appendicesglossaries
I am trying to make a list of variable definitions in the appendix and I tried making glossaries and using acronyms packages but I don't know what to do. I do not need to reference the symbols in the text, just make a list with a variable and its definition as so:
m The mass of the object
λ The absolute value of the displacement
As barbara mentioned, you can use \ensuremath like this:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{glossaries}
\makeglossaries
\newglossaryentry{lengthtree}%
{%
name={\ensuremath{L_t}},
description={description here},
sort={L}
}
\begin{document}
In line: \gls{lengthtree}. In math mode:
\[
\gls{lengthtree}
\]
\printglossary[title={List of Symbols}]
\end{document}
The arguments against \ensuremath come down to two main issues (see When not to use \ensuremath for math macro?):
Firstly, you might end up with $ inside the argument of \ensuremath. This won't occur in this example, as the argument of \ensuremath is being explicitly set to L_t.
Secondly, there is an issue of semantics. Following this line of argument, you should define the entry without \ensuremath and do $\gls{lengthtest}$, which is fine in the document text that you type, but this will cause a problem in the glossary where the style doesn't automatically shift to math mode when it comes to the entry name. Personally, I think \ensuremath is okay in this context, but for the purists who can't stand it, here's an alternative solution:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{glossaries}
\makeglossaries
\newglossaryentry{lengthtree}%
{%
name={$L_t$},
text={L_t},
description={description here},
sort={L}
}
\begin{document}
In line: $\gls{lengthtree}$. In math mode:
\[
\gls{lengthtree}
\]
\printglossary[title={List of Symbols}]
\end{document}
Both the above examples produce:
Glossary information is only written to the external files when commands like \gls are used. Without a minimal working example, it's difficult to say for certain, but if you're using \include then it may be possible that you're using a command like \includeonly to only selectively include chapters. If the excluded files contain commands like \gls they'll be skipped when the file is skipped, which means that they won't be written to the glossary file and no glossary will appear.
Here's an example. The main file test.tex:
\documentclass{report}
\usepackage{glossaries}
\makeglossaries
\loadglsentries{example-glossaries-brief}
\begin{document}
\include{chapters/test-ch1}
\include{chapters/test-ch2}
\include{chapters/test-ch3}
\printglossaries
\end{document}
In the chapters directory (folder) the files are:
test-ch1.tex:
\chapter{Sample}
\gls{lorem}
test-ch2.tex:
\chapter{Another}
\gls{dolor}
test-ch3.tex:
\chapter{No Glossary Entries Here}
Now the following document build sequence:
pdflatex test
makeglossaries test
pdflatex test
will correctly generate the glossary. However, suppose I now add
\includeonly{chapters/test-ch3}
to the preamble. This excludes the two chapters that use \gls and only includes the chapter that doesn't contain any \gls (or similar) command. This means that nothing is written to the glossary. Now recompile (rebuild) the document:
pdflatex test
makeglossaries test
This produces an error message from makeglossaries:
makeglossaries version 2.15 (2014-07-30)
added glossary type 'main' (glg,gls,glo)
Warning: File 'test.glo' is empty.
Have you used any entries defined in glossary 'main'?
Remember to use package option 'nomain' if you
don't want to use the main glossary.
This is because nothing has been written to test.glo because all the commands that perform that write have been skipped.
What should you do? Well, if you're excluding chapters, that means you're still working on the document, in which case it doesn't matter. The document is already an incomplete draft since there are some chapters missing, so just skip the makeglossaries step until you're ready to check the entire document rather than just the particular chapter you're working on. Once you go back to including the files that contain glossary references, then go back to building the glossary.
Edit: Another possibility is that you may be using an old version of makeglossaries which didn't pick up \@input from the .aux file. This was corrected in makeglossaries version 1.9 (distributed with glossaries v2.07 2010/07/10).
Best Answer
Late, but still of use: A solution with
glossariespackage.Update