetime Sometimes this may produce just the documented code rather than the user manual For example texdoc flowfram will display the documented code However in this instance the first paragraph of that document tells you that the user manual is in ffuserguide pdf in which case texdoc ffuserguide will produce the user manual In some cases especially for older packages the documentation may be contained in a README file in the documentation directory or it may be embedded as comments either at the start or the end of the sty or cls file Alternatively if the documentation was not installed on your system you can obtain it from CTAN You can either use the search box on the CTAN home page or you can use the URL http ctan org pkg name where name is the name of the package For example to obtain information on the glossaries package you can use the URL http ctan org pkg glossaries and it will provide links to the documentation for that package 7 Understanding Error Messages TeX and ATEX error messages can be cryptic but sometimes it s possible to at least find out where things have gone wrong b
22. es and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute However you may accept compensation in exchange for copies If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3 You may also lend copies under the same conditions stated above and you may publicly display copies 3 COPYING IN QUANTITY If you publish printed copies or copies in media that commonly have printed covers of the Document numbering more than 100 and the Document s license notice requires Cover Texts you must enclose the copies in covers that carry clearly and legibly all these Cover Texts Front Cover Texts on the front cover and Back Cover Texts on the back cover Both covers must also clearly and legibly identify you as the publisher of these copies The front cover must present the full title with all words of the title equally prominent and visible You may add other material on the covers in addition Copying with changes limited to the covers as long as they preserve the title of the Document and satisfy these conditions can be treated as verbatim copying in other respects If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly you should put the first ones
23. es tables and a bibliography end document This document is causing the following error Runaway argument minexam is essential when encountering a TeX or LaTeX Merror ETC Paragraph ended before gls was complete lt to be read again gt par Suppose you don t understand what the error is or whereabouts in the document it is occurring Since you don t know what command is causing the problem you can t use the ap proach illustrated in the previous section So you will need to use the hacking down approach Before doing anything else make a copy of the problem document Call the copy say test tex and only edit this Don t start messing around with the original document until you ve solved the problem otherwise you could lose your work One way of tracking down the problem is to use a binary search Suppose your document contains 1000 lines of source code then go to line 500 of your test document i e half way through it and insert the linef end document Make sure you don t put it inside a group or environment Now pass the test document to LaTeX You may get some warning messages as a result of omitting half the document but don t worry about that for now e If the error still occurs then the problem is in the first half of the document In which case delete everything after the first end document in your test file and repeat the process e If the error goes away then the pro
24. le year new authors and publisher of the Modified Version as given on the Title Page If there is no section Entitled History in the Document create one stating the title year authors and publisher of the Document as given on its Title Page then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated in the previous sentence J Preserve the network location if any given in the Document for public access to a Transparent copy of the Document and likewise the network locations given in the Document for previous versions it was based on These may be placed in the History section You may omit a network location for a work that was published at least four years before the Document itself or if the original publisher of the version it refers to gives permission K For any section Entitled Acknowledgements or Dedications Preserve the Title of the section and preserve in the section all the substance and tone of each of the contributor acknowledgements and or dedications given therein 17 L Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document unaltered in their text and in their titles Section numbers or the equivalent are not considered part of the section titles M Delete any section Entitled Endorsements Such a section may not be included in the Modified Version N Do not retitle any existing section to be Entitled Endorsements or to conflict in title with any Invariant Section O Preserv
25. lude any packages or code that do not contribute to the problem but must include a document class and the document environment There are two approaches to creating a minimal example building up and hacking down This document illustrates both approaches Creating the minimal example may lead you to the solution but if you are still stuck you can then post the minimal example Remembering first to search for the solution in the documentation and on the Internal for example in newsgroup archives or on forums or Q amp A sites Many package authors including me read messages on sites such as The ATEX Com munity TEX on StackExchange or on newsgroups such as comp text tex so if you have a problem you can t solve it s generally a good idea to post your query in one of those places remembering to paste the contents of your minimal file in your message If you ve made a mistake in your code then someone may be able to point it out which may mean that you get a reply quicker than you would if you posted your query directly to the author Also other people will be able to see your query and learn from it Re member that no one is being paid or is otherwise obliged to answer your query so be careful not to make your query sound like a demand or an accusation Note that when posting your query you also need to give a brief description of the problem and list the methods that you have tried to trace the problem Don t go into
26. ludes the line number where things started to go wrong 1 8 so I can use my text editor s go to line function Sometimes the line number given in the error message doesn t correspond to the line number where the error actually occurs For example consider the following document 12 documentclass report author A N Author title A sample document with a badcommand date 14th November 2008 begin document maketitle end document In this document the error is an undefined command badcommand occurring on line 4 However the error message is Undefined control sequence title gt A sample document with a badcommand 1 8 maketitle which indicates that the problem occurs on line 8 This is because TFX doesn t actually try to interpret badcommand until line 8 when maketitle tries to typeset the title page When this type of situation occurs it may be necessary to do a little bit of detective work to try to trace the problem In the above example there are two methods to try 1 The first line of the error message states the nature of the error an undefined control sequence and the second line indicates that the undefined control sequence is badcommand You can then use your text editor to search for any instances of badcommand and replace it with the correct command Alternatively if you have forgotten to use a package that defines the command or in the case of a custom command you have forgo
27. rily this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others This License is a kind of copyleft which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense It complements the GNU General Public License which is a copyleft license designed for free software We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software be cause free software needs free documentation a free program should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does But this License is not limited to software manuals it can be used for any textual work regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference 1 APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS This License applies to any manual or other work in any medium that contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms of this License Such a notice grants a world wide royalty free license unlimited in duration to use that work under the conditions stated herein The Document below refers to any such manual or work Any member of the public is a licensee and is addressed as you You accept the license if you copy modify or distribute the work in a way requiring permission under copyright
28. the package documentation you should either find the author s contact details or a link to a bug reporting tool If the conflicting package is one that is not publicly available for example it s your university s custom package that can only be downloaded from a restricted site then send your query to the author of that package If the conflicting package is publicly available but is not on CTAN then specify from where it can be downloaded 3 Hacking Down The previous section illustrated how to build up a minimal example This section shows how to hack down a minimal example Again we are going to start with a 300 page document which contains many images tables and a bibliography documentclass myuniversityscustomclass usepackage nonstandardpackage usepackage anothernonstandardpackage lots of other packages usepackage glossaries lots of your own command and environment definitions newglossaryentry minex name Minimal Example description A small document illustrating failing behaviour text minimal example lots more glossary definitions author John Doe title Astounding Discoveries begin document maketitle tableofcontents listoffigures listoftables 300 or so pages of text graphics tables and sundry other stuff Somewhere in the document is the following A gls minex is essential when encountering a TeX or LaTeX error you don t understand Lots more text figur
29. ts in the file author Ann Other title Sample Title journal Journal of Something year 2014 J end filecontents begin document cite sample bibliography test end document 5 Dummy Text Sometimes a problem may only occur at a certain place or after a certain point in which case you may need to create some dummy text to pad out your example If so the lipsum package is a useful tool This provides the command lipsum which has an optional argument that specifies the paragraph or the range of paragraphs to typeset For example suppose you are using the book class and you don t understand why the page number appears on the bottom of the first page of the chapter and at the top of the second page Then you could illustrate this as follows documentclass book usepackage lipsum begin document chapter Sample lipsum 1 4 end document This will produce enough text to generate two pages There is another dummy text package called blindtext that provides the commands blindtext for short blocks of text and Blindtext for longer blocks of text For example documentclass book usepackage blindtext begin document chapter Sample 10 Blindtext end document The blindtext package also provides other commands to provide a random document dummy lists etc See the blindtext documentation for further details 6 Where Do Find Package Documentation These days most package docum
30. tten to define the command then do so 2 The last line of the error message states that the problem was encountered on line 8 which contains the command maketitle What commands affect maketitle For the standard classes such as report these are author title and date so inspect the code where these commands are used Try commenting out all but one of the commands and see if the error still occurs For example if I comment out the lines containing the title and date the error goes away but if I comment out the author and date instead the error remains This means that the error is in the title For further information on understanding error messages see How to approach errors on the UK TeX FAQ There is also a list of some common error messages in the document LaTeX for Complete Novices which is available from the same site as this document 8 GNU Free Documentation License Version 1 2 November 2002 13 Copyright 2000 2001 2002 Free Software Foundation Inc 51 Franklin St Fifth Floor Boston MA 02110 1301 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document but changing it is not allowed Preamble The purpose of this License is to make a manual textbook or other functional and useful document free in the sense of freedom to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it with or without modifying it either commercially or non commercially Seconda
31. y studying the message Consider the following document documentclass article newcommand example 1 1 11 begin document This is a sample document that contains a long command example with an error This is the next paragraph end document This produces the following error message Runaway argument with an error par This is the next paragraph end document File ended while scanning use of example lt inserted text gt par The first line Runaway argument indicates the type of error A runaway argument is usually caused by a missing closing brace The next line indicates where TFX got up to before things started to go wrong In this error message there is no line number but you can use the information that has been supplied to help you track where the error might be Copy the first part of this line say with an error and paste it into your editor s search function This should take you to the relevant line where you can see that there is no closing brace Suppose instead the document looked like documentclass article newcommand example 1 1 begin document This is a sample document that contains a short command example with an error This is the next paragraph end document In this case the error message is Runaway argument with an error Paragraph ended before example was complete lt to be read again gt par 1 8 In this example the error message inc
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