LaTeX Document Template for Landscape Multi-Column Layouts

The following LaTeX source defines a compact landscape document with three columns, reduced section spacing, and no header or footer. It is well suited to cheat sheets and dense reference material.

Document Setup and Packages

\documentclass[10pt,landscape]{article}
\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage{calc}
\usepackage{ifthen}
\usepackage[landscape]{geometry}
\usepackage{amsmath,amsthm,amsfonts,amssymb}
\usepackage{color,graphicx,overpic}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\pdfinfo{
  /Title (example.pdf)
  /Creator (TeX)
  /Producer (pdfTeX 1.40.0)
  /Author (Seamus)
  /Subject (Example)
  /Keywords (pdflatex, latex, pdftex, tex)}

This sets page margins to 0.5 inch when using letter paper, and to 1 cm when using A4 paper. For other paper sizes, the default 1 cm margins are used. The header and footer are turned off.

\ifthenelse{\lengthtest{\paperwidth=11in}}{\geometry{top=.5in,left=.5in,right=.5in,bottom=.5in}}{\ifthenelse{\lengthtest{\paperwidth=297mm}}{\geometry{top=1cm,left=1cm,right=1cm,bottom=1cm}}{\geometry{top=1cm,left=1cm,right=1cm,bottom=1cm}}}
\pagestyle{empty}

Section Formatting

The section commands are redefined to use less vertical space:

\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\section}{\@startsection{section}{1}{0mm}{-1ex plus -.5ex minus -.2ex}{0.5ex plus .2ex}{\normalfont\large\bfseries}}
\renewcommand{\subsection}{\@startsection{subsection}{2}{0mm}{-1ex plus -.5ex minus -.2ex}{0.5ex plus .2ex}{\normalfont\normalsize\bfseries}}
\renewcommand{\subsubsection}{\@startsection{subsubsection}{3}{0mm}{-1ex plus -.5ex minus -.2ex}{1ex plus .2ex}{\normalfont\small\bfseries}}
\makeatother

Section numbers are suppressed, paragraph indentation is removed, and a custom \BibTeX logo is defined.

\def\BibTeX{{\rm B\kern-.05em{\sc i\kern-.025em b}\kern-.08em T\kern-.1667em\lower.7ex\hbox{E}\kern-.125em X}}
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{0}
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}
\setlength{\parskip}{0pt plus 0.5ex}
\newtheorem{example}[section]{Example}

Body Content

\begin{document}
\raggedright\footnotesize
\begin{multicols}{3}
\setlength{\columnseprule}{0.25pt}
\setlength{\premulticols}{1pt}
\setlength{\postmulticols}{1pt}
\setlength{\multicolsep}{1pt}
\setlength{\columnsep}{2pt}
\begin{center}
\Large{\underline{Title}}\\
\end{center}
\section{Section 1}
Text
\subsection{xCode}
Subsection text
\section{Section 2}
Text 2
\section{Section 3}
Etc.
% You can even have references
\rule{0.3\linewidth}{0.25pt}
\scriptsize
\bibliographystyle{abstract}
\bibliography{refFile}
\end{multicols}
\end{document}