LaTeX Template

A LaTeX document template with parallel compilation, themes, math environments, algorithm listings, and syntax highlighting support.

Prerequisites

• latexmk — required for compilation

  # Debian/Ubuntu
  sudo apt install latexmk
  
  # macOS (Homebrew)
  brew install latexmk
  
  # Arch Linux
  sudo pacman -S latexmk

• Python 3 — optional, only needed for the ./start.sh latex runner

  python3 -m venv .venv
  source .venv/bin/activate
  pip install -r requirements.txt

Quick Start

1. Copy the example directory as a starting point:

   cp -r LaTeX/src/example LaTeX/src/my_document

2. Rename the files inside your new directory:

   cd LaTeX/src/my_document
   mv light_main.tex my_document_main.tex
   mv example_content.tex my_document_content.tex

3. Edit my_document_main.tex and my_document_content.tex to suit your needs.
4. Compile:

   ./start.sh latex

5. Find your PDF at LaTeX/pdfs/my_document/my_document_main.pdf.

Building

./start.sh latex    # compile all *_main.tex files under LaTeX/src/

Output is placed in three mirrored directories:

Directory	Contents
LaTeX/build/	latexmk artifacts (.aux, .synctex.gz, etc.)
LaTeX/pdfs/	compiled PDFs
LaTeX/logs/	.log files

To clean all build artifacts:

rm -rf LaTeX/build/* LaTeX/logs/* LaTeX/pdfs/*

File Structure

LaTeX/
├── src/
│   ├── assets/
│   │   ├── algorithms/    # listings and algorithm environments
│   │   ├── environments/  # theorem, definition, and custom environments
│   │   ├── language/      # syntax highlighting (bash, julia, sagemath)
│   │   ├── math/          # amsmath, mathtools, theorem packages
│   │   ├── themes/        # colour themes and theme choice files
│   │   ├── base_header.tex   # core preamble packages
│   │   └── tikz.tex       # pgfplots and tikz configuration
│   └── example/           # light and dark theme examples
├── build/
├── pdfs/
├── logs/
└── run.py

Naming Conventions

These are required for the build system to work:

Pattern	Purpose
*_main.tex	Compilation target — the script finds all of these automatically
*_content.tex	Document body (tables of contents, sections)
*_content.tex	Body files are included from the main file via \input{}

Files whose path contains legacy, templates, tmp, or temp are excluded from compilation.

Header Load Order

The preamble is split across multiple header files that must be loaded in a specific order:

In your *_main.tex file (in this exact order):

\documentclass[french,a4paper,10pt]{article}
\input{../assets/base_header.tex}
\input{../assets/themes/theme_choice_dark.tex}   % or theme_choice_light.tex
\input{../assets/themes/theme.tex}

In your *_content.tex file (in this exact order):

\input{../assets/math/base.tex}
\input{../assets/math/advanced.tex}
\input{../assets/environments/base.tex}
\input{../assets/tikz.tex}
\input{../assets/algorithms/base.tex}
\input{../assets/algorithms/advanced.tex}
\input{../assets/language/your_languages.tex}   % bash, julia, or sagemath
\input{../assets/themes/more_colours.tex}

Loading headers out of order will cause errors because some packages depend on others. Only the headers in your *_main.tex are required for compilation. The ones in *_content.tex are optional and can be included as needed.

Custom Environments

Copy environments/template.tex into your own header file and modify it to create custom theorem, definition, or remark environments. Do not load template.tex directly.

Custom Commands

Custom commands are defined in base_header.tex. Use \providecommand when defining new commands to avoid "command already defined" errors:

\providecommand{\mycommand}[1]{{\sffamily\bfseries\color{astral}#1}}

Themes

Two themes are provided: theme_choice_light.tex and theme_choice_dark.tex. The active theme is selected in your *_main.tex file.

Cross-References

Use \ref{} or \eqref{} for automatic reference type naming:

\section{Introduction}\label{sec:intro}
Section~\ref{sec:intro} shows that ...   % → "Section 1 shows that ..."

Assets

Place global images and other assets under src/assets/ and reference them with relative paths. Place document-specific images in a subdirectory of your document's directory (e.g., src/my_document/images/) and reference them with relative paths.