Some LaTeX Gems – Part 1: TikZ, Loops and more

This logo means that the blog post is about something I have found interesting, but does not apply directly to the exact purpose of this blog.

Note: These commands have been tested in pdflatex. I am not sure if they work in other distributions.

Over the past couple of months, I have been assisting with editing some papers and also doing some projects in LaTeX. Seeing other peoples’ code has taught me some interesting things. Here are a few of them.

Arrays, Lists, and Loops

Indeed, it is possible to write loops in LaTeX, with a few limitations. I have used this in some of the following ways

creating a perfectly aligned bubble answer sheet for scoring by a desktop scanner. constructing midterms using a different dataset (form) for each student. creating sheets of business cards for our consulting center / mail merge.

Some other ways arrays and loops can be used with some clever programming:

creating multiple forms of an exam using item from different files. reports such as rosters, invoices, pre-printed forms, etc.

Arrays. To create an array in LaTeX, you will need the arrayjob package that can be downloaded from here. Then, to create the […]