Document 280

How to use an unlisted LaTeX package

Version: 3.x, 4.x, 5.x - Scientific WorkPlace & Scientific Word

Available LaTeX packages are not always listed in the Add Package dialog. You may find that you need to add a package that's not on the list. Suppose your new document uses the article shell DECUS Proceedings and you want to use the cite package to combine references so that they look like [1-3] instead of [1, 2, 3]. When you open the Add Packages dialog, no packages are listed. You can add the package even though it isn't listed.

Follow these steps to add an unlisted package to your document:

  1. From the Typeset menu, choose Options and Packages.

  2. Choose Package Options.

  3. Choose Go Native.

  4. In the Packages area, enter {package} where package is the name of the package you want to use, and then choose OK.

  5. Choose OK to return to your document.

Also, you can add a package to the list of available packages for each document class. Here's what to do:

  1. Find the file classes.pkg in the \Typeset subdirectory of your program directory.

  2. Make a backup copy of the file.

  3. Use an ASCII editor to open the file. The file lists the packages available for each document class, such as [article], [book], [letter] or [report].

  4. Under the heading for each document class for which you want the package to be available, add the package name in alphabetical order.

    To illustrate, in the example above the base document class for the DECUS Proceedings shell is deproc. So, you must add these lines to the end of the classes.pkg file:

    [deproc]

    cite

    If you want all the packages available in the article class, you could copy all the packages listed under the [article] heading in classes.pkg and add them under the [deproc] heading.

  5. Save and close the file.

Last revised 02/22/06

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