I downloaded the ACM Sigcomm 2015 template but its not compiling and giving me hundreds of errors. Kindly help me.
Here is the template link: http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2015/doc/sig-alternate-10pt.cls
[Tex/LaTex] ACM SIGCOMM 2015 LaTeX template not Compiling
acmtemplates
Related Solutions
The definition you report states that the spacing before the section title is 10pt, extendable to 14pt and shrinkable to 8pt (the fourth argument to \@startsection) and that the spacing after the title is 4pt (fifth argument).
The negative values in -10\p@ \@plus -4\p@ \@minus -2\p@ tell LaTeX that the following paragraph should not be indented; the positive value in the fifth argument tells that this sectioning level is "displayed" rather than "run in".
So if you want no space after the section title and to reduce the space above you can do something like
\makeatletter
\def\section{%
\@startsection{section}{1}{\z@}%
{-6\p@ \@plus -2\p@ \@minus -1\p@}%Caleb Serafy
{1sp}%Caleb Serafy
{\baselineskip 14pt\secfnt\@ucheadtrue}%
}
\makeatother
Notice that I didn't say 0pt (or the equivalent 0\p@ or \z@ in a \makeatletter regime) for the fifth argument, but 1sp (the minumum positive length, which is unnoticeable by the naked eye). I've marked the modifications with your name, as did GM when changed the setup in the style sheet.
However, I don't think that the conference organizers will be happy about this, since they provide a stylesheet just to ensure uniform appearance of the papers.
The class hardwires the names; it's easy to change this though.
\documentclass{sig-alternate}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\makeatletter
% don't use hardwired names
\def\fnum@figure{\figurename\ \thefigure}
\def\fnum@table{\tablename\ \thetable}
\patchcmd{\thebibliography}{References}{\refname}{}{}
\patchcmd{\thebibliography}{References}{\refname}{}{}
% fix a silly usage of \uppercase in \@sect
\patchcmd{\@sect}{\uppercase}{\MakeUppercase}{}{}
\patchcmd{\@sect}{\uppercase}{\MakeUppercase}{}{}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\section{Test}
This is a test.
\begin{figure}[hbt]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.48\columnwidth]{example-image}
\caption{Test Figure}
\end{figure}
And here is a reference: \cite{testCite}.
%\bibliographystyle{abbrv}
%\bibliography{citations}
\begin{thebibliography}{1}
\bibitem{testCite} Something
\end{thebibliography}
\end{document}
The change has no consequence in case babel is not used. I added a mock thebibliography environment just to show the effect.
Note that you should use \columnwidth and not \textwidth for the figure.
Best Answer
The reason is that this template is a CLASS file *.cls so you need to add it in your *.tex document as:
where sig-alternate is the required *.cls file that needs to be in the working directory of your project. You can create this class file sig-alternate.cls by copying the code from the link: http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2015/doc/sig-alternate-10pt.cls and pasting it in any text editor and saving it as *.cls. I hope you got my point.