Available in a git repository.
Repository: problempack
Browsable repository: problempack
Author: W. Trevor King

I've put together a LaTeX package problempack to make it easier to write up problem sets with solutions for the classes I TA.

problempack.sty

The package takes care of a few details:

  • Make it easy to compile one pdf with only the problems and another pdf with problems and solutions.
  • Define nicely typeset environments for automatically or manually numbered problems.
  • Save retyping a few of the parameters (course title, class title, etc), that show up in the note title and also need to go out to pdftitle and pdfsubject.
  • Change the page layout to minimize margins (saves paper on printing).
  • Set the spacing between problems (e.g. to tweak output to a single page, versions >= 0.2).
  • Add section level entries to the table-of-contents and hyperref bookmarks (versions >= 0.3).

The basic idea is to make it easy to write up notes. Just install problempack.sty in your texmf tree, and then use it like I do in the example included in the package. The example produces a simple problem set (probs.pdf) and solution notes (sols.pdf).

For a real world example, look at my Phys 102 notes with and without solutions (source). Other notes produced in this fashion: Phys201 winter 2009, Phys201 spring 2009, and Phys102 summer 2009.

wtk_cmmds.sty

A related package that defines some useful physics macros (\U, \E, \dg, \vect, \ihat, ...) is my wtk_cmmds.sty. This used to be a part of problempack.sty, but the commands are less general, so I split them out into their own package.

wtk_format.sty

The final package in the problempack repository is wtk_format.sty, which adjusts the default LaTeX margins to pack more content into a single page.