Chapter Summary

Chapter Summary

Key Points

• 1.

  Match figure fonts to document fonts. Use text.usetex=True with the same LaTeX preamble as your paper. For perfect integration, use the PGF backend and \input{figure.pgf}. Always use raw strings (r'...') for LaTeX commands.

• 2.

  Auto-generate all tables from data. Use pandas.to_latex() for DataFrames and tabulate with tablefmt='latex_booktabs' for professional rules. Never hand-type a results table — generate it from CSV/HDF5 with a script.

• 3.

  Separate simulation, visualization, and document. Simulation scripts produce raw data (CSV). Figure scripts read data and produce PDFs. LaTeX includes the PDFs. A Makefile orchestrates the pipeline and tracks dependencies.

• 4.

  Script every figure. Each figure should be reproducible by running python plot_figN.py. Use a batch script or Makefile to generate all figures with make figures. This satisfies reproducibility requirements from IEEE and other publishers.

• 5.

  Use pathlib for portable paths. Never hardcode absolute paths. Use Path(__file__).parent for relative paths that work on any machine.