# spalign version dated 2016-10-05

The purpose of this package is to decrease the number of keystrokes needed to typeset small amounts of aligned material (matrices, arrays, etc.). For instance, it is inconvenient to type (using the amsmath package)

$\begin{matrix} 1 & 12 & -3 \\ 24 & -2 & 2 \\ 0 & 0 & 1 \end{matrix}$


in a document where several hundred such matrices must be typeset. Of course one can always define a macro \mat which puts its argument inside a matrix environment, but it is still necessary to type the align character & and the end-of-row control sequence \\ many times for each matrix.

This package provides a facility for typesetting matrices, and for using other alignment environments and macros, with spaces as the alignment delimiter and semicolons (by default) as the end-of-row indicator. So the above matrix could be produced using the command:

\spalignmat{1 12 -3; 24 -2 2; 0 0 1}


This package also contains utility macros for typesetting augmented matrices, vectors, arrays, systems of equations, and more, and is easily extendable to other situations that use alignments.

Copyright (C) 2016 by Joseph Rabinoff

This material is subject to the Project Public License v1.3