19 October 2009 Dear Participants, the proceedings of the conference APPROXIMATION AND EXTRAPOLATION OF CONVERGENT AND DIVERGENT SEQUENCES AND SERIES in Luminy will be published in the Elsevier journal Applied Numerical Mathematics. Further information on the manuscript preparation can be found on the web page of Applied Numerical Mathematics. There you can find a subtopic "Guide for Authors" giving more details. This "Guide for Authors" is also the basis of these instructions. The template file and the example files, together with these instructions can be found at http://www.math.unipd.it/~luminy09/pages/proc.html I. GENERAL REMARKS ================== LaTeX is now the de facto standard in mathematical typesetting. For an author it is often possible to gain almost complete control over about the final look of the printed article, if he/she is willing to use some more sophisticated LaTeX techniques such as the use of special typesetting packages provided by Elsevier (or other publishers) and the use of BibTeX to organize and format the bibliography. For me, this approach has the undeniable appeal that virtually no reformatting by desk editors has to be done. According to my and usually bad personal experiences, every reformatting done by a desk editor will most likely introduce at least some new errors, which have to be detected and corrected. Moreover, publishers are also interested that authors do most of the work in the publishing process by submitting manuscripts that need little or -- ideally -- no manual interference by desk editors at all. In the following text, I will try to describe how this can be accomplished. However, the use of the more sophisticated LaTeX tools, which I will describe in the following text, is not madatory. Elsevier (as well as other publishers) accepts also less sophisticated LaTeX manuscripts and even non-LaTeX manuscripts (possibly with clenched teeth). II. A MINIMALISTIC APPROACH =========================== Not all contributors will be interested in achieving complete control over the final appearance and will be happy to submit just any kind of LaTeX manuscript. This is of course still possible. Those authors, who are not interested in using my template file described below, should, however, try to mimic at least the most basic features of the page layout of ANM. Thus, they should adapt the most essential LaTeX style parameters such as "\textheight" and "\textwidth" appropriately. Moreover, it is a good idea to choose a 10 pt fount and also choose "mathptmx" as a public domain substitute for the "Times" font used by most Elsevier journals. For that purpose, I recommend to use the following lines at the beginning of the LaTeX file: \documentclass[10pt]{article} \usepackage[a4paper,centering,body={468pt,622pt}]{geometry} \usepackage{mathptmx} The extension "[10pt]" of the 1st command chooses 10 pt font size. The 2nd command calls the "geometry" package and assigns to "\textwidth" and \textheight" the values 468pt and 622pt, respectively. The 3rd command chooses "Times" as the text font. By means of these three commands, one should be able to avoid major reformatting of formulas. However, the bibliography still has to be created manually. The packages "geometry" and "mathptmx" are part of every reasonably modern TeX/LaTeX installation. If non-standard LaTeX packages are used in the manuscript, they have to be included in the submission. This does not apply to the LaTeX packages of the American Mathematical Society, which have become de facto standard in more sophisticated mathematical typesetting and are also part of every reasonably modern TeX/LaTeX installation. III. PREFERENCES OF ANM AND ELSEVIER ==================================== In order to make sure that the submission, refereeing, and production process functions as smoothly as possible both for ANM {Elsevier) and the author, a few things should be taken into account. 1. ANM apparently also accepts non-LaTeX documents, but there seems to be a clear preference for manuscripts produced by LaTeX. 2. Apparently, ANM wants to have a .pdf file produces by LaTeX as the input of the journal's online submission and peer-review system. 3. The paper should be submitted in its final form. 4. Apparently, ANM prefers manuscripts whose bibliography is generated with the help of BibTeX. Topic 3. indicates that ANM (or Elsevier) would prefer to receive manuscripts typeset with the help of Elsevier LaTeX packages. Obviously, this is desirable for Elsevier because manuscripts, that hardly need any interference by desk editors, help to cut costs. However, I am positive that any LaTeX style would be accepted by ANM. The use of Elsevier style files is not mandatory. Nevertheless, there are some benefits for authors if they prepare their manuscript with the help of an Elsevier LaTeX typesetting package: a. From the authors point of view, it is desirable to have as much control as possible over the final printed article. My basic assumption is that authors understand their own formulas better than for example desk editors. b. In the case of longer displayed equations and also in the case of tables, reformatting will normally be necessary if a LaTeX page style is used that differs from the final page layout. I have had some bad experiences with desk editors who really messed up my formulas. For me, it is enough to struggle with my own errors and typos. I do not want to struggle with errors and typos created by others. c. Therefore, I now always try to imitate the style of the printed article as closely as possible. If a journal offers appropriate LaTeX style files (as Elsevier does), it is normally a good idea to use them. d. The contributors to the proceedings should not forget that there is a 15 page limit. Without further specifications such a limit is -- strictly speaking -- meaningless. In "Guide for Authors" the use of the old Elsevier LaTeX package "elsart" is recommended which is now more than 10 years old. However, "elsart" does not really produce a close approximation the final (printed} article. In addition, there are also some other inconsistencies and problems. Therefore, I wrote a template file "TemplateANM.tex" based on the fairly new Elsevier LaTeX package "elsarticle" which will be available on the web page of the Luminy conference IV. INFORMATION ABOUT ELSEVIER'S ELSARTICLE PACKAGE =================================================== The most recent version of "elsarticle" can be downloaded from CTAN (Comprehensive TeX Archive Network) under "http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/elsarticle/" or also directly from Elsevier under "http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/elsarticle". A Wikipedia-style article from the makers of "elsarticle" can be found under "http://support.river-valley.com/wiki/index.php?title=Elsarticle.cls". The basic files of the "elsarticle" package are "elsarticle.cls", which govern the whole layout, and "elsarticle-num.bst" which is responsible for the formatting of the references by means of BibTeX. Since LaTeX and BibTeX have to be able to find these files, it is recommendable to put them into the same directory as the file you are working on. I think that my template file "TemplateANM.tex" and also the explicit examples discussed later show that working with "elsarticle" is not more difficult than any other LaTeX style. Since "elsarticle" is now the preferred LaTeX typesetting package for all Elsevier journals, it may well be a good idea to try to use it. V. GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE USE OF BIBTEX ============================================== In "Guide for Authors" it is stated clearly that ANM (or Elsevier) prefers manuscripts whose bibliographies are organized and formatted by BibTeX. This is understandable, since the systematic use of BibTeX is the most flexible approach which again helps Elsevier to cut costs. However, using BibTeX is also profitable for authors, at least in the long run. From my own personal experience (I have been using BibTeX routinely for almost 10 years now), I can recommend the use of BibTeX without any hesitation. Novices of BibTeX may be afraid of having to invest too much time and effort in order to become familiar with it. Of course, at first the creation of a BibTeX data base (a file with extension .bib) is somewhat more demanding than creating the bibliography of a LaTeX manuscript manually. However, once you have the entries in a BibTeX data base, you can reuse them in later manuscripts at virtually no cost. Putting the entries into a BibTeX data base is easier than it may look at first sight. There are several editors that have a special BibTeX mode that greatly facilitates writing and expanding a .bib file. On the WWW, one can find plenty of information on the use of BibTeX. There, one can also find many BibTeX style files for many other journals. As a final general remark, let me emphasize once more that ANM also accepts manuscript whose bibliographies were not created by BibTeX (compare my template file "TemplateANM.tex"). VI. ANM AND BIBTEX ================== ANM wants to have the references numbered in a square bracket [.] and ordered sequentially according to their appearance in the text. To accomplish this, BibTeX should be used in connection with the BibTeX style file "elsarticle-num.bst" which controls the appearance of the bibliography. Actually, "elsarticle" was designed to use BibTeX in connection with the so-called "natbib" style which also makes it possible to use the Author-Year (Harvard) citation style. However, my template file "TemplateANM.tex" is set up in such a way that it does not make use of these additional possibilities. It is, however, also possible to format the bibliography by hand in the conventional LaTeX style without using BibTeX. But this more pedestrian approach may easily require some later reformatting which also increases the probability of making typos (why do something by hand that can also be done by the computer). VII. EXAMPLE FILES ================== In order to understand better what should be done with "elsarticle", I set up 2 examples which can be downloaded from the conference web page. Firstly, I reformulated the LaTeX source code (many thanks to Kerstin Jordaan) of the article K. Jordaan and F. To\'{o}kos [2009], Interlacing theorems for the zeros of some orthogonal polynomials from different sequences, Appl. Numer. Math. Vol. 59, pp. 2015 - 2022 in such a way that it works together with "elsarticle". This was easy. I only had to change the leading LaTeX commands governing the organization of the manuscript, and I also had to create a BibTeX data base. The body of this manuscript -- including numerous macros -- was not changed at all. The LaTeX source code can be found in the file "ANM59_2015.tex", and the corresponding BibTeX data base in the file "ANM59_2015.bib". So, download the files "ANM59_2015.tex" and "ANM59_2015.bib" and put them into a suitably directory on your computer together with the "elsarticle" files "elsarticle.cls" and "elsarticle-num.bst". Then give the following sequence of commands: latex ANM59_2015 bibtex ANM59_2015 bibtex ANM59_2015 latex ANM59_2015 latex ANM59_2015 The resulting TeX output "ANM59_2015.dvi" can be compared with the .pdf file for this article, which can be downloaded from the web page of ANM (if you have access to it). I also rewrote the LaTeX source code of my article E. J. Weniger [2008], On the analyticity of Laguerre series, J. Phys. A Vol. 41, 425207 (43 pp) in such a way that it works together with "elsarticle". Again, this was easy to do. I only had to change the leading LaTeX commands specific for "elsarticle". The main body of this manuscript, which contains many calls to LaTeX packages via the "\usepackage" command, was unchanged. I also did not have to create a new BibTeX data base. My old one did the job. The LaTeX source code can be found in the file "JPA41_425207.tex", and the corresponding BibTeX data base can be found in the file "JPA41_425207.bib". Put these files together with the "elsarticle" files "elsarticle.cls" and "elsarticle-num.bst" in a suitably directory. The referencing in my manuscript has a more complicated structure than in Kerstin Jordaan's manuscript. Therefore, proper LaTeX output requires now the following sequence of commands: latex JPA41_425207 bibtex JPA41_425207 bibtex JPA41_425207 latex JPA41_425207 latex JPA41_425207 bibtex JPA41_425207 bibtex JPA41_425207 latex JPA41_425207 latex JPA41_425207 VIII. FEEDBACK ============== There is no a priori reason to tacitly assume that everything works smoothly right from the beginning. So, if you encounter any problems in connection with my template file or if you would like to make some comments, please do not hesitate to contact me under Ernst Joachim Weniger