A possible list of terms, abbreviations and variable names with brief explanations has to be placed after the table of contents. If any term is explained in the list of terms, it is supposed to be used in the chapter text where it is used the first time. Is that possible in latex? If so which package can help me to do that. This MsWord screen shot is a good example..
thanks in advance..
[Tex/LaTex] How to i get the abbreviations as list in Appendix page
glossariesnomenclature
Related Solutions
As egreg said, look at the nomencl and glossaries packages.
Quick and dirty for nomencl:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[refpage]{nomencl}
\makenomenclature
\begin{document}
Here is some text, where we use APC.\nomenclature{APC}{antigeen-presenterende cel}
\printnomenclature
\end{document}
Run
pdflatex; makeindex -s nomencl.ist -t liselot.nlg -o liselot.nls liselot.nlo; pdflatex
on it to obtain
Quick and dirty for glossaries:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{glossaries}
\makeglossaries
\newglossaryentry{apc}{%
name={APC},%
description={antigeen-presenterende cel}%
}
\begin{document}
Here is some text, where we use \gls{apc}.
\printglossary[style=long]
\end{document}
Run
pdflatex; makeindex -s liselot2.ist -t liselot2.glg -o liselot2.gls liselot2.glo; pdflatex
on it to obtain
Make your own "abbreviations" environment. For example
\documentclass{article}
\newcommand{\abbrlabel}[1]{\makebox[3cm][l]{\textbf{#1}\ \dotfill}}
\newenvironment{abbreviations}{\begin{list}{}{\renewcommand{\makelabel}{\abbrlabel}}}{\end{list}}
\begin{document}
\begin{abbreviations}
\item[US] United States
\item[EU] European Union
\item[Gvmt] Government
\end{abbreviations}
\end{document}
Adjust the size of the makebox to suit your entries. If you don't like the dots, then remove the \dotfill command.
If you want to make this look more like the table of contents, then we have to make another slightly more complicated command to do the dots instead of plain TeX's \dotfill.
\makeatletter
\newcommand{\tocfill}{\cleaders\hbox{$\m@th \mkern\@dotsep mu . \mkern\@dotsep mu$}\hfill}
\makeatother
\newcommand{\abbrlabel}[1]{\makebox[3cm][l]{\textbf{#1}\ \tocfill}}
This uses the LaTeX parameter \@dotsep which controls the spacing of the dots in the table of contents. With \abbrlabel defined with \tocfill we get this.
To control the vertical spacing, we need to adjust the standard list dimension \itemsep which is added to the skip between each item. We can set this to what ever we want, as part of the environment definition. With these extra bells and whistles, the example looks like this:
\documentclass{article}
\makeatletter
\newcommand{\tocfill}{\cleaders\hbox{$\m@th \mkern\@dotsep mu . \mkern\@dotsep mu$}\hfill}
\makeatother
\newcommand{\abbrlabel}[1]{\makebox[3cm][l]{\textbf{#1}\ \tocfill}}
\newenvironment{abbreviations}{\begin{list}{}{\renewcommand{\makelabel}{\abbrlabel}%
\setlength{\itemsep}{0pt}}}{\end{list}}
\begin{document}
\begin{abbreviations}
\item[US] United States
\item[EU] European Union
\item[Gvmt] Government
\end{abbreviations}
\end{document}
and produces this slightly tighter list.
The only remaining problems are to make sure the new environment fits into its surroundings neatly and to cope with unusually long explanations of abbreviations. This requires some extra fiddling with the margins of the list environment, like this.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{calc}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\makeatletter
\newcommand{\tocfill}{\cleaders\hbox{$\m@th \mkern\@dotsep mu . \mkern\@dotsep mu$}\hfill}
\makeatother
\newcommand{\abbrlabel}[1]{\makebox[3cm][l]{\textbf{#1}\ \tocfill}}
\newenvironment{abbreviations}{\begin{list}{}{\renewcommand{\makelabel}{\abbrlabel}%
\setlength{\labelwidth}{3cm}\setlength{\leftmargin}{\labelwidth+\labelsep}%
\setlength{\itemsep}{0pt}}}{\end{list}}
\begin{document}
\noindent\lipsum[1]
\begin{abbreviations}
\item[US] United States
\item[EU] European Union
\item[Gvmt] Government. \lipsum[2]
\end{abbreviations}
\lipsum[3]
\end{document}
Here we've added the lipsum package for the filler text, and calc to allow us to use the + sign in setting the \leftmargin length.
For customizations like this, the Latex Companion is an indispensable reference.
Best Answer
The
glossariespackage allows glossaries as well as lists of acronyms. Here's a full example (note: compile it withpdflatex <myfile>makeglossaries <myfile>pdflatex <myfile>):