Re: OT: Latex Help

* Chris Bates said on 2006-09-07 22:08:56 +0200
> I posted this on the ZBB too. I'm desperate for help if someone could
> give me any... I'm writing my ngwaalq grammar, and I really need long
> tables that can span multiple pages to present my noun and verb
> classifiers properly.
I have no experience with longtable but I used supertabular in my
master thesis. I do know the reason to many other latex-bugs though,
might be that this is related.

> I'm having trouble getting the longtable package to work properly. I
> have, for instance, the following table:
>
> \begin{longtable}{c c}
> \caption[A Complete List of Noun Classifiers]{A Complete List of Noun
> Classifiers} \\
/snip/
> \label{noun-class}
> \end{longtable}
>
> Now, when I put this table in a latex document that contains nothing
> else except for the essentials (\begin{document} etc) then it compiles
> perfectly with no errors, no warnings, and after a couple of runs
> settles down so that everything is perfectly positioned. BUT. When
> it's located in its original place in the document it came from it
> generates two warnings when it chooses to work properly (about half
> the time), and about 24 when it chooses not to work properly (in which
> case the rest of the document compiles probably but half of the table
> vanishes and a long number appears in its place). Now, I was putting
> up with this behavoir (since half the time it compiled and looked just
> about right, even though it gave two error messages), but when I try
> to add another longtable the document bombs completely and won't
> compile properly at all (about 150 error messages).
I suspect it's not longtable's fault but one of the other packages you
use. For instance gb4e.sty, which is used for interlinears, has a
serious flaw that can break an astonishing number of packages. Gb4e's
flaw is that it makes superscript (^) and subscript (_) work outside of
mathmode. By commenting out the lines[*] in gb4e.sty that does this,
suddenly other packages stop complaining.

Another source of trouble in latex is that some packages insist on being
loaded last, or after so or so package, or before so or so package... in
the end, this means that some packages are incompatible with others.

The thing to do is start with the full document, then comment out all
the packages (except longtable) and turn the other pcakages on, one by
one. You might have to comment out pieces of text that uses the
packages too...

You are aware of \input and \include and friends, yes? Try to put a
section that heavily depend on a package or packages in their own file
and include/input them, that way they are easy to comment out while you
debug.


[*] The lines in question are these:
\catcode`_=\active
\def_#1{\ifmmode\mathit{\sb{#1}}\else${}\sb{#1}$\fi}
\catcode`^=\active
\def^#1{\ifmmode\mathit{\sp{#1}}\else${}\sp{#1}$\fi}


t.

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