Probably not for your thesis, but nevertheless worth checking out: Hanno Rein wrote the LaTeX Coffee Stains package which adds beautiful coffee stains to documents.
Usage (coffee4)
\usepackage{coffee4} ... \cofeAm{alpha}{scale}{angle}{xoff}{yoff} \cofeBm{alpha}{scale}{angle}{xoff}{yoff} \cofeCm{alpha}{scale}{angle}{xoff}{yoff} \cofeDm{alpha}{scale}{angle}{xoff}{yoff}
Stains
cofeAm
: 270° circle stain (see example above)cofeBm
: 60° circle staincofeCm
: two splashes, light colorcofeDm
: colorful twin splash (see example below)
Parameters
alpha
: transparency factor [0,1]scale
: scale factor (default: 1)angle
: angle in degreesxoff
: horizontal placementyoff
: vertical placement
Some sample code
\documentclass{article} \usepackage{blindtext} \usepackage{coffee4} \begin{document} \cofeAm{1}{1}{90}{5.5cm}{5.5cm} \Blindtext \cofeDm{0.5}{0.2}{0}{3cm}{3cm} \blindtext \end{document}
I had to typeset the document twice for the stains to appear. Also, drawing the stains may take a few seconds.
Check out the website for more details and the latest version of the package. The version used to generate the examples above can be downloaded here (coffee4). Coffee4 works with pdfLaTeX and provides more flexibility in terms of size of the stains and placement.
Guillaume Belanger
That’s really great for a little fun with LaTeX. Why can’t the Tex Live Utility find the package coffee4?
tom
I totally agree. The package is not (yet) part of the main distribution. But you can always manually install additional packages.
Cheers, Tom.
Karl Berry
more fun with coffee (not tex related, sorry): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZigVLW09YY
as for the package, if it’s on ctan and released under a free software license, it’ll make its way into TL in another week or two, after the release freeze is over.
k
tom
Thanks for the link and the clarification. Best, tom.
Jose
I can’t get the pdf since I get the error:
! Illegal unit of measure (pt inserted).
/
l.18 \cofeAm{1}{1.0}{0}{5.5cm}{3cm}
I use TexShop on Mac OS X.
Any suggestion?
Thanks, Jose.
tom
It would help if you provided a few lines of code to illustrated what you are doing and for me to reproduce the issue. Thanks, Tom.
suvayu
This would be perfect for a draft copy! Love it. 🙂
tom
Thanks! Tom.
Gilles
There seems to be a complication for me. The Xoff and Yoff rotate with the angle…
If angle is 0, Xoff is horizontal and Yoff is vertical
But if the angle is 90, they turn accordingly…
tom
You are right, thanks for pointing this out. Here is an example where the stains coincide after rotation and translation in different directions.