[PLUG] Visio on Linux?

Rich Shepard rshepard at appl-ecosys.com
Wed Jan 18 18:21:44 UTC 2006


On Wed, 18 Jan 2006, John Jordan wrote:

> Yes, I certainly have considered that. The problem is positioning the
> graphics. In a word processor you have to "anchor" the graphic to
> something. Your choices are "page," "paragraph," "character," or "as a
> character." (In OO.o, anyway -- I abandoned Word a long time ago.)

John,

   Two comments:

   1.) A smart page layout/typesetting application will adjust the position of
a figure or table based on typographic conventions. Go with the flow instead
of fighting it. If you put a cross-reference in the text, and a label on the
figure or table, then readers can find the appropriate reference easily
enough.

   Your extensive descriptions and anguish over exact placements,
requirements, and so on makes it appear to us naive folks that tweaking
details is more important to you than focusing on content and effective
communications to your reader(s).

   2.) Take 30 minutes to do the LyX tutorial (1.3.7 was just released).
You'll be immediately productive. Do your figures in whatever application you
want, save (or convert them) to .eps or .pdf, then use Insert->Float->Figures
to place them in the text. Let TeX find the best spot for them. You can add a
label in front of the caption and place a cross-reference in the text.

   The benefits are that you focus on the content and end up with beautifully
typeset output. The downside is that you spend a bit of time learning it. LyX
has the shortest learning curve of any application I've used. Once you get
into it, you'll learn LaTeX as you need it to do specific things.

Rich

-- 
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.               |   Author of "Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic"
<http://www.appl-ecosys.com>     Voice: 503-667-4517         Fax: 503-667-8863



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