[Tex/LaTex] How to pass options to a package?

package-optionspackages

I apologize if this is a neophyte or duplicate question because I was unable to find it.

A comment on the question Problem with \leq displaying as \leqslant, mentions that "you can include mathabx with the mathx option".

How exactly does one pass the mathx option to the mathabx package, or more generally pass options to LaTeX packages?

In addition to Google, I have also experimented with each of the following, all of which resulted in error messages.

\usepackage{mathabx}{mathx}
\usepackage{mathabx}[mathx]
\usepackage[mathx]{mathabx}

Best Answer

Per the suggestion in the comment, I wanted to clarify that the last option I tried was the correct option. The correct way is thus:

\usepackage[mathx]{mathabx}

It turned out a different part of my source depended on the other symbols in the package mathabx.

I was not expecting an error on a different line, so I assumed that it was something wrong with the package parameter passing.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Where to get help for the package options

Under most operating systems,

texdoc <packagename>

will open up the TeX documentation (in your default PDF browser) associated with the package. Alternatively, CTAN contains all the packages that form part of both the MiKTeX and TeX Live distributions, from where you can follow the links to their documentation.

[Tex/LaTex] Applying options to already loaded package

If a package is loaded, the option setting code in the package is already processed and gone. Thus in general you cannot change package options later.

`\PassOptionsToPackage`

But you can specify options earlier, before loading the package. Apart from a global option (with side effects for other packages) \PassOptionsToPackage can be even used before \documentclass, e.g.:

\PassOptionsToPackage{demo}{graphicx}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\begin{document}
\includegraphics{foobar}
\end{document}

Package interface for loading options

Sometimes a package or class allows the setting of a subset of options later. For example, package hyperref provides \hypersetup. Also some options of package graphicx (or rather for \includegraphics) can be set via:

\setkeys{Gin}{<options>}

However, the option demo is not supported this way.