EATCS Bulletin
LaTeX Style   Contributions   Pictures   Some Details

LaTeX Style
The Bulletin of the EATCS is entirely typeset by pdfTeX and ConTeXt in TXfonts. Submissions must therefore follow rigorously the bulletin's purpose-designed LaTeX2e class, beatcs.cls (available here). Final contributions must typset correctly in pdf(La)TeX. (Notice that this prevents embedding PS fragments in the texts, like e.g. with pstricks; see below, if this is your case.) But don't panic!: beatcs.cls is a simply an adaptation of article.cls, the standard article class in LaTeX2e. No need to learn new commands, as most of the documentation for article.cls applies directly. In particular, Goossens et al's The LaTeX Companion and Lamport's classical LaTeX book remain the main references. As we illustrate below, the major points where beatcs.cls differs from article.cls are because of the automatic inclusion of other standard LaTeX2e classes, such as amsmath and graphicx.

Contributions
All TeX sources, including figures, and a reference PDF version must be bundled in a ZIP file. We regret we are unfortunately not able to accept submissions in other formats, or indeed submission not strictly adhering to the page and font layout set out in beatcs.cls. In particular, authors must not modify the page dimensions, layout or font family and sizes. We shall also not be able to include contributions typeset at less than camera-ready quality: Authors must rigorously make sure that their contributions generate positively no overfull boxes. (You can use the draft option of beatcs.cls to highlight overfull boxes, and \sloppypar if nothing else works.)

Pictures
Pictures are accepted in EPS, JPG, PNG, TIFF, MOV or, preferably, in PDF. Photographic reports from conferences must be arranged in ZIP files layed out according to the format described below. 
	    - picture in a file named after the meeting,
              say icalp03Pic01.jpg, icalp03Pic02.jpg, …

            - a text-only description file, say icalp03Desc.txt, containing on
              each line the file name and the relative caption, as eg:

                 {icalp03Pic01.jpg}    {Prof Manfred Kudlek}
		 {icalp03Pic02.pdf}    {Mr and Mrs X}
		 {icalp03Pic02.tiff}   {Mr Y and Prof Z}
			    …                    …
Please make sure that the pictures are upright.

Some Details, Samples and Templates

Class file beatcs.cls extends article.cls by loading automatically the following classes.

  • amsmath -- American Mathematical Society's Math Package (manual)
  • amsthm -- American Mathematical Society's Theorem Package (manual)
  • txfonts -- Times Roman Fonts (manual)
  • hyperref -- HyperText References in PDF (manual)
  • graphicx -- Graphics packages bundled (manual)
  • url -- Defines macro \url{…} for URLs.
Your document may not make use of any of them, though it is quite possible that you will: use \newtheorem{…} from amsthm, to define theorem-like environment; use \includegraphics{…} from graphicx to include figures in you document; use \url{…} to typeset URLs and email addresses. Even if you don't use them explicitly, hyperref and amsmath will work stealthily to typeset your document.

How to include figures. The idiom to include figures is: 

   \includegraphics[options]{pictureFileName}
Options may include useful things such as [scale=0.76], or [width=52mm], or [width=1.78in,height=0.77in] The filename extension (say .pdf or .eps) is best omitted, as the class will include the best suited available picture (definitely PDF in the camera-ready version).

Please observe that PS fragments prevent pdf(La)TeX from working correctly, and cannot therefore be included -- neither in pictures via epsfig, nor directly in the document with pstricks. It is however very easy to convert pictures from (E)PS to PDF, and \includegraphics will try to load PDF under pdfLaTeX. In summary, PDF pictures for \includegraphics can be generated as follows.

  1. If you have a (E)PS, jump to step 3 below. Otherwise, create a dvi page containing only one picture. (I mean only! Don't forget to include \def\page{} to remove the pagenumber at the bottom.)
  2. Use dvips -E file.dvi to generate an EPS file from the dvi.
  3. To convert from a (E)PS picture to a PDF one, use epstopdf.

How to include URLs. Simply use \url{myemail@my.provider} or \url{http://www.my.provider/~my/url}. This is important because it hyphenates URLs, typesets correctly things like ~, and adds an hyper-reference in the PDF.

How to generate PDF. Simply use pdflatex file.tex. You will have to make sure that figures included with \includegraphics are translated to PDF via epstopdf, and that you don't use specific PS tricks incompatible with pdfTeX. You must make sure there are no overfull boxes. Use \document[draft]{beatcs} to highlight overfull boxes, and use {\sloppy …\par} if nothing else seem to work. Use \document[final]{beatcs} for the camera-ready version of your document.

A Technical Contribution Sample. TeX, PDF.

A Survey or Tutorial Sample. TeX, PDF.

A PhD Abstract Sample. TeX, PDF.         (max length: 3 pages)

A Conference Report Sample. TeX, PDF.         (max length: 5 pages)

Another Conference Report. TeX, PDF.

A photographic report. ConTeXt, PDF.         (max length: 3 pages)

A Document Template. The skeleton of a Technical Contribution will look somehow like the following. 

   \documentclass[final]{beatcs}

   \newtheorem{Theorem}{ …}
   \newtheorem{Corollary}[Theorem]{…}
   …

   \title{ … }

   \author{First Author\thanks{ … } \\
	   Affiliation 1 \\
	 \url{email 2} 
   \and 
	  Second Author\thanks{…}\\ 
	  Affiliation 2
	 \url{email 2}
   }

   \date{}

   \begin{document}
   \maketitle


   \begin{abstract}

     <ABSTRACT>

   \end{abstract}


   \section

    <HERE GOES THE PAPER>

   \begin{thebibliography}{ … }

    <THE LIST OF BIBITEMS>

   \end{thebibliography}
   \end{document}

Vladimiro Sassone
Last modified: Tue Feb 3 20:19:23 GMT 2004