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How To Produce A Quick Reference Guide With LaTeX
Copyright © 2007 by Zack Smith,
All rights reserved.

This is a quick overview of how I produce quick reference guides using LaTeX, which is the most popular macro package of the always-been-free TeX typesetting system.

LaTeX is a great way to produce quick reference guides for five major reasons:

  1. It handles mathematical equations very well.
  2. It lets you create new "commands" that can greatly simplify making documents.
  3. It's not some huge bloat app like OpenOffice.
  4. It's free.
  5. It has great fonts.

The best format for a quick reference guide, in my opinion, is 3 columns of 10-point text limited to just one page that has 0.5 inch margins. It turns out that standard LaTeX supports a 3-column mode using the multicol package.

So you can start your page with something like... 

\documentclass[letterpaper,10pt]{article}
\usepackage{vmargin}
\usepackage{multicol}
\parindent=0in
\setmarg{0.5in}{0.0in}{7.5in}{9.4in}
\begin{document}
\begin{multicols*}{3}
\raggedright

What I've done is create a template LaTeX file that include the above and more, in fact there's a set of commands to make quick-reference guide creation efficient, simple, and effective.

  • A recent version of the template is here.

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