LaTeX BEng/MEngTech Dissertations
Frequently Asked Questions

When trying to run pdflatex, I get a "command not recognized" error.

The search path was not installed correctly by the setup program for some reason. The path variable should contain the string c:\texmf\miktex\bin;. To check if this is the case, type path in the command prompt window. The path variable should contain the string c:\texmf\miktex\bin;. If not, close the command window and follow the earlier instructions on setting the path environment variable. Then open a new command window and repeat the test.

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When trying to run pdflatex, I get a "a4page.sty not found" error.

When you downloaded one or more files, Windows may have changed the extensions. When you want to download a file and save it to your hard disk, right-click on the link and then select Save Target As. In the dialog box that comes up, you should not change the file name, but you must change the "Save as type" box to "All Files". If you don't do this, Windows will add another extension to your filename, and LaTeX (or any other program) will not be able to see it.

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I can't read PDF documents.

The pages linked from here contain material in the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Acrobat Reader is required. You can download Acrobat reader from Adobe

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What are ZIP files, and how do I read them?

Information which is in zip format must be extracted using an unzip utility. If you haven't got such a utility, please see my instructions

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The figures in my dissertation are in the wrong place - they keep moving and/or come out on one page!

You can use the [h] option like this
\begin{figure}[h]
which will *try* to force the image to the current location. But remember that latex has a complicated algorithm, which amongst other things tries to minimize the amount of whitespace on a page. So, the above may not always work.

As a last resort, you can get the 'float' package, and go
\usepackage{float}
...
\begin{figure}[H]
where the capital H means 'forget about your algorithm, I want it 'HERE'. This will always work as you want it. The downside is that you may end up with a lot of whitespace on the page, which might look odd. Another danger is that the figure might end up before you refer to it in the text. Latex's algorithm ensures this never happens, but if you over-ride it with H, that's what you get.

Basically, all these problems stem from the use of double-spaced text, which means there are sometimes no paragraph breaks on a page (and the para breaks are part of the algorithm to try to guess the best location for floats).

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Last updated: March 2007
Author: John Leis
john.leis@usq.edu.au