CS 880: Advanced Complexity Theory
Spring 2004

Scribe Guidelines

You should email Charles (cdx@cs.wisc.edu) a draft of your scribe notes within 24 hours of your lecture. Send both the LaTeX source and the PostScript file. We will make the draft available to the class at that time via our webpage. The final version should be submitted at the latest one week later.
Sample Files:
  • lecture.tex: you should \include this in your tex document. It defines some simple environments (e.g., example, claim, theorem, exercise). It also allows you to create our standard lecture banner using the \lecture command. \lecture takes 4 arguments: {lecture number}{lecture title}{date}{scribe name}.

    To typeset complexity classes use the provided macros eg. \NP for the class NP, \IP for the class IP etc., take a look at the file to see the list of pre-defined classes.

  • lecture00.tex: start your lecture notes from this template. It has some examples of the new environments we've defined.
Style:
  • General: We suggest you don't type beyond the 80th column in your source file. Latex ignores single newlines, so manually wrap your text when necessary. This makes reading/editing your source easier.

  • Intro: Start your scribe with a few lines' summary of the lecture.

  • Proofs: Notice lecture.tex includes amsthm.sty. Among other things, amsthm defines a useful proof environment we should all use.

  • Figures:
    • We suggest using xfig to generate .eps files for the figures you want to include. Prefix your your .eps files with the lecture number (i.e., 1.fig.eps).
    • Here is a great link for typesetting formulae into xfig drawings.

  • LaTeX References: Make cross-reference labels of this form: \label{lectureNumber:labelType:labelName}. So, a reference to a figure of a NAND gate in the first lecture would look something like \ref{1:fig:nand}. This will help us avoid reference conflicts when we compile all the lectures together.

  • Bibliographic References: End your scribe with references to the literature.

  • Structure: Do use sections/subsections where appropriate. Use the environments defined in lecture.tex when applicable.

  • Algorithms: Typeset any algorithms using the alg.sty macro package. Information on using this can be found in alg.ps.

  • Please don't use personalized Latex macros/environments! We'd like to keep the lectures somewhat standardized, so if you want your favorite environment or macro included, just send Charles an email with your request and we'll include it in lecture.tex. Also let us know if you have any suggested improvements to existing environments.
Latex Resources:

dieter@cs.wisc.edu