Common Bugs in Writing

Here, I’ll post a few links which discuss about the common mistakes while writing a paper.

• Common Bugs in Writing
• Editorial Rules

Margin Issue in Latex

Today, while submitting my work in TENCON through edas.info, I faced an issue with the bottom margin.

Edas complained that the 3rd page has only 0.92 inch bottom margin where the minimum requirement was 1 inch.

I tried many things ……and wasted my time.

Then I found that TENCON asked for A4 paper and by default ieeetran gives LETTER format.

I simply changed \documentclass[conference]{IEEEtran} to \documentclass[a4paper,conference]{IEEEtran}, and the problem was solved!

Embedding All Fonts in PDF file

When we submit/send a pdf file, it is a good idea to embedd all fonts used, in the pdf file.

To embed all fonts in your pdf file use this command in terminal and create the pdf file from ps file.

ps2pdf -dEmbedAllFonts=true -dSubsetFonts=true -dEPSCrop=true -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress FILENAME.ps

This will create a pdf file with name FILENAME.pdf

Hard word wrapping in gedit

gedit is a handy option for dealing ‘.txt. files.

Unfortunately, gedit does not contain any hard word wrapping plugin.

1. Open gedit
2. Navigate to Edit -> Preferences -> Plugins
3. Enable “External Tools”and press “close”
4. Now, go to “Tools” -> “Manage External Tools”
5. Press “New” (press ‘+’ sign) and enter “Line Break at Col 80″ (or any name you like)
6. Paste the following script in the “command(s)” text area (you can choose to leave out the #comments, these are only here as a reminder in case you want to modify it to fit your needs):

#!/bin/sh
BREAK=80
# fmt [-WIDTH][OPTION]… [FILE]…
# –uniform-spacing — one space between words, two after sentences
# –split-only — split long lines, but do not refill
# –width=WIDTH — maximum line width (default of 75 columns)
# when FILE is -, read standard input
fmt –uniform-spacing –split-only –width $BREAK –

7. Choose “Current selection” as Input
8. Choose “Replace current selection” as Output
9. At this point, you can choose to create a shortcut key such as “ctrl+m” for easy access.
10. Close “External Tools Manager” by pressing the “Close” button
11. Now this script is executable under the “Tools” menu. Alternatively, you can use your shortcut key for quick access.

My gedit version: 3.4.1, OS: Ubuntu 12.04 (64-bit)

Installing latex extras

 may often require packeges like multirow.

many packges are not included by default in texlive.

To install the extra packages use the following command

sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-extra

Mex Error in Matlab

While using mex compiler in Matlab 2010+ versions, error occurs due to the conflict between tha shared libaries used by Matlab and the OS (mine is Ubuntu 11.10).

One of the solutions is to remove the Matlab shared libraries and use show the system shared libraries to Matlab.

This can be done by

cd $MATLAB
cd sys/os/glnx86
mkdir old
mv libstdc++.* libg2c.* libgcc_s* old

Then, update the library path

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib32:/usr/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
source: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/8079-how-to-get-working-matlab-coder-in-linux

Speeding Up Matlab

The performance of the linear algebra operations in any machine ultimately depend on the efficient BLAS implementation available on the machine and Matlab is not an exception!

By default, Matlab uses a version of Intel MKL which they upgrade with every release.

But usually the default option will not be optimal for the particular machine.

Luckily, Linux version of Intel MKL is free for non-commercial use.

We may download and install it to improve the performance.

I could install it on  my machine today. But linking Intel MKL with Matlab is not completed yet.

I’ll update it once I complete the job.

Nice tables using Latex

Here, we’ll show how to improve the default appearance of a table in .

The following commands will produce the default style table in . (Refer Table I)

\begin{table}[htbp]
\caption{Default Table}
\label{Tab:SRNRValues}
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|}
\hline
\multirow{2}{1.5cm}{Method}& \multicolumn{3}{p{5cm}|}{\centering Measurements} \\
\cline{2-4} & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{Clean} & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{SMNR=15 dB} & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{SMNR = 10 dB} \\ \hline
Type1 & 27.54 & 13.23 & 6.80 \\
Type2 & 29.55 & 9.61 & 6 \\
Type3 & 25.99 & 11.49 & 6.15 \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\end{table}

* The following modifications will make the table look more attractive. (Refer Table II).

You need to include additional packages using commands

\usepackage{multirow}
\usepackage{bigstrut}

\renewcommand{\multirowsetup}{\centering} %to align center inside the table
\setlength{\tabcolsep}{10pt}
\begin{table}[htbp]
\caption{A Nice Table}
\label{Tab:SRNRValues}
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|}
\hline
\multirow{2}{1.5cm}{Method}& \multicolumn{3}{p{5cm}|}{\centering Measurements} \bigstrut \\
\cline{2-4} & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{Clean} & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{SMNR=15 dB} & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{SMNR = 10 dB} \bigstrut \\ \hline
Type1 & 27.54 & 13.23 & 6.80 \bigstrut \\
Type2 & 29.55 & 9.61 & 6 \bigstrut \\
Type3 & 25.99 & 11.49 & 6.15 \bigstrut \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\end{table}

Adding New Application Launcher to Unity in Ubuntu

To add New Application Launcher (here we are using Matlab as example)  to Unity in Ubuntu 11.10, copy the following into a file with an extension ‘.desktop’ and save it in /usr/share/applications/.

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Matlab2010b
Comment=Matlab2010b
Exec=/usr/local/MATLAB/R2010b/bin/matlab -desktop
Icon=/usr/local/MATLAB/Matlab_Logo.png
Terminal=false

You may replace Matlab with any other application of your choice, but don’t forget to update the other relevant information.

Enhancing Bash

Use the following e lines in Bash init. (/etc/bash.bashrc in Ubuntu 11.10!)

export HISTCONTROL=erasedups 
export HISTSIZE=10000 
shopt -s histappend

The first line removes the duplicate commands saved in history (when a command is entered).
Second line sets history size to 1000 lines.
The third line makes sure that when you exit a bash shell, the history from that session is appended to ~/.bash_history. (By default this may not happen always especially when you are working on multiple shells!)