Homework

homework is a LaTeX class for typesetting homework assignments. It can handle any Unicode input (so no more worrying about accent characters or writing in another language), and works for problem sets, book problems, lab reports, even essays.

Goals

There's no shortage of homework *TeX classes, but this class is designed to be:

• Easy To Use: Writing in LaTeX is already hard enough without having to worry about custom requirements for a class. With this in mind, homework tries to abstract away much of the custom configuration required for different use cases, instead providing class options to customize each document while minimizing the extra code that must be written.
• Semantically Coded: Along with providing functionality for common parts of a generic homework assignment, homework attempts to add meaning to each custom command to improve readability — for example, instead of \boxedanswer{}, it makes more sense to call the command what it is: \final{}.
• Unicode Compatible: Unicode support in LaTeX is, in general, a mess. While there exist a variety of work arounds to support accented Latin characters (\"{}, \'{}, \^{}, etc.), this is an inelegant solution for a couple of reasons: first, it hampers the readability of the document (it's much easier to read/copy/paste Paul Erdős than it is Paul Erd\H{o}s). Second, it completely ignores the problem of writing in languages which do not use the Latin script, like Greek or Russian. This necessitates the loading of other packages (babel, polyglossia), each of which come with their own complexity and have the propensity to break the document if package conflict arrises. Instead, homework opts for a much nicer solution: to use XeLaTeX to allow for fully Unicode-Compatible source documents.

Documentation

Prerequisites

To use homework, you must have, at minimum, a LaTeX distribution installed on our system. If you want to highlight source code in your LaTeX documents (like documenting c code, for example), you will need to install Python and the pygments python package. If you intend to compile your documents with xelatex and want to use a specific font, you must have that font installed on your computer. I reccomend installing the CMU fonts, which expand the default Computer Modern TeX fonts to support unicode.

Compilation

To compile homework documents, run the following commands in your shell:

pdflatex ROOT or xelatex ROOT, where ROOT is the main *.tex file, with or without the extension.

If your LaTeX file contains source code to be displayed, you will need to add the -shell-escape flag. If you are compiling with xelatex, you will need the additional flag -8bit when compiling documents with formatted source code to correct a bug in xelatex which causes tab literals to be encoded correctly.

# compiling with pdflatex
pdflatex main.tex

# compiling with pdflatex, using pygments to format source code
pdflatex -shell-escape main.tex

# compiling with xelatex
xelatex main.tex

# compiling with xelatex, using pygments to format source code
xelatex -shell-escape -8bit main.tex
 

Usage

A basic homework document looks something like this:

\documentclass[<class-options>]{homework}

\author{YOUR NAME}
\course{COURSE}
\due{\today}

\title{ASSIGNMENT}

\begin{document}

	\begin{problem}
		% ...
	\end{problem}
	\begin{solution}
		% ...
	\end{solution}

\end{document}

You can use the template.tex as a starting point for your own homework assignments.

Class Options

Problem/Solution Options

• qed: Place a QED marker at the end of each solution
• newpage: Place each problem on its own page.
• hidesolutions: Don't display the solutions in the resultant PDF.
• noboxes: Remove the boxes around each problem.

Document Macros

Option	Description	Default Value
\author{}	Your name. This will appear at the beginning of each document and, if in mla mode, automatically extract your last name for the header.	Your Name
\course{}	The name of the class or course	Course
\due{}	When the assignment is due	\today
\title{}	The title of the assignment	Title

Packages Loaded

homework loads a number of LaTeX packages by default to simplify the writing workflow.

Category	Package	Options
Text	kantlipsum
	hyperref	bookmarks=true, hidelinks
	fontspec
	ragged2e
	titlesec
Tables	array
	tabularx
	booktabs
Time	datetime
Physics	physics
	siunitx
Math	amsmath
	amssymb
	amsthm
	mathtools
Chemistry	mhchem
Diagrams	tikz
	circuitikz	american, siunitx
Code	minted
	algorithm
	algpseudocode
Formatting	framed
	geometry	pass
	fancyhdr
	enumitem

Custom Functionality

New Macros

Macro	Usage
\final{}	Places a box around an answer to denote a final answer from other steps in a solution
\note{}	Highlights text in yellow

Additional Units

homework defines several additional units to complement those provided by siunitx.

Command	Definition
\mile	mi
\gallon	gallon
\pound	lb
\foot	ft
\atmosphere	atm
\fahrenheit	\degree F
\atom	at
\molecule	molecule
\calorie	cal
\Calorie	Cal
\inch	in

Credits

homework is based on the latex-homework project by @artemmavrin.

License

This code is distributed under the MIT license.

Change Log

v1.2.0

• Removed xelatex dependency so documents can now also be compiled with pdflatex
• Added default values the document macros so that compilation would not silently crash if no values were provided

v1.1.1

• Adopted semantic versioning
• Change v1.0 to v0.1 to correct earlier, erroneous change to pre-1.0.0 versioning

v1.1

• Updated \part to allow to allow an optional argument to serve as the reference label: \part[q:1:a] instead of \part\label{q:1:a}
• Added mhchem package to allow for typesetting chemical equations
• Updated version numbering

v0.1

• Initial release