[OS X TeX] Standard preamble

[Maarten Sneep]

On 18-jul-2006, at 22:29, Jan Hegewald wrote:

> Am 18.07.2006 um 17:43 schrieb Chris Goedde:
>
>> An alternative to the previous suggestions is to put your preamble  
>> in a style file (i.e. mypreamble.sty) and then include it via the  
>> \usepackage{} command (i.e. \usepackage{mypreamble}). I think that  
>> this is much cleaner than using \input or \include. You can stick  
>> the style file in a place where TeX will find it (mine is in ~/ 
>> Library/texmf/tex/latex) and then you can use it for anything you  
>> TeX.
>
> I do not understand why a .sty file is cleaner than a simple .tex  
> file. Can you explain it to me?

There are several reasons for this:
1) Some tricks require \makeatletter ... \makeatother to work when  
used in normal latex code. In a style file they work without these  
commands. The table of contents formatting is one such area IIRC.
2) You can more easily work with package options, to micro-adjust  
your layout

I'm sure there are other very good reasons to use a style file instead.

Maarten



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