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Commit fd1491f2 authored by Edward Longman's avatar Edward Longman
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Add FAQ section to README

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LaTeX Documents for the University of Southampton. Mainly for Thesis and project reports
For slides with Beamer, please see https://git.soton.ac.uk/sw2f11/latex-slides-template
## FAQ
#### Q: How do I include an "Accessed on", "Visited on", "Date last Accessed" or "Last visited" note for urls?
The bibliography is formatted by the `natbib` package that does not support the `urldate` field in `.bib` files.
As a work around, add a `note={Accessed on 2020-01-01}` to the relevant bib entry.
For more info see [this Stack Exchange question](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/103133/problems-with-natbib-strange-url-format-and-urldate-not-shown).
#### Q: How do I fix a bib entry with special characters (`&``%`)?
You may get an error like "Paragraph ended before \\BR@@bibitem was complete"
or there may be a cascade of errors because of an unclosed `\begin` statement.
The short term solution is to manually "escape" special characters in the `.bib` url fields,
i.e. `url = {http://www.somesite.com/8%20report}` => `url = {http://www.somesite.com/8\%20report}`.
Unfortunately, the longer term solution requires editing some source files.
Locate the `plainnat.bst` (or `biblatex.bst` file, if using `biblatex`)
and add the following in the file at the end of `FUNCTION {begin.bib}`
```
"\providecommand{\BIBdecl}{\relax}"
write$ newline$
"\BIBdecl"
write$ newline$
```
Then add ``\newcommand{\BIBdecl}{\catcode`\%=12 }`` before `\begin{document}` in your `.tex` document source.
[Stack Exchange Source](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/140143/hyperref-with-pagebackref-requires-manual-escaping-of-percentage-signs-in-urls)
#### Q: Can I use `biblatex` instead of `natbib`?
Yes you can. Since this template has existed longer than `biblatex` it uses the older `natbib`.
there are good reasons to change to `biblatex` but `natbib` is still preferred by journals,
so using `natbib` will mean that source material from papers will not need to be modified,
## Your `{TEXMF}` root subdirectory
For Tex Live: This whole folder can be moved into the `~/texmf` directory to begin using the class files.
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