LaTeX \subsubsubsection

This small article will present my workaround for the problem of defining a "\subsubsubsection" command in LaTeX, so that the properties of the formatting, environment and also the generation of the table of contents stays the same as in the case of "\subsection", but also the new level of hierarchy is added to the document.

I have tried to follow some of the proposed solutions on the internet, but I failed to achieve the result, some of them are here, here.

For example:

1. Section

1.1 Subsection

1.1.1 Subsubsection

1.1.1.1 Subsubsubsection


I consider it a "hack", as amazingly for me, the combination below delivered the desired result.

The snippet of the code follows:
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%to be inserted in the main file %
%the \mypar command makes the 3-folded subsectioning :) %
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\newcommand{\mypar}{\subsubparagraph}

\makeatletter

\renewcommand\mypar{\@startsection{paragraph}{4}{0ex}{-3.25ex plus -1ex minus -0.2ex}{1.5ex plus 0.2ex}{\normalfont\normalsize\bfseries}}
\makeatother
\stepcounter{secnumdepth}
\stepcounter{tocdepth}

\renewcommand{\paragraph}{\subparagraph}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Notice the triple use of the \renewcommand.

In the first line I create a new command \mypar which makes it act as a \subsubparagraph. Later on the \renewcommand applied to it redefines the environment properties and also sets the table of contents generation parameters, based on the \paragraph environment settings.

At the very last line, the surprising \renewcommand applied to \paragraph makes the previous lines work as desired.

Comments concerning the explanation of these facts are welcome, as I had not yet the chance to dive deeper into the underlying sty, and source files of the LaTeX packages, nor am an expert in style programming.

Nevertheless, I consider it useful for someone like me in the need of this functionality to have this hack in the hands :)

Mind Mapping Software

Well, I have been inspired by a training video conducting by the famous Allen David GTD concept creator. I have realised that even if I am far from having the tasks and responsibilities of a CEO or related I still miss the techniques of achieving all my goals and solving all the current and future challenges in a more systematic, predictable and rather pleasant way.

I have been convinced to try to research more about GTD, and related software.
As I am still a student and not part of an corporate environment, the targets were open-source or free ware. After a lot of trials I chise the following:

FreeMind, The official page can be accessed here.

2D mind mapping tool which has really handy shortcuts and nice user interface.
The format used to store the map data is a simple xml-like format which can be even hardcoded manually of using a script language like Python to perform fancy data imports/exports.

A quick look at the screenshots and the demo video would give an impression of it.

For the ones who prefer visualizing the map in 3D, the student edition of the Topicscape provides the import feature from .mm files used in FreeMind.

Another tool which can be easily integrated with FreeMind is RemembertheMilk platform which can be used both online/offline so that to integrate the tasks/actions methods from the GTD.

For now I will use these and in case I find something new I will return to complete this post.

I highly recommend to everyone the books of Allen David, as it might be that your life could be much easier and more fun than it is now:)