<latex> – LaTeX code

Attributes:

code

LaTeX code (required)

desperate

"true" or "false" (default) – element for last phase of production?

Possible Contents: Arbitrary.

Description: This is some sort of emergency command: It inserts code if we're producing LaTeX output, and interprets the element's contents else. It's totally ignored if desperate is "true".

As an example I mention here the definition of the tbook predefined entity `&LaTeX;':

<!ENTITY LaTeX "<latex code='\LaTeX{}'>LaTeX</latex>">

Then &LaTeX; prints a neat LaTeX logo in all outputs.¹

The contents of this element is tbook code, no HTML code!

The desperate attribute

The idea behind desperate is that the transformation tbook => LaTeX can be forced to interpret even <latex>'es with desperate="true" if a special XSLT parameter called desperate-measures is set to true, see XSLT parameters. Have a look at an example:

<latex code="\newpage" desperate="true"/>

This is usually done in the very last phase of production, maybe for having better page breaks like in this example. Normally it is totally ignored, but if you call the LaTeX transformation with

     tbtolatex mybook desperate-measures=true

the (hopefully) optimising page breaks are applied.