Adding Templates to ReLaTeX

Overview

You can easily add new templates for ReLaTeX to use. The basic process is:

• You take an existing latex file you want to use as a template. For example, this might be the official latex template provided by a scientific journal that you want to submit a paper to. You add this to ReLaTeX by simply copying it to relatex/templates/TEMPLATENAME/template.tex, where TEMPLATENAME is the name you wish to assign to this template. You should also copy any additional files required for this template to work (such as .sty or .cls files), to that directory.
• You add Jinja2 code to the template.tex template file, telling ReLaTeX what content to insert in different parts of the template.

Examples

See the example templates in templates/pnas, templates/plos, and templates/generic. You can see them in action in Basic ReLaTeX Tutorial. Note that Jinja2 variables are inserted using {{ }} markers, and control structures are inserted using {% %} markers.

ReLaTeX Content Variables

ReLaTeX provides the following variables for insertion anywhere within your template:

Content variables

• any keyword parameter(s) passed by the --param command line option.

• title: inserts the document title

• section: is a dictionary of the named sections in the paper, whose keys are section names, and whose associated values are the latex content of that section. It also provides the following attribute:

  • order: a list of section names, in the order they appeared in the input latex file.

  Note that if your input latex file uses the \begin{abstract}...\end{abstract} construct, its content will be added to this dictionary as the section named Abstract.

• figures: if --extract-figures was specified, a list of figure objects, each with the following attributes. Otherwise it’s an empty list.

  • imagefile: file name of the image file.
  • caption: the figure caption
  • options: the latex \begin{figure} options provided in the input latex file for this figure, if any.
  • legend: the text legend associated with this figure.

• tables: if --extract-figures was specified, a list of table objects, each with the following attributes. Otherwise it’s an empty list.

  • tabular: the content of the table itself (i.e. the content of its tabular environment.
  • columnFormats: the list of format specification for the set of columns, provided in the input latex file for this figure.
  • legend: the text legend associated with this table.

Author and Affiliation variables

• authors: a list of author objects, each with the following attributes:

  • name: the Author Name as provided in the input latex file’s \author{} list.

  • get_affiliations(fmt=None, key=None, linker=’,’): returns a string providing a formatted list of affiliations for this author.

    fmt, if provided, will be used as a Python format string which can contain any of the following fields: %(id)s: inserts the number of the affiliation (starting from 1); %(key)s: inserts the key character of the affiliation, obtained from the optional key character string key argument. %(label)s: inserts the affiliation string from the affiliations.txt file for this affiliation. %(labelOnce)s: same as %(label)s, except that it will insert an empty string on subsequent re-usages of the same affiliation (required by some journal formats).

    key, if provided is a string of characters to use for each affiliation (i.e. the first character is used for the first affiliation, etc.).

    linker is the string used for joining the list of affiliations.

  • get_marker(role, label): returns the string specified by label if the author has the specified role, otherwise an empty string.

• emailAddress: inserts the corresponding author’s email address, provided by the --email option.

• affiliations: a list of affiliation objects, each with the following attributes:

  • id: the number of the affiliation (starting at 1).
  • label: the affiliation string from the affiliations.txt file for this affiliation.

Bibliography variables

• bibname: name of the bibliography file (i.e. .bib file name without the .bib suffix).
• bibCount: inserts the largest bibliography number from the .bbl file supplied via the --bbl option.
• thebibliography: inserts the bibliography obtained from a .bbl file supplied via the --bbl option.

LaTeX macros etc.

• macroDefs: inserts macros defined by the input latex file, which must be marked BY starting with the line %BEGINMACROS and ending the line %ENDMACROS, e.g.:

  %BEGINMACROS
  \newcommand{\ip}{\ensuremath{\text{IP}_0}\xspace}
  \newcommand{\zdx}{\ensuremath{\text{ZD}_{\chi}}\xspace}
  \newcommand{\zdr}{\ensuremath{\text{ZDR}}\xspace}
  \newcommand{\zdt}{\ensuremath{\text{ZD}_t}\xspace}
  \newcommand{\mars}{\ensuremath{\text{MaRS}^{*}}\xspace}
  %ENDMACROS