5 useful Latex packages

I am using Latex for preparing documents (conference papers, presentations, homework reports… ). I usually include following packages.

multirow

Quite frequently we need to span multirows/multicolumns in our documents. In this tutorial or in the wikibooks LaTeX/Tables you can see how it works.

subfig

This package can be used to put several images in the same figure. It also give us the possibility of refering them seperately.

algorithmic

A very nice package to use to create algorithms in your latex document. The usage is similar to any programming language, there is a good tutorial in wikibooks Algorithms in LaTeX section.

pstricks

This package allow us to draw vectoral graphics in LaTeX. You should spend time to learn the basics from the documentation. But I recommend highly you to use LaTeXDraw software which is a GUI to generate pstricks codes.

booktabs

The booktabs package is useful for creating professional-looking tables in LaTeX.
Notice that the thickness of the horizantal lines are different:

Table 1: Standard LaTeX table

Table 2: LaTeX table enhanced with booktabs package