How can I add a list of mathematical variables to my appendix?

Question

I would like to include a section in my appendix which shows a list of mathematical symbols, operators, etc. with a textual explanation right next to them. Ideally they should be separated by dots (like in the table of contents).

How can I achieve that? Is that what glossary is for?

Here is my current setup:

...
\appendix{}
\chapter{Appendix}
\section{Notation}
THIS IS WHERE THE LIST SHOULD APPEAR

\section{Appendix 2}
Lorem ipsum ...
...

EDIT: Some more code from my setup

\usepackage[section,numberedsection=autolabel,symbols]{glossaries}
...
\glsaddall{}
\printglossary[type=main,style=long,nonumberlist]

And here my glossary entries

\newglossaryentry{pressure}
{
  name={\ensuremath{p}},
  description={Pressure}
}
\newglossaryentry{acceleration}
{
  name={\ensuremath{g}},
  description={Acceleration}
}

Something like http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/269565/glossaries-how-to-customize-list-of-symbols-with-additional-column-for-units/269571?s=5|0.0000#269571 perhaps? glossaries can do this almost out of the box — , Oct 14 '15 at 09:36
mmh.. the look is not really what I want. it gives me separate chapter headers and does go into my "notation" section. Is there any way I can make my own glossary. I just need a list of variables with their definitions ideally separated by dots — user2426316, Oct 14 '15 at 10:00
You could also just define a tabular environment in the section, what would be against it? — JJM Driessen, Oct 14 '15 at 10:21
In my thesis, I thought about glossaries but in the end I just did it manually and used the description environment to format the list of symbols with their explanations. I didn't want dots though, not sure how easy it would be to get dots with description — FionaSmith, Oct 14 '15 at 10:29
@ChristianHupfer I kind of handling it right now with glossaries. Are you aware of any good style option for a list of symbols? — user2426316, Oct 14 '15 at 10:56
@user2426316: good? That's no well defined. I personally would not use dots as requested, so for me that's not good. — , Oct 14 '15 at 10:58
@ChristianHupfer I just would like to fill the paper. right now everything is sitting at the left. Some spacing between symbol and description would be ideal (and some dots to fill that spacing) — user2426316, Oct 14 '15 at 11:04
@user2426316: Add your code to your post and I've a look into it. Most likely it's necessary to change an existing style — , Oct 14 '15 at 11:07
@user2426316: Yes, but it leaves any further effort to other users or me -- not a single symbol is there, no \newglossaryentry etc. I won't try an answer until there's some more support. — , Oct 14 '15 at 11:15
@ChristianHupfer there is not much to my newglossaryentrys. added them above — user2426316, Oct 14 '15 at 11:19
@user2426316: Is it possible to provide a working document? Is this that difficult? won't glue one fragment to the other one and making a compilable document out of it. I wonder if I post such fragments if you wouldn't be puzzled too. — , Oct 14 '15 at 11:20
For the simpler case of a list of variables, I think the nomencl package notation is simpler, just a \nomenclature{$a$}{Meaning of $a$}. By default, you won't get the format you want, but section 5.5 of its documentation shows something similar. — Mike Renfro, Oct 14 '15 at 12:25

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 14 '15 at 12:20

Instead of automation, I went with a simple tabular (actually, a longtabu for multi-page compatibility). A \quad for indentation makes enough horizontal white space, manual \\[3pt] spacing to group the list by starting letter.

Preview

MWE

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{@{}ll@{}} 
\textbf{Symbol} & \textbf{Description} \\
$a\in A$ & \textbf{arc} (directed) from vertex $v_i$ to $v_j$, set of arcs \\
$\phantom{a\in{}}A^\text{p}_{v}$ & \quad arriving arcs into vertex $v$ (\emph{predecessor}) \\
$\phantom{a\in{}}A^\text{s}_{v}$ & \quad leaving arcs from vertex $v$ (\emph{successor}) \\[3pt]
$b \in B_{e}$ & \textbf{building}, set of buildings along edge $e$ \\
$b_\text{eff}$ & concurrence effect (parameter) \\[3pt]
$c\in C$ & \textbf{commodity}, set of commodities \\[3pt]
$e\in E$ & \textbf{edge}, set of edges \\[3pt]
& \dots \\[3pt]
$v\in V$ & \textbf{vertex}, set of vertices
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

This won't break over pages if the list is considerably longer — , Oct 14 '15 at 13:11
Indeed. As I wrote, I actually use the longtabu environment. For the sake of a MWE, I omitted the dependency. — ojdo, Oct 14 '15 at 14:35

How can I add a list of mathematical variables to my appendix?

1 Answers1

Preview

MWE