0

I'm trying to make a template for writing my personal mathematical notes based on the amsart class. I copied this file (https://www.ams.org/arc/journals/packages/bull/bull_amslatex/journal.tex) and was trimming away the things that I might not need (like multiple authors etc). I found this code in the preamble:

%    Blank box placeholder for figures (to avoid requiring any
%    particular graphics capabilities for printing this document).
\newcommand{\blankbox}[2]{%
  \parbox{\columnwidth}{\centering
%    Set fboxsep to 0 so that the actual size of the box will match the
%    given measurements more closely.
    \setlength{\fboxsep}{0pt}%
    \fbox{\raisebox{0pt}[#2]{\hspace{#1}}}%
  }%
}

I am wondering if I should delete it or not. What is the purpose of this code, and is it okay to delete it? I found no difference in the output by excluding it.

1 Answers1

0

In journal.tex this command is used twice, on lines 258-267:

\begin{figure}[tb]
\blankbox{.6\columnwidth}{5pc}
\caption{This is an example of a figure caption with text.}
\label{firstfig}
\end{figure}

\begin{figure}[tb]
\blankbox{.75\columnwidth}{3pc}
\caption{}\label{otherfig}
\end{figure}

As you can see this command serves to illustrate how figures are used in this template, without actually showing a figure. Instead a 'blank box' is shown with the dimensions given by the arguments of the command.

So you can safely delete the code, unless you want to use a similar image placeholder when you pass your template on to other people, for example. However, in that case you can also use the demo or draft options for the graphicx package, or use \includegraphics{example-image}, which will include the file example-image.png that is part of the mwe package that comes with most LaTeX distributions by default.

Marijn
  • 37,699