3

I am using MiKTeX 2.9 on Windows 7 (64) with XeLaTeX and the Texmaker editor. For an address book for my son's preschool I would like to use fancytabs for a thumb index. The package works fine and produces the thumb index as described in the documentation. I do not understand how to change the package's presets, however.

I have some experience with the syntax in TikZ and LaTeX, but, alas, only a rudimentary understanding of programming. I suspect this may be why I cannot answer the following question when reading Raphael Pinson's fancytabs documentation: How, exactly, do I change one of the package's parameters for use in a given document document? The \fancytabsStyle default, for instance, is \Large\scshape. How do I change this default in my preamble so that, for instance, the small caps are no longer in use? I tried altering the "variable" and then the "accessor" (those are the terms in "2 Implementation" of the documentation) for this parameter by adding the following after \usepackage{fancytabs}:

\newcommand{\tab@style}{\Large}

I also tried

\usepackage{fancytabs}
\renewcommand{\tab@style}{\Large}

and I also tried adding \newcommand{\tab@style}{\Large} or \renewcommand{\tab@style}{\Large} after \begin{document}.

I suspect that there is some basic principle of using commands that is escaping me. If someone could show me how to change a single parameter of fancytabs I would be very grateful.

lockstep
  • 250,273
Daniel Balestrini
  • 33
  • Thanks for accepting my answer, but please also upvote it (this has to be done separately from accepting). – lockstep Aug 11 '12 at 11:39

1 Answers1

2

It seems that the "official" way is

\fancytabsStyle{\Large}

As \fancytabsStyle internally uses \renewcommand{\tab@style}, your second approach should also work if you enclose the changed definition within \makeatletter/\makeatother (See What do \makeatletter and \makeatother do?):

\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\tab@style}{\Large}
\makeatother
Community
  • 1
lockstep
  • 250,273
  • Thank you, lockstep, for your help. Not only did your explanation solve my immediate problem, your pointer re. \makeatletter and \makeatother is quite helpful in a more general sense! – Daniel Balestrini Aug 11 '12 at 10:55
  • In general, the package provides setting commands so you don't have to redefine internals (commands with @). For more redefinitions, look at https://github.com/cc-translators/sagesse/blob/master/devotional.sty#L423 and following. – raphink Aug 11 '12 at 21:51