LaTex Annoyances

I really like LaTex. I much prefer to typset my papers, rather than manufacture them in word. But every once in a while, I find little things that make using LaTex a PITA.

For example, in my document, I have text that often needs to be repeated. For example, I need the title on the titlepage (duh), the copyright page, the signature page and etc... Same goes for actor. I spent countless hours searching how to extract data from the built in variables initialized via the standard \author and \title calls. I even emailed my old mentor in all things LaTex and he also had no clue.

So I decided to fake it:

\newcommand{\printtitle}{Title of My Paper}

Now wherever I need to put title, I just use \printtitle and I'm done. This is not a perfect solution, but it works. At least as long as you don't start nesting functions. For example if you do:

\uppercase{\printtitle}

You get lowercase letters. Why? Latex does not have a proper stack, and so nesting functions may or may not work depending on circumstances. At least that's what I have been told.

This is annoying as shit. Anyone knows the proper way to do this? I know that the answer must be locked up somewhere deap within article.cls which includes the implementation of the \maketitle call. But for the life of me, I can't decipher how to extract title and author from there.

Tags: latex, programming, typesetting, school