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Advice on how to use the MNRAS LaTeX class file
mnras.cls, version 3.0
In 2015 May MNRAS
released version 3.0 of the LaTeX
class file mnras.cls for
preparing papers. However, this is mangled in various ways, with the
instructions/template provided not being consistent with the
mnras.cls file.
Note: a revised version of
mnras.cls
was released on
CTAN on 2020 July 4th.
This is called version 3.1 in the
announcement,
although – very confusingly – the version number given in the new
mnras.cls file (and the associated files) is still set to 3.0,
and still the release date is given as 2015/05/22. The changes
made are ‘increasing page efficiency and including a new “Data
Availability” section’, and the advice below also applies to this
new version 3.0
mnras.cls. If your
mnras.cls produces
an abstract that uses the full width of the page,
then it is the 2020 version, otherwise
download it from CTAN.
So, here is some advice/hints about how to use the MNRAS class
file.
Here is what I used at the start of a MNRAS paper.
\documentclass[fleqn,usenatbib,usedcolumn]{mnras}
%==============================================================================%
\usepackage[british]{babel} % British English hyphenation
\usepackage{newtxtext} % Good fonts
\usepackage[slantedGreek]{newtxmath} % " " (slanted Greek)
%
\let\la=\lesssim % for less than similar from newtxmath, not \la from mnras.cls
%
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc} % Good font encoding
\usepackage{graphicx} % Including figures
%
...
\begin{document}
...
Notes:
- Do not use the a4paper or usegraphicx options for
mnras.cls, but load the graphicx package explicitly
if you want to include images.
- I use the newtx
packages (i.e. newtxtext and newtxmath) for nice Times
Roman fonts, with the slantedGreek option to ensure all greek
letters are slanted, as is appropriate for mathematical variables
(non-slanted greek letters are also available, e.g. $\muup$ to
give a micro prefix for units, or $\upDelta$ for an upright
capital delta for a difference/increment).
- As I have loaded the newtx packages, I reset \la
to point to the amssymb-named character that is defined by
newtxmath, not the one in mnras.cls. This could be
done for other characters as needed.
- If you want to load AMS packages (e.g. amsmath,
amssymb), then load these before newtxtext and
newtxmath, not after.
- The usedcolumn option loads the dcolumn package which is
useful to align table columns by decimal places (mnras.cls
defines three new column types, ‘d’,
‘.’ and ‘,’ similar to the first
page of the documentation for the dcolumn
package; the only difference is that the ‘d’ column
does not use a centred dot for the decimal point).
- Also, assuming you are using pdfLaTeX,
include a \hypersetup{...} declaration, after your last
\usepackage{...}. Something like
\hypersetup{pdfauthor={D. A. Green},
pdftitle={Constraints on the distribution of supernova
remnants with Galactocentric radius},
pdfkeywords={supernova remnants, Galaxy: structure, ISM: structure},
bookmarksnumbered=true}
This gives useful document properties in the output .pdf (and ensures
that sections/subsections are numbered in the navigation table of the
contents in the .pdf, which is useful, but is not the default).
Also note that, with pdfLaTeX, you are likely to get
warnings such as ‘;warning (ext4): destination with the same identifier
(name{figure.1}) has been already used, duplicate ignored’ (as the
hyperref package is loaded too early by the mnras.cls
file). Such warnings can be ignored.
If you want to include landscape figures, using the rotating
package, then add these lines to the preamble of your .tex
file (i.e. before the \begin{document}):
\usepackage{rotating}
\makeatletter
\let\@makecaption=\SFB@makefigurecaption
\makeatother
\setlength{\rotFPtop}{0pt plus 1fil}
\setlength{\rotFPbot}{0pt plus 1fil}
Then you can use \begin{sidewaysfigure*} ...
\end{sidewaysfigure*} to include a sideways
figure.
Previously I also provided more advice about how to change several
things to make submitting an MNRAS paper to arXiv easier, as arXiv was running a rather
old LaTeX
implementation, which did not have the newtx font packages. But
from early 2017 arXiv has been running more up-to-date versions of TeX Live, that do include
newtx, which makes it much simpler to submit a MNRAS paper to
arXiv.
Still, I would recommend the following.
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