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I have been using LaTeX for quite some time but never on a daily basis. As I've used it to write many different documents I came across many useful packages but I have trouble keeping track with all of them.

Do you have any suggestions on how to keep a record of the LaTeX packages that you have already used along with a brief description of their functionality? It would be nice if the solution included using a single file or a web service.

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4  
How about taking notes? That could very well be a simple text file... – clemens Jun 27 '12 at 16:54
1  
en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Packages#Packages_list math.kangwon.ac.kr/~yhpark/tex/packages.html maintain a blogpost for latex packages in wordpress – texenthusiast Jun 27 '12 at 16:55
    
The problem with this is that I have little clue on what I used from each package, (mainly the exact command and the visual effect) – Evangelos Bempelis Jun 27 '12 at 16:59
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Well, if you don't know - who else could know which packages you've used what for? Maybe What packages do people load by default in LaTeX? is helpful? – clemens Jun 27 '12 at 20:05
up vote 6 down vote accepted

May I suggest organizing your preamble by grouping related packages and commenting liberally? This response to Best practices on organizing your preamble can be extended to keep a dummy master preamble file where you can archive all the packages you have ever used, in neat categories, with brief descriptions of their functionality. Of course, you wouldn't want to use this file as your actual master preamble, because it will change all the time, but you can pick and choose the packages you need from it and use them in your documents.

Also, texdoc <package name> on the command line will pull up the package's documentation, if you need more help on using a specific package. See the texdoc quickguide for more information.

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This is something that I consider doing - having a dummy master. My additional question (might be going a bit astray) here is that is it possible to use conflicting packages in the same file? for instance different packages for header styles that are applied in different parts of the document? – Evangelos Bempelis Jun 28 '12 at 8:35
1  
For the specific example you pose, about having different header styles in different parts of the documents, take a look at tex.stackexchange.com/q/37574/3731 for instructions on how to accomplish that with fancyhdr. For other packages that deal with headers, tex.stackexchange.com/q/1247/3731 offers a few suggestions. Regarding your additional question, tex.stackexchange.com/a/18550/3731 also gives a good suggestion for the general case. If you have something specific in mind, you should post a new question with a MWE. It helps others find a lot easier. – Ricardo Jun 29 '12 at 3:03

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