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

[Dean S. Messing]

 :: On Thu, 8 Aug 2002, Dean S. Messing wrote:
 :: 
 :: >     _The Joy of TeX - A Gourmet Guide to Typesetting with
 :: >                   the AMS-TeX Macro Package_.
 :: 
 ::   What a hoot! And it just goes to show that theoretical mathematicians can
 :: have a well developed sense of humor, too.

Here's some Chapter Headings (in order):

  Getting Acquainted
  Learning TeX's Lingo
  Printers Do It With All Types
  Your First TeX Experience
  TeX's Erroneous Zones
  Spaces That Separate, Ties That Bind
  Doing It With Élan
  Lousy Breaks
  The 2nd Level of Complexity
  Our Problems Mount (on fractions of fractions, binomial coeffs, &c.)
  Fascinating Things That Expand By Themselves
  A Roman Orgy  (on including ordinary "roman" type w/in equations)
  Too Much of a Good Thing
  Sophisticated Positions  (on matricies, commutative diagrams)
  Practicing Self Control (on defining control sequenences)
  Ex-Rated Features  (advanced stuff)


 :: > He even formed his own publishing company (based on TeX) to publish
 :: > his five volume work on Differentiable Manifolds.
 :: 
 ::   If I install his differential manifolds on my diesel pickup will I get
 :: better milage and more power from the engine?

Since DM's are useful in "mechanics" (better milage) and essential to General
Relativity (more power), I suppose so.

 :: > 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).
 :: 
 ::   The TUG -- International TeX Users Group -- is headquartered here in
 :: Portland. But, they apparently do nothing but collect annual dues and hold
 :: annual meetings in furin' countries to which I cannot afford to travel. I
 :: wish there was a local users group that met regularly (once a month?). I'd
 :: sure be an active member!

Most of the work occurs, these days, in Europe, and in particular Germany.
Sebastian Rahtz and Frank Mittelbach are the big wizards.  The latter
is one of the designers of the advanced font scheme (NFSS) used in LaTeX.

Fonts have always been _the_ problem with LaTeX.  Knuth designed his own
(computer modern) and made TeX play nicely with them. If you're happy
with CM fonts, life's a breeze with TeX/LaTeX. If not, well ...

This was before commodity software typesetting so people were just
plain happy to have a beautiful typesetting alternative to troff
(yuck).  But being able to use generally available fonts is nearly
impossible in Plain TeX and, until Mittlebach, LaTeX.  Now its
relatively (key word) simple (as I understand) but I've never deviated
from the fonts that come in Tetex (a reasonable selection) and so I
don't know how to import Your Favourate Font and make it work.

But then I don't even know how to get TTF working in KDE, so it's no
surprise.

 :: 
 ::   Perhaps Sharp would sponsor space and coffee?

Fat chance.  I can't get them to supply klenex :-)

 ::   For me, getting the few fonts I need in is the major issue. Heck, I could
 :: do well with Palatino as the body text (already available) and find
 :: something as a header text, but I need Baker Signet as the company logotype.

Get on the TeX mailing list or the newsgroup and ask questions.
They are peopled with gurus who may just deign to help you. 

<snip>
 :: 
 :: > 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.
 :: 
 ::   The LyX web site describes it as WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean).
 :: I've put a lot of LaTeX in the preamble of docs and there's a way (called,
 :: interestingly enough) Evil Red Text (or ERT) to write pure LaTeX in the
 :: midst of your LyX document.
 :: 
 ::   The only real advantages of LyX over LaTeX are, IMO, 1) you don't need to
 :: memorize and type macros, just select them from the pull down menu and 2)
 :: it's just a mouse click to compile and view the dvi output or print a pdf
 :: doc. The full power of LaTeX _is_ available.

I stand corrrected, though if you are reduced to writing straight LaTeX in
the midst of your LyX document, to get all the functionality, then
I might be tempted to argue with you.

As for memorising and typing macros, it "just happens" after a little
while and then you find yourself speeding along just as I'm doing now
in typing this post.  I don't need to think about the individual
letters I'm typing.  I just write.  Same things happens in emacs.  The
initial period of learning is awkward (just as learning to drive a
"standard" tranny truck is awkward, but after three days you don't
even think about it.  But the mouse-clicking menu-binker will be
enslaved to pulling down menus, then pulling down sub-menues, then pulling down
sub-sub-menues, finding entries, and binking on them for the rest of
his life.  All to get \pi into his equation :-)

 ::   A couple of years ago I sold back to Powell's my LaTeX books, except for
 :: one: "LaTeX for Linux" by Bernice Sacks Lipkin. That sits at my desk here.
 :: 
 :: Rich

Maybe that's why you're having so much trouble with fonts :-)
The index of _The LaTeX Companion_ by Goossens, Mittelbach, and Samarin
contains no less than 1.5 pages of entries under "Font, (see also Character)".

I also see in Chapter 7 (Font Selection) sub-headings like:

Introduction to NFSS (New Font Selection Scheme)
Understanding Font Characteristics
Font Families and their Attributes
Encoding Schemes
Using Fonts in Text
Changing the Default Text Fonts
Standard Packages
Providing New Text Fonts
The Low Level Interface
Setting Up New Fonts,

and so on.

But, to be candid, I've not studied this section so I don't know
if  it will help.  Fonts always seem harder (to me) than they should.

By the bye, I'd love to see a nice in-depth tutorial at one of the
PLUG meetings on Fonts (for X, KDE, and or LaTeX).

Dean