Utilizing LATEX and BIBTEX for ASAE Papers

J. D. McCauley

Abstract:

This document describes by example the use of asaetr.sty, a LATEX style that somewhat conforms to the style used in the Transactions of the ASAE. [#!asaeins!#] An accompanying style file is also used to format the bibliography in a style similar to that used by ASAE. LATEX, , typesetting, ASAE Transactions.

Introduction The American Society of Agricultural Engineers editorial staff encourages authors to submit electronic manuscripts in the following formats: MacWrite, MS–Word, MS–Works (preferably Version 2.0), WordPerfect (Version 5.0 or later), and WriteNow (ASAE, 1990). It's a pity they don't use TEX or LATEX. If they only knew how good it could look ...

Well, the editorial staff likes to do their own thing, but there's no reason why agricultural engineers cannot try to conform to the style used by the Transactions when writing Summer and Winter Meeting papers. This file and the accompanying style files are my attempt to make the task of formatting papers easier for agricultural engineers.

Objective

My objective of this work was to develop LATEX and style files for ASAE members.

Finer Objectives Well, that sounds pretty good, but I also wanted to

  1. Make it easier on myself (`cause I'm a programmer, and programmers are lazy),
  2. Encourage my boss to switch to TEX  and
  3. Show you the use of a \levelthree heading and the enumerate environment.

Getting Started

If you're unfamilar with LATEX, I would suggest picking up a copy of the manual (Lamport, 1986). [#!ll:86!#, note] If you're already familiar, read on.


Table: Comparison of Publishing Tools
Tool Learning Curve Support
FrameMaker 5.0 6.0
Troff 10.0 1.0
TEX 7.0 10.0

The Preamble The preamble is where tell LATEX that you are going to use asaetr.sty. It's also where you list the authors and ASAE membership grades. Here's an example: 

\documentstyle{asaetr}
\title{Boring Title}
\author{U.\ B.\ Boring, \fellow \and 
       I.\ M.\ Young, \student \and
       R.\ U.\ Happy, \nonmember    }
\begin{document}
\maketitle
I have used up to four authors and still got it fit on one line. Five authors may fit, depending on the lengths of the names. If they don't all fit, two rows of authors will be formed. Membership grades can be any of 
 \member, \associate, \student, 
 \affiliate, or \fellow.
You can also use \nonmember, but it has the same effect as leaving the membership grade off. The \maketitle command simply tells LATEX to use this author and title information to compose the title of the paper.

The Abstract

After the preamble comes the abstract. Here's an example: 

\begin{abstract}
This is going to be short. See, I told you.
\keywords{brevity, terseness, words.}
\end{abstract}
This should be straightforward enough.

The Body

The commands that you should be most familiar with to typeset the body of your paper are the sectioning commands. They are


levelone:
Same level as the Introduction and Abstract.

leveltwo:
Secondary headings, such as ``Objectives'' above.

levelthree:
Third level headings for finer details.

levelfour:
Try to avoid fourth level headings.
The usage of these commands can be best described by an example: 
 \leveltwo{The Body}
This is the sectioning command for the section you are now reading.

Fourth level headings should be avoided because in the current version of asaetr.sty version 0.9, there is a font problem. Instead of using a slanted, small caps font, only a small caps font is used. This will be worked out in later versions.

Figures and Tables

If you have a printer available, it's highly recommended that you use the \psfig macros written by Trevor Darrell to include high quality figures. Another useful utility for including figures is fig (or xfig if you use X Windows). Figure 1 was created in about 30 seconds using xfig. You can get fig from cayuga.cs.rochester.edu by anonymous ftp. Remember that in Transactions of the ASAE, captions for figures go below the figures.

Figure: Primitive figure.
\begin{figure} \setlength{\unitlength}{0.1mm} %{0.00625in}%{0.0125in}% \begin{c... ...80){}} \put(60,60){\line( 1, 1){ 60}} \end{picture} \end{center} \end{figure}

If plan to include tables, and if you want to have footnotes within these tables, use the minipage environment. Contact your local LATEX guru or your local guide for more information or see the source for this paper (comments within the example table). You'll notice in Transactions of the ASAE or in Applied Engineering in Agriculture they use thicker lines for the top and bottom rules in tables. Instead of having to change line thickness yourself (as you do in using document style ``article'' and others), you can use two macros that come with this style: \thickhline and \thinhline. See the example table in this document (Table 1). Don't forget to put the caption above the table instead of below it.

The References

This is where comes into play. The style file asaetr.bst is currently being developed. It comes close, but you may have to edit some entries by hand. See Appendix B in (Lamport, 1986).

Conclusion

This file should serve as an excellent example of the use of the style files. If you still can't figure things out, hunt up your local guru and ask him/her to explain LATEX and style files.