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Sorry to start a subjective question, but want to understand "own.sty" file.

Other than all \usepackage{} what sort of other commands can be added to the makeyourown.sty file. Can you include \let command, and \newcommands in it.

What sort of precaution / structure newbies should follow.

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@Stefan: Thanks for the retag. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I tagged this with {documentclass}... –  Caramdir Jan 11 '11 at 22:28
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up vote 20 down vote accepted

Here is a skeleton for an own package:

% this is my first package
% (c) Buffalo Bill
%% of the LaTeX Project Public License Distributed from CTAN archives
%% in directory macros/latex/base/lppl.txt.
  [2011/01/11 v0.01 LaTeX package for my own purpose]

\RequirePackage{whateverwe need}
\def\hi{Hello, this is my own package}
\newcommand\GoodBye[1][\bfseries]{{#1Good Bye}}

%% End of file `mypackage.sty'.
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And use \RequirePackage instead of \usepackage. –  Juan A. Navarro Jan 12 '11 at 12:29
@Juan- I am just curious to know why you asked me to use \RequirePackage instead of \usepackage. Whats the difference. Sorry for coming back to the post this late. –  Aku Jan 21 '11 at 1:14
The difference is that usepackage doesn't work and LaTeX provides the command RequirePackage, which loads all the required packages when the newly written style file is loaded in a document. –  gns-ank Feb 23 '13 at 20:44
@gns-ank: why should \usepackage not work? –  Herbert Feb 25 '13 at 15:57
Maybe it does, I have not tried it, I just used RequirePackage always as it was suggested in Leslie Lamport's book LaTeX. I can not remember the real reason now. I found another question on stackexchange: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/19919/… –  gns-ank Feb 26 '13 at 20:03
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Package files are just input literally, so you can use any command that you can use in document files. Most often it makes sense to include a small amount of identification metadata, to support options, etc.; see clsguide.pdf (texdoc clsguide) for a good introduction.

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