boldmath-mode
Is it possible to make all numbers followed by a point bold? Having thousands of questions to make bold is a tough effort. For example, if I have answers to some questions like this:
1. $8+2 \cdot 3 + 1 = 15$
2. 5+3=8
3. 4+9 =13
…
Is there any code I can write in the beginning of the document to produce all the 1., 2. etc. in a bold text?
Here is one solution, albeit cumbersome:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}% http://ctan.org/pkg/amsmath
\newcommand{\thickhat}[1]{\mathbf{\hat{\text{$#1$}}}}
\newcommand{\thickbar}[1]{\mathbf{\bar{\text{$#1$}}}}
\newcommand{\thicktilde}[1]{\mathbf{\tilde{\text{$#1$}}}}
\begin{document}
$\hat{a}, \bar{a}, \tilde{a}$ \par
$\hat{\mathbf{a}}, \bar{\mathbf{a}}, \tilde{\mathbf{a}}$ \par
$\mathbf{\hat{a}}, \mathbf{\bar{a}}, \mathbf{\tilde{a}}$ \par
$\thickhat{a}, \thickbar{a}, \thicktilde{a}$ \par
\end{document}
amsmath provides the easy font-and-size switching capability via \text. This allows you to use the \thick-constructs inside super-/subscripts.
For the underscore, the following works:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\catcode`\_=\active
\protected\def_{\begingroup\itshape\aftergroup\/\let_\endgroup}
\begin{document}
Hello \textit{World!} How are you?
Hello _World!_ How are _you?
I'm fine._ And you?
_I'm fine, too.
Glad to hear that._
\end{document}
However, it is a bit crazy and unstable. If you want to use it only for short texts (not spanning multiple paragraphs), the following would be better. (It doesn't work in the above example, since there we span multiple pagraphs. In real, it will throw an error if you put odd number of _ in one paragraph.)
\catcode`\_=\active
\protected\def_#1_{\textit{#1}}
You can use the same ideas for the star. The problem is, that \section*{Text} will suddenly stop working. Variant 1:
\catcode`\*=\active
\protected\def*{\begingroup\bfseries\let*\endgroup}
Variant 2:
\catcode`\*=\active
\protected\def*#1*{\textbf{#1}}
If you don't use math at all, just use ^ instead of * and it should be ok.
How does it work: The primitive macro \catcode makes _ \active so that we can define it as any other command.
In Variant 1, we define it to (1) start a group (2) start italic text (3) add italic correction to the end of the italic text (4) make the one next _ end the group we started. By the end of the group, the re-definition of _ is forgotten so another _ will again start an italic text.
The Variant 2 is even simpler: When _ is found, a second _ is looked for, end everything inbetween is put into \textit.
The \protected directive makes sure that _ is written as _ in the auxiliary files, which is necessary for it to behave correctly.
Best Answer
TeX is a programming language so you can do most things with a bit of effort, but that doesn't mean you should. The following implements the requested test but the input markup is weird, and the resulting output is horrible. In particular why math mode for the first (because of the
\cdot) but not the others (so the fonts and spacing are all wrong).You should almost never number anything explicitly in LaTeX it is set up to number and cross reference automatically.