Allergy: Writing drafts in LaTeX

I always find myself loading the same basic packages over and over again in all my notes and articles. Over the years, the loaded packages have stabilised into what is now allergy.sty. It can be used with different options at the three production stages of any document, the drafting, review and publication stages.

A typical use case at draft stage is

\documentclass{scrartcl}

\usepackage[watermark, showeqnr, theoremdefs]{allergy}

\begin{document}
Here is an equation without reference, but nevertheless numbered with the \texttt{showeqnr} option on:
\begin{align}
f \colon A \to B
\end{align}

Here is a labeled equation, with label visible in the margin:
\begin{align}
\label{eq:important}
2 + 2 = 4
\end{align}

The following holds
\begin{theorem}
Sensible theorem, lemma and definition environments are already defined.
\end{theorem}

Some extra math delimiter commands are defined such as \(\abs{x}\), \(\norm{x}\), or \(\pairing{\omega}{X}\).
Sets can be defined as \(S \coloneqq \set{1,2,\ldots}\), or by comprehension as \(S' \coloneqq \setc{i \in S}{i \leq 10}\).

There is also a nice watermark on the top of every page (compile several times).

\itodo[Me]{Here is an inline todo of some urgent issue to address}

\itodo*[Me]{Another, less urgent task, with the starred version of the \texttt{itodo} command.}

When the document is in review stage, add the final option, and remove the watermark option:

\usepackage[final, showeqnr, theoremdefs]{allergy}

At publication stage, you may want to remove showeqnr so that only referred equations are numbered, as is customary in most journals:

\usepackage[final, theoremdefs]{allergy}

Here is a brief list of options with their meaning:

• final: Remove todos, and margin labels
• showeqnr: Show all equation numbers (you should use the unstarred align, or equation environment in your draft)
• biblatex: Load biblatex with some reasonable defaults
• watermark: Add a watermark with a timestamp on top of every page
• theoremdefs: Add standard theorem definitions

See my blog post about LaTeX for more details, and tips on how to use LaTeX at its best.