Re: Referring to arbitrary labels?

I would advice against defining a new section command. A references 
should enable the reader to find the reference in the text fairly 
easily. The best reference is of course a page number, which can also 
be achieved by using something like like fullref. I usually do this  in 
a book, when the reference points to a different section. In a paper 
refering to the section and theorem/experiment label alone is more 
appropriate.

Thus I would recommend to use the standard section command. Your 
experiments lead certainly to a main observations or results. This 
result should be stated like a theorem

\begin{thm}
\end{thm}

In addition you have to define in the preamble

\newtheorem{thm}[subsection]{Experiment}

Then this will be printed as

Experiment 3.1. The breath taking result can best be described ....

if the experiment is the first experiment in section 3. This would be 
my recommendation.

You could also define

\newtheorem{thm}{Experiment}

then the experiments would be labeled consecutivley starting with 1 
without any reference to a section number. If there would be a 
bijective relation between experiments and sections, this would be 
identical, but I doubt it, because of the introduction, and you also 
said that some experiments would be stated not as sections. Thus, to be 
consistent you should use the first approach.


Claus


On 18.11.2004, at 15:06, Mohinish Shukla wrote:

> I have a problem that seems 'generic'..(meaning I suppose a similar 
> problem could arise in various contexts)
>
> - I have a series of Experiments in the thesis; I would like to number 
> these Experiment 1, Experiment 2 and so on. They are all sections, but 
> not every section is an Experiment..also, they are spread out across 
> different chapters.
>
> So, I tried
>
> \newcounter{expt}
> \setcounter{expt}{1}
>
> and whenever I have an Experiment (typically a \section), I used
>
> \section{Experiment \arabic{expt}: Experiment name}
> \addtocounter{expt}{1}
>
>
> Works great, except that now I cannot refer back to this particular 
> experiment. I tried:
> \section{Experiment \arabic{expt}: Experiment name\label{expt1}}
>
> but a \ref{expt1} returns, naturally, the section number, and not the 
> experiment number...
>
> so I cannot say ".. in Experiment \ref{expt1}... "
>
> Any ideas/suggestions? I would be most grateful!
>
> Currently I'm naming the experiments by their section number, as:
>
> \section{Experiment \arabic{chapter}.\arabic{section}: Experiment name}
>
> which is not elegant, but is at least consistent..
>
> Thanks for any suggestions!!!
>
> Mohinish
>
> mohinish shukla
> cognitive neuroscience sector
> scuola internazionale superiore di studi avanzati
> via beirut 2-4
> trieste 34014, italy
> +39 040 3787 613 (off)
> +39 040 3787 615 (fax)
>
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