What software would you use to write this?

Post by imurray » Thu, Dec 24, 2009, 6:26 AM UTC

CyberFonic wrote: post #7

imurray wrote: post #3

Academics from mathematical fields tend to use LaTeX. One way to compile a PDF is with pdflatex, which can import .png, .jpg, and .pdf images. This means you’d need to be able to get your vector images into .pdf format conveniently. This tends to be easy on traditional Unixy systems. I believe on osx too(?). Many theses and textbooks are typeset with LaTeX. I used it for my PhD thesis. Advantages include: a plain tex…

Yes, I use Latex on my Mac Book Pro (Snow Tiger). Works very well.

I was really referring to the ease of making figures in the right format, as the poster made a particular point about including figures.

When I used to use MikTeX on Windows (8 years ago now) saving figures to .eps or .pdf from most applications was possible but a bit tricky. It often involved printing to file with the right postscript driver [1], then fiddling with bounding boxes and running through epstopdf. Most Unix graphics applications produce postscript and/or pdf pretty easily. I think osx with its Qwartz stuff will too.

[1] e.g. Apple Color LW 12/660 PS with "optimized for portability" turned on.

Post by gnosis » Thu, Dec 24, 2009, 7:32 AM UTC

dragoncity wrote: post #6

LaTeX is the 'best' way to go. If you on Linux try the Kile , a excellent gui interface tool to LaTeX which does not impose any special structures onto your project. You are still free to arrange you LaTeX files as you wish. Get yourself a decent intro to LaTeX book, Lamport's is the 'standard' , but other titles are very good as well. LaTeX user guide and reference ( 2nd edition) : Leslie Lamport LaTeX Notes, practi…

I would second this recommendation. Learning enough LaTeX to typeset a whole book effectively will take some doing, but the effort is well worth it.

Apart from dragoncity's recommendations, these are also good places to start:

[edit: rather than clog this thread with a ton of links, I've decided to put them all in to a separate page which you can view here: http://paste.pocoo.org/show/159346/ ]

Re: What software would you use to write this?

Re: What software would you use to write this?