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+<head>
+<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label minxampl</title>
+</head><body>
+<h3>How to make a &ldquo;minimum example&rdquo;</h3>
+<p/><a href="FAQ-askquestion.html">Our advice on asking questions</a>
+suggests that you prepare a &ldquo;minimum example&rdquo; (also commonly known
+as a &ldquo;<em>minimal</em> example&rdquo;) of failing behaviour,
+as a sample to post with your question. If you have a problem in a
+two hundred page document, it may be unclear how to proceed from this
+problem to a succinct demonstration of your problem.
+<p/>There are two valid approaches to this task: building up, and hacking
+down.
+<p/>
+<b><em>Building up</em></b> starts
+with a basic document structure
+(for LaTeX, this would have <code>\</code><code>documentclass</code>,
+<code>\</code><code>begin{document}</code>, <code>\</code><code>end{document}</code>) and adds
+things. First to add is a paragraph or so around the actual point
+where the problem occurs. (It may prove difficult to find the actual
+line that&rsquo;s provoking the problem. If the original problem is an
+error, reviewing
+<a href="FAQ-errstruct.html">&ldquo;the structure of TeX errors&rdquo;</a>
+may help.)
+<p/>Note that there are things that can go wrong in one part of the
+document as a result of something in another part: the commonest is
+problems in the table of contents (from something in a section title,
+or whatever), or the list of &lt;<i>something</i>&gt; (from something in a
+<code>\</code><code>caption</code>). In such a case, include the section title or caption
+(the caption probably needs the <code>figure</code> or
+<code>table</code> environment around it, but it <em>doesn&rsquo;t</em> need
+the figure or table itself).
+<p/>If this file you&rsquo;ve built up shows the problem already, then you&rsquo;re done.
+Otherwise, try adding packages; the optimum is a file with only one
+package in it, but you may find that the guilty package won&rsquo;t even load
+properly unless another package has been loaded. (Another common case
+is that package <i>A</i> only fails when package <i>B</i> has been
+loaded.)
+<p/>
+<b><em>Hacking down</em></b> starts
+with your entire document, and
+removes bits until the file no longer fails (and then of course
+restores the last thing removed). Don&rsquo;t forget to hack out any
+unnecessary packages, but mostly, the difficulty is choosing what to
+hack out of the body of the document; this is the mirror of the
+problem above, in the &ldquo;building up&rdquo; route.
+<p/>If you&rsquo;ve added a package (or more than one), add <code>\</code><code>listfiles</code> to
+the preamble too: that way, LaTeX will produce a list of the
+packages you&rsquo;ve used and their version numbers. This information may
+be useful evidence for people trying to help you.
+<p/>What if your document simply doesn&rsquo;t fail in any of these cut-down
+scenarios? Whatever you do, don&rsquo;t post the whole of the document: if
+you can, it may be useful to make a copy available on the web
+somewhere: people will probably understand if it&rsquo;s impossible ...
+or inadvisable, in the case of something confidential.
+<p/>If the whole document is necessary, it could be that it&rsquo;s an overflow
+of some sort; the best you can do is to post the code &ldquo;around&rdquo; the
+error, and (of course) the full text of the error.
+<p/>It may seem that all this work is rather excessive for preparing a
+simple post. There are two responses to that, both based on the
+relative inefficiency of asking a question on the internet.
+<p/>First, preparing a minimum document very often leads <em>you</em> to the
+answer, without all the fuss of posting and looking for responses.
+<p/>Second, your prime aim is to get an answer as quickly as possible; a
+well-prepared example stands a good chance of attracting an answer
+&ldquo;in a single pass&rdquo;: if the person replying to your post finds she
+needs more information, you have to find that request, post again, and
+wait for your benefactor to produce a second response.
+<p/>All things considered, a good example file can save you a day, for
+perhaps half an hour&rsquo;s effort invested.
+<p/>The above advice, differently phrased, may also be read on the web at
+<a href="http://www.minimalbeispiel.de/mini-en.html">http://www.minimalbeispiel.de/mini-en.html</a>; source of that
+article may be found at <a href="http://www.minimalbeispiel.de/">http://www.minimalbeispiel.de/</a>, in
+both German and English.
+<p/><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=minxampl">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=minxampl</a>
+</body>