lanepaper

lanepaper is a LaTeX2e typography package for academic papers. It gives ordinary LaTeX documents a considered typeface, hierarchy, spacing, list treatment, caption style, and footnote treatment without replacing the document structures that authors, editors, and tools already understand.

This repository contains the package, a curated visual demo, and the tests that prove the package loads and builds.

Status and scope

The current work is the v3 development line. V3 is a deliberate breaking contraction: there is one public entry point and there are no compatibility aliases for the removed v2 surface. A v2 document needs source edits; it cannot be made current by adding a flag. The complete replacement map is in MIGRATION.md.

Load the package with:

\usepackage{lanepaper}

The only package options are:

\usepackage[optical]{lanepaper}
\usepackage[nocolor]{lanepaper}

optical enables the sourced optical refinements. nocolor keeps the hierarchy while converting the palette to grayscale. Any other option is an error.

CTAN status: v3 is not yet on CTAN. Until the maintainer announces a CTAN release, install it from this GitHub repository or from a local checkout.

What the package provides

• TeX Gyre Pagella text, harmonized newpxmath mathematics, and scaled Inconsolata monospace.
• Microtype's shipped Pagella protrusion and default expansion, plus restrained small-caps tracking.
• Styled standard sectioning commands, lists, quotations, figures, tables, and footnotes.
• A small title-page family for article title, author, date, abstract, keyword, and JEL metadata.
• A 13.2pt internal spacing quantum and 16.32pt body leading, used as typographic implementation details rather than a public grid API.
• Optional optical refinements and a grayscale mode, as described above.

The package configures document-owned integrations only where they contribute to Lanepaper typography. The document remains responsible for bibliography, language, cross-reference, appendix, float, table-note, and page-rotation packages.

Quick start

Use the package in a paper

The following is a minimal package-first document. Choose the document's bibliography, language, links, and cross-reference packages explicitly:

\documentclass[11pt]{article}

\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[backend=biber,style=authoryear]{biblatex}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{lanepaper}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{cleveref}
\addbibresource{references.bib}

\begin{document}

\section{Introduction}
\sectionopening{A page should make structure easy to see,}
and the rest of the paragraph can carry the argument in ordinary prose.

\begin{itemize}
  \item Standard LaTeX structures remain the document's structure.
  \item Lanepaper supplies their typographic treatment.
\end{itemize}

\printbibliography
\end{document}

For a title page, the package also provides \articletitle, \articleauthors, \articledate, the articleabstract environment, \articlekeywords, and \articlejel. The complete retained API is in API_REFERENCE.md.

Build the repository demo

The demo is a visual showcase, not a template to copy for a new paper. From the repository root:

make lint
make build
make test

make build compiles demo/main.tex and writes main.pdf at the repository root. The demo's demo/preamble.tex shows one document-owned biblatex setup with Biber, English hyphenation, Hyperref, and cleveref.

Installing from GitHub

The package is distributed from GitHub while the v3 CTAN release is pending:

git clone https://github.com/nathanlane/lanepaper.git
cd lanepaper

For a paper that uses a local checkout, add its package directory to the TeX search path before compiling:

export TEXINPUTS="/path/to/lanepaper/lanepaper:"
pdflatex paper.tex

Alternatively, from the checkout, make install places the package in TEXMFHOME; make uninstall reverses that installation. Repository builds do not need an installed copy because the Makefile supplies the local search path.

Do not install lnp*.sty modules directly. They are internal owners loaded by lanepaper.sty, not adopter-facing entry points.

Supported toolchain

Lanepaper is pdfLaTeX-only. XeLaTeX and LuaLaTeX stop with a package-owned error because the font stack is 8-bit and uses T1 encoding, inputenc, Type 1 Pagella, newpxmath, mathalfa, and zi4.

The format floor is LaTeX2e 2020-10-01. The verified production baseline is TeX Live 2025 at /usr/local/texlive/2025, with:

• pdfTeX 1.40.28;
• latexmk 4.86a;
• Biber 2.20;
• ChkTeX 1.7.9.

Other TeX distributions may work when they provide the same LaTeX2e packages, but TeX Live 2025 is the supported and tested baseline for this repository.

Dependencies

The package and repository demo have separate dependency sets. Distribution package names can group several of these LaTeX files together.

Loaded by lanepaper

The seven files in lanepaper/ are one public package and six internal modules. Their required LaTeX packages are:

amsmath amssymb array booktabs caption enumitem etoolbox fancyhdr footmisc
fontenc geometry graphicx iftex inputenc mathalfa microtype newpxmath
textcomp tgpagella titlesec xcolor zi4

The font resources selected through those packages include boondox. It is easy to miss in a package-load grep because lnpfonts.sty selects it through the values of \RequirePackage[cal=boondoxo,bb=boondox,frak=boondox]{mathalfa}. The distribution package may be named mathalpha even though the LaTeX load name is mathalfa.

Added by the demo

The curated demo owns these document-level packages:

babel babel-english biblatex cleveref csquotes hyperref

babel-english is also easy to miss in a package-load grep. It is selected by \usepackage[english]{babel} in demo/preamble.tex and provides the English language definition. The demo's bibliography configuration requires the Biber executable.

Tools for the repository workflow

The build and test gates additionally require:

• make;
• Python 3 with pytest;
• latexmk, pdflatex, and Biber;
• ChkTeX for make lint;
• Git for obtaining the repository.

On TeX Live or MacTeX, install missing LaTeX dependencies with tlmgr. For example, the distribution names corresponding to the package set include latex, amsmath, amsfonts, tools, graphics, booktabs, boondox, caption, enumitem, etoolbox, fancyhdr, footmisc, geometry, iftex, mathalpha, microtype, newpx, tex-gyre, titlesec, xcolor, inconsolata, babel, babel-english, biblatex, cleveref, csquotes, hyperref, and biber. Use the package manager's current name when a distribution bundles or renames one of these files.

Document ownership

The package deliberately does not load every package a paper might need. Load these in the document when their features are wanted:

Need	Document-owned package or structure
Bibliography	biblatex and Biber, or another explicitly chosen backend
Language and hyphenation	babel with the language definitions required by the paper
Hyperlinks	hyperref
Smart cross-references	cleveref
Table notes	threeparttable
Wide-page rotation	pdflscape and its standard landscape environment
Appendices	Standard \appendix and ordinary sectioning

This boundary keeps \usepackage{lanepaper} predictable and avoids making a typography package own document policy. See CONVENTIONS.md for the configure-if-loaded rule and MIGRATION.md for v2 replacements.

Typography guidance

Use standard LaTeX structures in the paper:

\begin{quote}
  A quotation can change the measure without changing the document model.
\end{quote}

\begin{table}[tbp]
  \caption{A table caption belongs above the table.}
  \centering
  \begin{tabular}{@{}lr@{}}
    \toprule
    Measure & Value \\
    \midrule
    Example & 1.0 \\
    \bottomrule
  \end{tabular}
\end{table}

\begin{figure}[tbp]
  \centering
  \includegraphics[width=.7\textwidth]{figures/example}
  \caption{A figure caption belongs below the figure.}
\end{figure}

Tables use booktabs rules without vertical lines. Figures use standard figure and \includegraphics. The package also retains the lanepaperfigurenotes environment for a collision-safe note block attached to a figure.

For mathematics, use amsmath environments and standard notation such as \mathbb{R}, \lVert x\rVert, and \DeclareMathOperator. For emphasis and quotations, use standard LaTeX commands and environments. The package's public commands and their signatures are listed in API_REFERENCE.md; private \lnp@... names are not a document interface.

Repository layout

lanepaper/              package entry point and internal modules
demo/                   curated visual showcase and its bibliography
tests/                  pytest contracts and LaTeX fixture harness
API_REFERENCE.md        retained v3 API
MIGRATION.md            v2-to-v3 replacement guide

The demo is the visual proof of the package. The test layout and accepted warnings are documented in tests/README.md.

Troubleshooting

Start with TROUBLESHOOTING.md. In particular, if Biber exits with status 2 and an empty error log, search for Unicode::UCD: failed to find unicore/version; the guide documents the macOS PAR-cache repair.

For a v2 paper that fails after loading v3, read MIGRATION.md before adding packages or redefining commands.

Contributing

Run the same three gates used by CI:

make lint
make build
make test

Package code follows CONVENTIONS.md. Document-source style and the ownership boundary are in CONTRIBUTING.md. Do not run the CTAN build while the maintainer's CTAN hold is active.

Licensing

The files in lanepaper/ are licensed under LPPL 1.3c. The other original repository files are MIT, under licenses/LICENSE-MIT.txt.

The project is not yet a CTAN release. GitHub distribution and a later CTAN publication are separate release steps.