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I would like to print a simple list of acronyms at the beginning of my dissertation, something like:

Acronyms

  • USA - United States of America
  • NBA - National Basketball Association
  • PIN - Personal Identification Number

I've tried using the glossaries package, the acronym package, and the xindy/makeglossaries programs, but they require steps like

  • compiling a list of definitions into other files
  • running makeglossaries or other scripts between pdflatex compilations
  • using \gls{} within the document itself

In short, the glossaries package is a very complicated and capable tool, and it breaks everything when I try using it.

Does anybody know of a simple way to make an Acronym section at the beginning of a document that doesn't involve manually formatting? Here is a pseduo-MWE:

\documentclass[12pt]{book}
\usepackage{simpleacronyms} %prospective solution
\input{acronyms}            %definition file

\begin{document} 
\frontmatter 
\tableofcontents 
\printacronyms              %put the acronym definitions here


%... dissertation here


\end{document}

Where acronyms.tex has content like

\acronym{USA}{United States of America}
\acronym{NBA}{National Basketball Association}
\acronym{PIN}{Personal Identification Number}
Community
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user1717828
  • 904
  • I'm not sure what you mean by "doesn't involve manual formatting" but you could follow this answer: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/149708/simple-list-of-abbreviations-manually/149751#149751 – Thruston May 10 '16 at 15:33
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    why not just create a \chapter* containing the list using a tabular environment? – barbara beeton May 10 '16 at 16:16
  • @barbarabeeton, That's basically what I did. See the posted solution. – user1717828 May 10 '16 at 16:23
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    Packages glossaries, acronym and acro all can do this. »it breaks everything« is very unspecific. If you had posted a MWE showing how things break we might have been able to help… But it it looks like you found out how to use acronym and that is doesn't require additional compilation steps (contrary to your statement in the question) after all :) – cgnieder May 10 '16 at 18:33

1 Answers1

4

Found it!

thesis.tex

\documentclass[12pt]{book}
\usepackage{acronym}       %solution!
\begin{document}
\include{abstract}
\frontmatter 
\tableofcontents 
\include{acronyms}         %solution!

\mainmatter 
\include{Chapter1}
\include{Chapter2}
%...

\end{document}

acronyms.tex

\chapter*{Acronyms}
\begin{acronym}
 \acro{USA}{United States of America}
 \acro{NBA}{National Basketball Association}
 \acro{PIN}{Personal Identification Number}
\end{acronym}
user1717828
  • 904