XeLaTeX article template

This article uses XeLaTeX to type natively in Alegreya font, Andale Mono for code blocks and Libertinus Math for equations.

It uses a makefile typesetting to builds bibliography and counts words and characters on built pdf.

brew cask install pdftotext

characteristics

This template provides a two-columns article with a focus on fonts and typographic issues. It employs strategies to count characters and words in the produced PDF.

The abstract is an external file (placed into includes/abstract.txt) imported to have text access without formatting rapidly. It is useful to strictly look at words count during the writing or for the standalone forwarding for the abstract reviews.

file structure

.
├── 2020-GS-ARTICLE.tex
├── LICENSE
├── README.md
├── gs2020.tex
├── gscom.sh
├── img
│   ├── image1.png
│   └── image2.jpg
├── includes
│   ├── abstract.txt
│   ├── bibliography.bib
│   ├── char.txt
│   └── words.txt
└── makefile

usage

The main file is named 2020-GS-ARTICLE.tex it includes a call to gs2020.tex as an external style. You can create different stylesheets to call at necessity.

You can run LaTeX in multiple ways. I prefer to run a makefile into the terminal to automate some passages. Bibliography printing requires numerous compilations to connect the references, the same for the strategy adopted to count words and characters on the final PDF.

Type

make

to generate all the passages to obtain the PDF.

Looking at the makefile there are three strategies:

• publish the one you implicitly invoke with the make command (so make and make publish are equivalent). After the building process, it removes all the intermediate files. This is the longest-running process, not useful for middle writings, but for the publishing phase;
• build the process of complete building without removing the intermediate file. This process is useful for the reconnection of references during intermediate writings;
• step is the single step advancing mode, useful during writings, fast because it does not reconnect references, not launch the word-count strategies.

So

make step

is the command to the unreferenced PDF production.

make build

is the command to produce a full PDF, the intermediate files remain for the next build steps.

make publish

to produce a full PDF and clean the folder from the intermediate files.

counter strategy

The count of characters and words is processed by pdftotext on the PDF generating two separate files containing respectively words counts and character counts. It is necessary then a multiple generation strategy to obtain full PDF with cross-references, bibliography (BibTeX assumes three compilation processes) and counters. Both counters are printed at the footer of each page, alongside the page number and the building date.

github usages and bash script

Using the template mode offered by GitHub you can generate future articles repository by this starting point.

The following gscom bash script is self-explained. It is the lazy mode on, with the single command bash gscom.sh commitname (where commitname is the name you want assign to the commit, so channge it!) you are doing all the three listed git commands

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# use it by terminal typing:
# bash gscom.sh commitname

git status
git add .
git commit -am "$1"