Simplified IEEE Template

Quick start for modern LaTeXing for an IEEE conference, based on the Manuscript Template for Conference Proceedings.

The official template is distributed via CTAN as the IEEEtran package, which is actively maintained. However, de-facto configurations (hyperref) and modern features of latex (microtype) are not configured. This template does it.

This template is for the conferences. It is based on the bare_conf_compsoc.tex distributed by IEEE. In case you need other configurations, please adapt paper-conference.tex or run the latex template generator.

To build the whole document, execute following command. Note that this requires a working perl installation.

latexmk paper

In case something goes wrong, you can instruct the LaTeX compiler to stop at the first error:

pdflatex paper

Benefits

Following features are enabled in this template:

• Provides a skeletal paper.tex file
• Shows how IEEE copyright notice can be added.
• (Optional) Typesetting of listings using advanced highlighting powered by the minted package.
• Generated PDF allows for copy and paste of text without getting words with ligatures such as "workflow" destroyed. This is enabled by glyphtounicode, which encodes ligatures (such as fl) using unicode characters.
• Support of hyperlinked references without extra color thanx to hyperref.
• Better breaking of long URLs.
• Support for \powerset command.
• (Optional) Support todos as pdf annotations. This is enabled by the pdfcomment package.
• microtypographic extensions for a better look of the paper.
• Modern packages such as microtype, cleveref, csquotes, paralist, hyperref, hypcap, upquote, booktabs.
• (Optional) LaTeX compilation using the modern lualatex compiler.
• Ready-to-go configuration for latexindent.

Disabled features

Following features were not activated for this template. You can run the latex template generator to enable the features.

Hints on writing an abstract and thesis by Dirk Fahland.

Examples

• paper-conference.pdf - regular conference paper.
• paper-conference-minted.pdf - conference paper showing minted in action.

Quick start

• Click on Download ZIP or here.
• Extract main.zip in the folder where you want to write your paper.
• Edit paper-conference.tex.
• latexmk paper-conference.

Attention regarding compsocconf

Some conferences distribute a IEEEtran.cls V1.7a dated 2007 and a parameter compsocconf. The parameter compsocconf was NEVER included in Michael Shell's IEEEtran.cls file. It is unclear, who did this patch and why it is around in the wild.

The most recent version is V1.8b and automatically distributed over CTAN, because it is actively maintained by Michael Shell at http://www.michaelshell.org/tex/ieeetran/. A full changelog is available at http://mirror.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/IEEEtran/changelog.txt.

 2014/09/17 V1.8a (MDS) changes:

 1) Extensive rework of the compsoc mode to comply with the latest standards
    of the IEEE Computer Society.

The class parameter compsocconf never existed officially. One has to use conference, compsoc, because the parameters are "orthogonal": Either "conference" or "journal", either "compsoc" or not. With a modern IEEEtran.cls, you'll get

LaTeX Warning: Unused global option(s):
    [compsocconf].

compsoc option is not needed any more

When using the 2007 version or the most recent version with (the unhandled) compsocconf, you'll get paper-conference.pdf instead of paper-conference-compsoc.pdf. That differs significantly in the style used for section headings. paper-conference-compsoc.pdf was removed from the build since August 2021, because compsoc option was not used by computer science conferences in 2021.

IEEE distributes their templates at https://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html. With the update of July 2017, the archive https://www.ieee.org/documents/ieee-latex-conference-template.zip contains both bare_conf.tex and bare_conf_compsoc.tex. Thus, the conference should state which option to use.

All in all, the distributions of IEEEtran from 2007 are roughly equivalent to \documentclass[conference]{IEEEtran} (and version V1.8b), which does not comply with IEEE's rules for computer science conferences, because the compsoc option is missing.

Hence, double check with your conference whether you have to use compsoc or not.

Statement from IEEE:

Please note that, as stated on the webpage https://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html. "IEEE does not require a specific format for their conference articles". Thus, we dot not purport that the "compsoc" is a requirement for publishing conference papers with us.

Tool hints

There is currently no official biblatex support. A first step towards that is done at the biblatex-ieee package.

MiKTeX installation hints are given at http://latextemplates.github.io/scientific-thesis-template/#installation-hints-for-windows.

• Grammar and spell checking is available at TeXstudio. Please download LanguageTool (Windows: choco install languagetool) and configure TeXstudio to use it. Note that it is enough to point to languagetool.jar. If TeXstudio doesn't fit your need, check the list of all available LaTeX Editors.
• Use JabRef to manage your bibliography (Windows: choco install jabref).

To have minted running properly, you have to do following steps on Windows:

1. Install python: choco install python - that uses chocolatey to install Python
2. Install pygments: pip instal pygments - that uses the Pyhton package manager to install the pygments library
3. When latexing, use -shell-escape: pdflatex -shell-escape paper. You can also just execute latexmk paper.

Usage with docker

The generated Dockerfile is based on the Dockerfile by reitzig. The idea of that system is to host the document sources in a directory separated from the output directory.

docker run --rm -v "c:\users\example\latex-document:/work/src" -v "c:\users\example\latex-document\out:/work/out" ltg work latexmk

Following one-time setup is requried:

docker build -t ltg .

FAQs

Q: I have questions on the IEEEtran class itself.

The author of the class offers a large FAQ at http://www.michaelshell.org/tex/ieeetran/. Please read on there. The other possiblity is to execute texdoc ieeetran and read in the documentation. For example, there is an explanation of how to typeset the afficiliation information with four or more authors properly.

Q: How can I synchronize updates from the template to my repository?

1. Initialize your git repository as usual
2. Add this repository as upstream: git remote add upstream https://github.com/latextemplates/LNCS.git
3. Merge the branch upstream/main into your main branch: git merge upstream/main.

After that you can use and push the main branch as usual. Notes on syncing with the upstream repository are available from GitHub.

Q: I get the error ! pdfTeX error (font expansion): auto expansion is only possible with scalable fonts.

Install the cm-super package using the MiKTeX package manager. Then, run initexmf --mkmaps on the command line. (Long description: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/324972/9075)

Q: I get Package csquotes Error: Unbalanced groups or invalid nesting. What can I do?

A: You have activated \MakeOuterQuote{"} and used some special babel command to allow hyphenation at other places as a dash. One example is writing application"=specific. Now, you have to decide whether you want keep using plain quotes to enquote a word or use the special hyphenation command. In other words: Do you want "quote" and app\-lication\-specific or \enquote{quote} and application"=specific?

Note that this should not happen when the template is generated as the setting tweakouterquote ensures that these two options are mutually exclusive.

Q: I need more space. What can I do?

The most simple solution to get more space is to exchange the font.

Q: How can I reformat my .tex files?

Execute following command:

latexindent -l -s -sl -w paper.tex

Q: I want to obey the one-sentence-per-line rule. How can I do that?

Execute following command:

latexindent -m -l -s -sl -w paper.tex

Attention! This is work in progress and does not always produce best results.

Q: Can I also write in German?

Yes. You can regenerate the template and choose "German" as language.

Further information

• Other templates: https://latextemplates.github.io/