Any TeX-perts out there? (was: Re: [PLUG] Struggling with OpenOffice

AthlonRob AthlonRobNF at cs.com
Thu Aug 8 22:12:02 UTC 2002


On Thu, 2002-08-08 at 14:04, Dean S. Messing wrote:
<snip>
>  :: >From what I've heard, TeX is *the* way to write any kind of technical
>  :: papers.
> 
> It depends on the society.  AMS (American Mathematical Society) is (or
> was, last time I looked) exclusively TeX/LaTeX-based.  They even have
> a version of LaTeX named AMS-LaTeX.  The manifold theorist, Michael
> Spivak, has published a nice book (in the style of Knuth and Lamport)
> for those who want to do Pure Maths Typesetting with "straight"
> TeX. It is called
>
>     _The Joy of TeX - A Gourmet Guide to Typesetting with
>                   the AMS-TeX Macro Package_.
> 
> He even formed his own publishing company (based on TeX) to publish
> his five volume work on Differentiable Manifolds.

Well, I'm hardly publishing papers.  More or less, I'm at the turn in a
report every now and then stage.  :-)
 
> IEEE (my society) allows both .ps files (usually derived from LaTeX)
> and .doc files (written with you-know-who's typesetting software)
> and provides style files and templates for each system.
> 
> MPEG does everything with .doc files.
> 
> I don't know about Physics, Chemistry, or Biology, but I know that
> LaTeX has sophisticated macro packages for the first two that allow
> just about any graphic, e.g. Feynman diagrams, Organic Molecule
> diagrams, to be designed.  There is also a nice Music Typesetting
> package, as well as packages for Chess, Maps, &c.

That's good to know.... now if I do something in TeX, can I later
convert it to pdf, postscript, or (ghasp!) Word?

> Long before Linux and the "free software revolution" there was TeX and
> the army of people writing all kinds of modules for it.  For serious
> users it's a way of life and makes the "cult of emacs" pale in
> comparison. (Well, that may be slight exaggeration).

I never got in to Emacs much.  There is quite a cult following, though,
I've noticed.  "Linux is just the device driver"  "Emacs is a great OS,
but it sucks as an editor"  Although if I include those, I *must*
include "You can't spell eVIl without vi"  :-)

> Be aware that TeX/LaTeX is _not_ a WYSIWYG system, though there are
> Linux packages out that have a WYSIWYG front end.  My (nearly nil)
> knowledge of these is that they are great if you are not trying to do
> anything very sophisticated.  But to get the full power of LaTeX you
> must go to old-fashioned editing.  But it is not bad at all.  I can
> code up a complex mathematical expression in TeX by typing in the
> commands to a file, compiling it, and displaying it just as fast as my
> colleagues can use "Equation Editor" in M$ Word.
> And mine will look like professionally typeset mathematics rather than
> the stuff that my eight grade algebra teacher would print off on the
> school mimeograph machine thirty years ago.  (That's probably another
> slight exaggeration.)

If it helps me get out those darned equations faster than the quite
cumbersome equation editor, I'm sure I'll fall in love with it!  I like
keystrokes when I'm typing a paper, not mouse movements and clicks.

>  :: I haven't used it at all thus far, though.  Slackware has a
>  :: whole seperate diskset for it, for some reason... I've never installed
>  :: it. 
> 
> There are two (or three?) major distributions of TeX/LaTeX.  I can't
> remember the 2nd one but the one I use is called `tetex' and I have
> version 1.0.7 installed.  Of course I simply do: "rpm -Uvh tetex*.rpm"
> and it's installed and ready to use.
> But since you use Slack you may have to compile.  It's not a single binary
> but a whole raft of things.
> 
> In "the old days" compilation was a bear.  It probably isn't any more.
> There are many, many components to a full TeX system including the
> viewers, the translator(s) from .dvi format to .ps, the plethora of
> fonts, and much more.  You need to worry about very little of this if
> you use a tetex sub-system.
> 
> You may wish to look at http://www.ctan.org/ where the CTAN (comprehensive
> TeX Archive Network) is housed. Everything (and a lot more) is there.

I'm sure I'll compile it... but Slackware has a whole diskset of TeX
binaries.

rob:/mnt/cdrom/slackware/t > ls
install-packages  tetex-1.0.7-i386-1.tgz      tetex-doc-1.0.7-i386-1.txt
install.end   tetex-1.0.7-i386-1.txt      transfig-3.2.3d-i386-1.tgz
maketag       tetex-bin-1.0.7-i386-1.tgz  transfig-3.2.3d-i386-1.txt
maketag.ez    tetex-bin-1.0.7-i386-1.txt  xfig-3.2.3d-i386-1.tgz
tagfile       tetex-doc-1.0.7-i386-1.tgz  xfig-3.2.3d-i386-1.txt

Linuxpackages.net likely has additional binaries to go along with
these... they do a pretty good job getting the more professional (ie;
not stuff like xmms) things out there up for download and easy installs.

But that doesn't matter, I'll have to compile it from source,
super-optimizing it as much as it can stand!  I love gcc optimizations. 
Just love 'em!

-- 
Rob
"Google is your friend"





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