Interesting LaTeX packages
Tags: latex, software
While revising a paper, I stumbled over two interesting LaTeX packages: overpic and SIunits. The
former is a great way of “texifying” existing pictures. It shows you a grid as an overlay for the
picture and allows you to position arbitrary LaTeX commands (such as short text description) to be
positioned within this grid. This is great when the pictures are created in another application
such as Inkscape or GIMP, but you still want to use
the correct LaTeX fonts or mathematical symbols.
The latter package, SIunits, is the correct way of typesetting SI units. Of course, one could do
this manually by using the math mode of TeX, but then one would have to ensure that the units are
not shown in italics etc. Going with SIunits is easier: Just type \square\metre, for example, to
get the unit of area. It is as simple as that.
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