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Stalafin

Member

From: Berlin, Germany

Registered: 2007-10-26

Posts: 617

LaTeX - package gensymb issue: control procedures not being defined?!

I want to use the gensymb package in my LaTeX file. Most commands work fine, but for the following two I get an error:

Package gensymb Warning: Not defining \perthousand.


Package gensymb Warning: Not defining \micro.

For me this is rather bad as I want to use \micro :

! Undefined control sequence.
l.109 In \micro
                the first part of the experimant the experimental setup was
?

What shall I do?

bender02

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-02-04

Posts: 1,328

Re: LaTeX - package gensymb issue: control procedures not being defined?!

In the gensymb documentation, it says:

Under normal circumstances you should use gensymb in conjunction with the
textcomp package. In this case the above symbols are taken from a text font using
the TS1 (text companion) encoding - even in math. As a result, they will exhibit
the style of the surrounding text or of the \mathrm alphabet, respectively.

   When textcomp is not used (for instance, because your text fonts are not
available with TS1 encoding), the gensymb package tries to emulate the above
symbols using what is available in the math fonts. However, the symbols µ and {added by bender: here is supposed to be "perthousand"}
cannot be faked, and the package will issue appropriate warning messages. The
option upmu is a workaround to provide at least the µ - see below.

I think this sheds some light on your problem.

Last edited by bender02 (2008-03-24 16:39:42)

Stalafin

Member

From: Berlin, Germany

Registered: 2007-10-26

Posts: 617

Re: LaTeX - package gensymb issue: control procedures not being defined?!

Thanks! Where can I find the documentation?

bender02

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-02-04

Posts: 1,328

Re: LaTeX - package gensymb issue: control procedures not being defined?!

Well, let me tell you how did I find it (I don't use that package at all):
I went to CTAN, looked for that package, downloaded the .zip, unpacked. With most packages, you end up with a bunch of files, the important ones have suffix .ins and .dtx (eg. gensymb.dtx and gensymb.ins). Gensymb.dtx is the "source", which contains both the style file and the documentation. To get a .sty file out of it, you can run "latex gensymb.ins" (as in 'ins'tall), and it should load gensymb.dtx and produce at least gensymb.sty - that's the file you include in your latex files. Now to get documentation, just process the file gensymb.dtx itself with latex, and you end up with a .dvi.
All in all, I just looked at that gensymb.dvi and it was there.

Sometimes packages have an extra manual with them, you just need to look at the unzipped stuff from CTAN.

Stalafin

Member

From: Berlin, Germany

Registered: 2007-10-26

Posts: 617

Re: LaTeX - package gensymb issue: control procedures not being defined?!

Uff, that sounds somewhat awkward. But thanks for doing that work for me!

Having that error helped me finding a typo! ^^ Do you maybe know how I can have a spell checker run over my document?

bender02

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-02-04

Posts: 1,328

Re: LaTeX - package gensymb issue: control procedures not being defined?!

Sure you can: e.g. with aspell: 'aspell -c <filename>'

Stalafin

Member

From: Berlin, Germany

Registered: 2007-10-26

Posts: 617

Re: LaTeX - package gensymb issue: control procedures not being defined?!

Oh, that's straight forward. Thanks again!

Stefan Husmann

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2007-08-07

Posts: 1,391

Re: LaTeX - package gensymb issue: control procedures not being defined?!

Well, let me tell you how did I find it (I don't use that package at all):
I went to CTAN, looked for that package, downloaded the .zip, unpacked. With most packages, you end up with a bunch of files, the important ones have suffix .ins and .dtx (eg. gensymb.dtx and gensymb.ins). Gensymb.dtx is the "source", which contains both the style file and the documentation. To get a .sty file out of it, you can run "latex gensymb.ins" (as in 'ins'tall), and it should load gensymb.dtx and produce at least gensymb.sty - that's the file you include in your latex files. Now to get documentation, just process the file gensymb.dtx itself with latex, and you end up with a .dvi.
All in all, I just looked at that gensymb.dvi and it was there.

Sometimes packages have an extra manual with them, you just need to look at the unzipped stuff from CTAN.

After installing gensymb at the appropiate places a "texdoc gensymb" opens the documentation.

bender02

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-02-04

Posts: 1,328

Re: LaTeX - package gensymb issue: control procedures not being defined?!

After installing gensymb at the appropiate places a "texdoc gensymb" opens the documentation.

The thing is that I usually don't install any documentation, since I rarely use it, and when I need to, it's on the web somewhere. Also, I thought it might be useful to actually understand how the CTAN packages are distributed, just in case someone needs something which is not distributed along with texlive.

But thanks, I didn't know about this script. It looks pretty clever.