Re: For The Typesetting Geeks

[David Auerbach auerbach@xxxxxxxx]

I'm pretty sure that every math, logic and computer science journal is typeset from LaTex. Those who write for those journals know how to (must know how to) write directly in LaTex (at least the simple mark-up portion of it). There are front-ends to make some things easier and what amount to canned style-sets. Googling with get you its history and more details (keyword: Knuth)
 It makes typesetting equations, integrals, matrices, tree-structures, etc. trivial or near trivial.
(for an extreme example Google: LaTex Begriffsschrift)

Here's a real-life minor example. Someone has made available a very good free logic text. The PDF
is available, but so is the LaTex version. That's handy because the author produced the PDF using
one set of standard logic symbols (⊃, ∧, (x)...) whereas I use another (→,
&, ∀). No problem, a simple change to the prefix at the top of the file and we're done.




David Auerbach                           auerbach@xxxxxxxx
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
NCSU
Raleigh, NC 27695-8103

On Aug 16, 2010, at 9:54 AM,  wrote:

> Hi Kari,
>
> I've never used LaTex, and I don't know all that much about it, but I'd
> imagine it holds some of the same charms for its users as XyWrite does
> for us.
>
> It's non-GUI, text-centric, and very powerful. But while XyWrite is a
> word processor, LaTex is a composition engine; you markup (extensively)
> your text and run it through the composer app and out comes a formatted
> document. It outputs to PDF or DVI (which I've never heard of).
>
> That's about all I know (and probably half of that is wrong).
>
> -B
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Kari Eveli
>
> Brian,
>
> I certainly belong to the typesetting geek crowd having worked a lot
> with customized fonts and professional typography. I have never used
> LaTeX, so please elaborate a bit. How do you go about to typeset a text
> with it? And, more importantly, why would one choose LaTeX over InDesign
> or Quark? OK, it is free. but besides that...
>
> Best regards,
>
> Kari Eveli
> LEXITEC Book Publishing (Finland)
> lexitec@xxxxxxxx
>
> *** Lexitec Online ***
> English summary of our services: http://www.lexitec.fi/sitesummary.html
> FileOpen-based ebook packaging and support:
> http://www.lexitec.fi/fileopen.html
> Acrobat Reader Treasure Trove: http://www.lexitec.fi/acrobat-reader.html
> English-Finnish-English Computer Terms:
> http://www.lexitec.fi/glossary.html
> XyWrite Utilities: http://www.lexitec.fi/xywrite/utility.html
> Home page (in Finnish): http://www.lexitec.fi/
>
>