tufte-style-article

tufte-style-article is a LaTeX class with a design similar to Edward Tufte's works. His designs are known for their simplicty, legibleness, extensive use of sidenotes in a wide dedicated margin and tight text and graphic integration. This class is however not a rigourous copy of E.Tufte's works, it is more of an inspiration. It also includes design features from Robert Bringhurst's Elements of Typographic Style.

The overall look and features of this class can be seen in documentation.pdf, with more in-depth explanation. tufte-style-article is meant to be adaptive: one can typeset small casual papers, or more fancy and hefty documents.

Latest changes

• [19/02/2022]

  • minted -> listings. It is better and no need for --shell-escape or Pygments anymore.

    You can still use the same code macros !

  • Changed color scheme.

  • Changed code box looks.

• [22/07/2021]

  • BIG CHANGES : \marginnote{} and \margintext{} are now replaced with \sidenote{} and \sidetext{} (see the documentation, it is all updated here).

  • Figures are now cleaned up. All kinds of figures can float freely!

  • Main font was Palatino, now it is Linux Libertine (I find it better).

Installation

This class' source file is tufte-style-article.cls, avaliable on the following repository:

www.github.com/sylvain-kern/tufte-style-article

The file can just be put in the same folder as your main .tex file. Overleaf users will have to do this, since it does not support custom class installation. For Windows or Linux users with an installed LaTeX distribution, please see respectively the two following sections, on how to install tufte-style-article on your system.

In order to make the code environments and syntax highlighting work, it is needed to have Python installed on your system, along with the pygments package. With pip simply execute

pip install pygments

MikTeX users on Windows

1. Create a localtexmf directory if you do not already have one, for instance

   C:\Users\<you>\localtexmf
   

2. Create a tex\latex\ directory in the localtexmf one, and inside it, create a folder named tufte-style-article.

3. Paste the tufte-style-article.cls file in that tufte-style-article folder and you should be good. Eventually, the class file is located at

   C:\Users\<you>\localtexmf\tex\latex\tufte-style-article\tufte-style-article.cls
   

4. Open MikTeX console, go to Settings, Directories tab. Click on add, and enter yout texmf path.

   C:\Users\<you>\localtexmf
   

5. Finally, go to the tasks tab, and hit Refresh file name database.

tufte-style-article is now installed on your system ! MikTeX will recognize and find the class file without it having to be in your project folder.

TeX Live users on Linux

1. Create a localtexmf directory if you do not already have one, for instance

   $HOME/.texmf
   

2. Create a tex/latex/ directory in the .texmf one, and inside it, create a folder named tufte-style-article.

3. Paste the tufte-style-article.cls file in that tufte-style-article folder and you should be good. Eventually, the class file is located at:

   HOME/.texmf/tex/latex/tufte-style-article tufte-style-article.cls
   

4. Update the texmf with

   mktexlsr $HOME/.texmf
   

5. Check if it worked with

   kpsewhich tufte-style-article.cls
   

tufte-style-article is now installed on your system ! TeX Live will recognize and find the class file without it having to be in your project folder.

Usage

I provide the template minimal.tex, to quickly get started.

Please see the documentation for more in-depth explanations and examples. This section gives a quick overview on how to produce a simple document.

Packages already loaded

This class is already packed with packages, so check this before adding any package that may be already included.

geometry emptypage fullwidth sidenotes caption fontenc libertinus libertinust1math gillius droidsansmono ragged2e titlesec titletoc tocloft fancyhdr graphicx microtype amsfonts amsmath mathtools physics xcolor mdframed tabularx booktabs enumitem hyperref etoolbox changepage placeins xparse xpatch biblatex listings

Preamble

Call the class with the following:

\documentclass[options]{tufte-style-article}

The options are listed and explained below:

Main document

All native LaTeX commands work with this class. However, some new macros are added to spice up the document.

Margin notes

\marginnote{<your note>} displays a numbered note in the margin.

\margintext{<your note>} displays unnumbered text in the margin.

Figure shortcuts

\textfig[<optional with>]{<image path>}{<caption>}{<label>} creates a figure with the caption in the margin. Optional width is relative to \textwidth: 1 will make the figure as wide as the text.

\marginfig{<image path>}{<caption>}{<label>} creates a figure completely in the margin.

\widefig[<optional with>]{<image path>}{<caption>}{<label>} creates a figure that completely spreads in the margin.

Compilation

This class compiles with pdflatex.

pdflatex document.tex

Contribute

I am always open to improvements, so feel free to fork the repository to change things. I am relatively new to LaTeX, so I am eager to put the class to higher standards.

Known issues

In this section I gather the issues that have popped and been reported. I will try to fix them as best as I can. If you spot a malfunction of any kind in this class or you just have a question about all this, feel free to send me an email at:

[email protected].

• When used, colorful, sans, and notufte are considered unused. It generates the following warning :

  Unused global option(s) : colorful.
  

• Bad page breaks can still occur for \textfig{}, \widefig, and code snippet environments.

• Marginpar systematically generates the following warnings:

  Marginpar on page 1 moved.
  

• I have to work on overfull \hboxes.