[Tex/LaTex] Create a command for a different font

emphasismacros

I'm pretty new to Latex and I am writing my thesis. I would like to use a command that I can essentially change the font of a few words in-line or separate (like an equation).

I have computer commands that I would like to display in a different font (Courier New) than the rest of the document. I have heard that I could either modify the \emph{} command or create a new command like \comp{} that changes the font.

I don't know how to do either. Is there a package that already does this for me? Thanks for your help

Example:

Next you need to position the robot arm by using the command \comp{Home}.

\comp{cd folder ./trajectory.exe}

Best Answer

What you want is a macro. Wikibooks has excellent tutorial on the topic. As for the code environment, use the listings package: Wikibooks, CTAN.

Here is a quick example of what you can do. The \newcommands there make three, well, new commands: \compbox, \compline, and \comp.

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{fancybox}
\usepackage{listings}
\lstset{%
language=Python,%
basicstyle=\renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{1}\ttfamily,%
numbers = left,
numberstyle = \tiny,
numbersep = 5pt,
} %% Many other options!

\newcommand{\compbox}[1]{\ovalbox{\texttt{#1}}}
\newcommand{\compline}[1]{\underline{\textbf{\texttt{#1}}}}
\newcommand{\comp}[1]{\textbf{\texttt{#1}}}

\begin{document}

Hit the \compbox{F5} key. Next you need to position the
robot arm by using the command \compline{Home}. Now run
this on the terminal:

 \comp{texdoc listings}

Which should open \comp{listings} documentation.
Then you can write something like this:

\begin{lstlisting}
import math
import sys
def cube(x):
    return x*x*x
# An example of Python code
# in LaTeX
\end{lstlisting}

\end{document}

Output

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] create a command that will conditionally gobble up trailing whitespace: I want an “\unxspace” command

Let's see what happens: if \testa and \testb are equal, there is no problem; when \testa and \testb are different, from

Test \mycommand{this} is

you get "Test••is" (with • I denote a space in the output). This has nothing to do with the macro at hand, but it's a consequence of the rules. In fact, when \mycommand{this} is expanded to nothing, the input has already been tokenized, so TeX is not any more in the state where consecutive spaces are reduced to one space token.

How to remove the space depends on what you want to do. The difference between

\newcommand{\mycommand}[1]{%
  \ifx\testa\testb
    #1%
  \else
    \ifhmode\unskip\fi
  \fi}

and

\newcommand{\mycommand}[1]{%
  \ifx\testa\testb
    #1%
  \else
    \ignorespaces
  \fi}

is about what of the two spaces is removed; with \unskip it's the space before, with \ignorespaces it's the one after.

There is, however, a conceptual difference: \unskip just removes glue if it was there, and has nothing to do with macro expansion; \ignorespaces, instead, expands the following tokens until finding a non expandable one that is not a space token and gobbling all space tokens it finds in the process. (That's why it's not necessary to use \expandafter in front of it in the second definition, because it will start expanding the \fi).

Thus it may be preferable to use the first mode, if you're afraid that expansion can happen too early. Using \relax before \ifx, if you don't need \mycommand in an expansion only context, may prove useful.

Just to try being clearer, \unskip works down in the stomach, when commands are being executed; to the contrary, \ignorespaces works during macro expansion, much earlier than the stage when TeX executes commands. So the former can remove the last node, if it is glue, the latter cannot remove spacing instructions, but only space tokens.

Best Answer

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[Tex/LaTex] create a command that will conditionally gobble up trailing whitespace: I want an “\unxspace” command

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