Most useful additions in KOMA-Script?
Unlike memoir, the KOMA-Script-classes do not add the functionality of dozens of packages to the LaTeX core - but the KOMA-additions are useful and extremely easy to handle. Roughly in order of the documentation:
- Customizable type area with default values that also (contrary to the standard classes) work well for letter- and A4-paper,
- Support for arbitrarily chosen font sizes (e.g. 10.5pt),
- Ability to change font size mid-document,
- Customization of the font attributes of many document elements,
- Enhanced
\maketitlefeatures (e.g.\subtitle), \addpart,\addchap, and\addseccommands producing unnumbered parts, chapters, and sections that are nevertheless included in the table of contents,- Options to include the bibliography, the index etc. in the table of contents,
parskipoption that is more powerful than the package of the same name,- Configurable footnotes (including some features of the footmisc package),
- Option
open=leftto always start chapters on left pages, - Consistent formatting of every "listofsomething" (e.g. "chapter gaps" in the "List of Listings"),
- Lots of little things.
KOMA-Script brings even more than extended classes: it offers packages to allow other classes to benefit from its features.
Here are some of them:
typeareaprovides automatic calculation of layout dimensions according to classical typography,scrlayer-scrpage(scrpage2is superseded) is a feature-rich replacement for fancyhdr,scrextendbrings various KOMA-features together with non-KOMA classes,scrlfilehelps managing package dependencies,tocbasicmanages table of contents and lists of tables and figures and so on,tocstylehelps with formatting table of contents and lists of floats.
In addition to what has already been mentioned the KOMA bundle provides the letter class scrlttr2 which is a huge improvement over the standard letter class. scrlttr2 is both easy to configure and has a lot of features including the option of generating letters from address lists.