LaTeX: KOMA-Script

KOMA-Script is a LaTeX package that introduces modern updates to the classic document classes that LaTeX uses by default. Not only are the styles in the old document classes outdated, they are also set for the letter paper size. The letter paper size is used only in the USA, with the rest of the world having moved on to the ISO A4 size a long time ago. The KOMA-Script layout is noticeably larger, using more of the space in the A4 paper size. The size comparison of the default LaTeX document class with that of KOMA-Script can be seen in the figure above. KOMA-Script also uses a different set of fonts for these document classes, which in my opinion looks fresher.

Using KOMA-Script for your LaTeX documents is very easy. First, download and install the koma-script package. Next, replace the standard document classes (article, book, letter, report) with those provided by KOMA-Script (scrartcl, scrbook, scrlttr2, scrreprt). That is it! 😊

Wondering why the document class names have a prefix of scr? KOMA-Script is the successor of an older package which was named Script, which introduced the scr prefix.

If you are using TeX Live (in Ubuntu for example), KOMA-Script can be found in the texlive-latex-recommended package.

(Via Top 10 LaTeX Modules by Nico Schlömer)