LaTeX structure

For the purposes of quarto_titlepages, this is all you need to know.

\documentclass[<<<classoption>>>]{<<<document class>>>}

<<<include-in-header static>>>

<<<title.tex template>>>

\begin{document}

<<<before-body.tex template>>>

ALL YOUR CONTENT

\end{document}

document class

This specifies the look of your PDF. It is specified by a .cls file. Quarto uses by default scrartcl and scrbook. If you want to customize a document class, you can start with class options. You’ll need to dig into the CTAN documentation to see what is available: scrbook and srcartcl.

    documentclass: scrbook
    classoption: ["oneside", "open=any"]

include-in-header (static)

This is static LaTeX. Static means it doesn’t using any variable from your YAML. It is just plain LaTeX. Headers on LaTeX documents are used to specify extra packages to use and define or redefine commands. It can get pretty complex. But quarto_title pages, we really don’t need much. I used the babel package for some diacritic (accents on letters) and the hyphenat package to stop titles from being hyphenated.

title.tex (template)

Note

quarto_titlepages does not use title.tex I include this section because defining authors using \author{} is ubiquitous in LaTeX, so you should know a) what it is and b) what to do if you want to use it. Why doesn’t quarto_titlepages use it? Because the standard LaTeX title pages are nothing like the title pages I need for government reports. I would in a constant fight against the pre-defined \author function or the authblk package functions if I used it.

Pandoc allows you to use a Pandoc template (meaning you can uses variables in your YAML). To that you can use title.tex. Despite the name, it is not restricted to using for the title. It is just that that is how Pandoc uses it.

title

You might see title defined here like so.

\title{Here is the title.}

\title is a function and {..} is the argument for it. Later, after \begin{document}, we can use \title to output a title. The formating is defined in the \title definition in the document class cls file.

authors

If you are going to use \author or the authblk package to help you generate your author list on your title page, this is where you do that. Here is a really common \author specification for a LaTeX document.

Example from Pandoc title.tex

\author{$for(author)$$author$$sep$ \and $endfor$}

The is going to put, for example, the following LaTeX in the document:

\author{Jane Doe \and Ashok Kumar \and Matti Meikäläinen}

It gets the names from author: in the YAML.

\author is essentially a function in LaTeX and the bit in {...} is the arguments. The document class (the cls file) has the code to process define the \author function using those arguments (the names). Later, after \begin{document}, we can use \author to call the author function and it will output a formatted list of the author names.

authblk package

We also typically have author affiliations that we want to print. The authblk package helps with that.

It modifies the \author function to have a number for the affiliation. So \author[1]{author name 1} and has a \affil[#]{affiliation} function to define the affiliation 1. So you would see something like this

\author[1]{Junli Liu}
\author[2]{James Rowe}
\author[3]{Keith Lindsey}
\affil[1]{address one}
\affil[2]{address two}
\affil[3]{address three}

before-body.tex (template)

This is where the command to make a title page is issued. Typically, you will see \maketitle called. \maketitle is a function defined in the document class cls file and specifies how the title page looks.

\begin{document}

\maketitle

ALL YOUR CONTENT

\end{document}

But we don’t have to use \maketitle at all. We can define our own title page. This is the approach quarto_titlepages uses.

\begin{titlepage}

<<< Code for your title page >>>

\end{titlepage}

For example, (the MWE from the base LaTeX installation):

\begin{titlepage}
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=0.15\textwidth]{example-image-1x1}\par\vspace{1cm}
    {\scshape\Jacksonville State University \par}
    \vspace{1cm}
    {\scshape\Large Final year project\par}
    \vspace{1.5cm}
    {\huge\bfseries Pigeons love doves\par}
    \vspace{2cm}
    {\Large\itshape John Birdwatch\par}
    \vfill
    supervised by\par
    Dr.~Mark \textsc{Brown}

    \vfill

% Bottom of the page
    {\large \today\par}
\end{titlepage}

frontmatter

In a book document class, the title page is created using \frontmatter (again that’s a function). If that is the case, you need to define the frontmatter otherwise the frontmatter (with title page) from the class definition will be used. So you have to use

\begin{frontmatter}
\begin{titlepage}
<<< Code for our title page >>>
\end{titlepage}
\end{frontmatter}

troubleshooting

• The most common problem I have is that LaTeX wants a empty line feed (carriage return) at the end of my _titlepage.tex code. I often forget and then it complains that \begin{titlepage} did not end.