[Tex/LaTex] What are the available “documentclass” types and their uses

big-listdocument-classes

Some of the available classes of documents in LaTeX are well known and widely used, such as the article and beamer classes, while others are not so well known, such as the standalone class.

I found this figure (edit: transcribed)

article for articles in scientific journals, presentations, short reports, program documentation, invitations, …
proc a class for proceedings based on the article class.
minimal is as small as it can get. It only sets a page size and a base font. It is mainly used for debugging purposes.
report for longer reports containing several chapters, small books, thesis, …
book for real books
slides for slides. The class uses big sans serif letters.
memoir for changing sensibly the output of the document. It is based on the book class, but you can create any kind of document with it (1)
letter For writing letters.
beamer For writing presentations (see LaTeX/Presentations).

which lists the main classes and is a good starting point, but the description is too short and still leaves one wondering when it would be more suitable to choose one class over the other and what the characteristics of each class is. Furthermore, the list is not exhaustive I think, given that I know at least one more document class that is not there (the standalone class, as I mentioned).

So my question is: what are the available classes of documents in LaTeX, and could you provide a brief description of the class and the situations where it would be recommended?

Please give only one class per answer.

Best Answer

New working link: Alternative LaTeX class(es)

Original answer:

There's a category in the TeX Catalogue: Alternative Document Classes (web archive link).

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Beamer slides and tufte-handout

The problem appears to be related to the \title command. When I compile a document using \title then it hangs, and when I compile it without then it works just fine. There's a bit of a tangled web of definitions and redefinitions going on that is a bit hard to track. One method that worked for me was to copy out the (re)definition of \title from tufte-common.def and stick it in after the call to beamerarticle. Thus my main file looks like this:

\documentclass{tufte-handout}
\usepackage{beamerarticle}

\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\title}[2][]{%
  \gdef\@title{#2}%
  \begingroup%
    % TODO store contents of \thanks command
    \renewcommand{\thanks}[1]{}% swallow \thanks contents
    \protected@xdef\thanklesstitle{#2}%
  \endgroup%
  \ifthenelse{\isempty{#1}}%
    {\renewcommand{\plaintitle}{\thanklesstitle}}% use thankless title
    {\renewcommand{\plaintitle}{#1}}% use provided plain-text title
  \@ifpackageloaded{hyperref}{\hypersetup{pdftitle={\plaintitle}}}{}% set the PDF metadata title
}
\makeatother

\input{tufteMain}

Of course, that means that the title doesn't get "beamerified", but as this is only for the article version, that doesn't matter.

I tried storing the old definition of \title before calling beamerarticle and resetting it afterwards, but that didn't work:

\documentclass{tufte-handout}
\let\tufteTitle=\title
\usepackage{beamerarticle}
\let\title=\tufteTitle

\input{tufteMain}

still hung.

In general, TeX hangs like that when it enters an infinite loop, so my guess is that somehow the definition and redefinition of \title mean that it ends up calling itself again and again. Also, when TeX enters an infinite loop then the logfile contains the last thing that it did okay, so removing stuff that has appeared in the logfile isn't an optimal strategy (you may happen on whatever it was that created the loop, but there's no guarantee).

[Tex/LaTex] a good Manual/Guide class in LaTeX

Do consider Texinfo, as endorsed by Karl Berry for this task. The Latex-based compilation route is pretty bare bones, but it allows you to produce custom html, and supporting hint boxes in the html is not too difficult. pandoc is a serviceable Latex to Texinfo converter.

A Latex example, the source of Oetiker's Not so short introduction to LaTeX2e is available: he uses the normal book class, together with a custom style, and supports some graphically offset hints, although I think not really what you are after. See lshort.tex and lshort.sty.

Context was designed with producing educational books in mind, and is good for putting together documents with boxed content for emphasis, and allows some use of interactive PDFs and XML-based publishing. The introductory text, Context: An Excursion, showcases this.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Beamer slides and tufte-handout

[Tex/LaTex] a good Manual/Guide class in LaTeX

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