Some TeX Developments

I’ve had a a few questions about the achemso bundle concerning creating references such as “Figures 1 to 3” automatically. The problem has been that I’ve been using the varioref package to turn \ref{some-fig} in “Figure 1” automatically, rather than having to put Figure~\ref{some-fig}. Unfortunately, varioref does not handle multiple references in an automated fashion.

For version 3.4 of achemso (which I’ve just sent to CTAN), I’ve switched to the cleveref package. This means that you can now write something like \ref{fig-1,fig-2,fig-3} and get “Figures 1 to 3” without further effort. I hope that this makes life much easier for users, although it does mean that there is another package required to use achemso. I think that this is the right balance: I’m sure users will let me know if I’ve got it wrong.

One question that crops up from time to time is “How do I install achemso?” For most people, I tend to point out that the latest MiKTeX and TeX Live distributions include both achemso and everything it needs to work. So on a stand-alone system, installing an up-to-date distribution is the easiest way.

Manually installing achemso itself is not too hard, the main problem being that people miss out the BibTeX files (achemso.bst and biochem.bst), then get odd effects with bibliographies. On CTAN, the file achemso.tds.zip contains everything laid out ready for installation, and that includes the BibTeX files. So my advice for those who can’t or don’t want to do a full update is to use the TDS zip. For those who want to extract from the source and do everything themselves, as I say the main thing is not to forget the BibTeX styles.

One problem that comes up is the need for a reasonably recent copy of xkeyval. If I was writing the code again from scratch, I probably would not use xkeyval, but that is not the situation. I’ve worked quite hard to reduce the problems, and the latest version of achemso uses only the most basic functions in xkyeval. One of the reasons that life is a bit complex is because xkeyval requires installation of items in both tex/generic/xkeyval and tex/latex/xkeyval: not ideal. At the moment, there is no TDS zip on CTAN for xkeyval, but I’m always happy to send anyone who needs one a suitable zip by e-mail.

I’ve had a few e-mails recently from users of my achemso and rsc packages, complaining that they get an empty first entry in the bibliography. Some of the users have noticed that it seems to be linked to the special control citation that both packages use. However, this is not a bug in either bundle, but is because the users have done a self-install of the packages.

In both cases, the LaTeX packages are designed to work with matching BibTeX styles. What tends to happen is people install the LaTeX stuff manually, but forget the BibTeX part. So the wrong .bst files get used by BibTeX, and odd results are seen. So my advice is, if you update anything by hand, make sure you install all of the update and not just some of it!

My achemso package has evolved over time to work quite well for submitting papers to the American Chemical Society (ACS). However, I still get feedback about issues with the submission system. A lot of this comes from the fact that I write the package without any direct input from the ACS. So any issues tend to be brought up by users. The ACS publish around 30 journals, each with its own rules, and I have to work out what each one wants! Not an easy task: I’ve submitted to a couple, and never as the lead author. It’s a challenge, but I hope that I’m doing more good than harm.

I’ve just uploaded version 3.2 of achemso to CTAN, and also sent it off the the American Chemical Society. The development for v3.2 has mainly been about making using the package easier for end users. I’ve removed a lot of dependency on other support packages, so that it only uses very standard LaTeX packages (things like float and caption). I’ve also made the package cope better with older versions of xkeyval, by using only a subset of the functions provided there. There are a few bug fixes as well, plus a new environment for graphic TOC entries. Hopefully, this makes life easier for manuscript authors.

I’ve had a couple of minor bug reports about my achemso package for submissions to the ACS. The latest version (v3.1a) is on its way to CTAN and the ACS now.

When I wrote the achemso class for submissions to American Chemical Society journals, I did my best to get the style of each journal correct. Of course, this is not easy as there are a lot of journals and they are not necessarily consistent in applying the style rules! One issue that comes up a lot is section numbering. Most of the journals do not number sections, most of the time. However, sometimes authors want to include section numbers. I need to look at this again for version 3.2, but in version 3.1 you need to do:

\makeatletter
\acs@restsecnums
\makeatother

somewhere in the preamble to restore numbering.

My achemso package (for submissions to the American Chemical Society) has been updated to v3.1. This brings two main developments. First, JACS Communications now automatically format in the journal style. This was asked for by the editorial office, and hopefully shows the approximate page requirement. Second, I’ve completely revised author affiliations. The original system was much too inflexible (just one main affiliation per author), and I’ve had a lot of questions about this. The new system gives you three macros:

• \affiliation

• \altaffiliation

• \alsoaffiliation

The last one is new, and should enable pretty much any combination of different addresses.