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Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

olivierpieters.be

121–130 of 223 posts

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#122
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this need not be the case. When creating this, I wanted it to look good and the way I wanted it. Not make it scream "LaTeX". For a CV, Computer Modern might be more apt since there's also more text on it. But again, why make it scream LaTeX if one can do it more subtle and make it more personal at the same time? Do note that I have a LaTeX PDF style CV as well, but it's not linked in the article (nor availabl…

I edit a genre fiction and we do all our layout in XeTeX. I picked it because it's the right tool for the job, and I don't know PageMaker. The colophon calls attention to it because I think it's helpful to tell others how you made something (typefaces, tools, etc.) rather than for nerd cred. https://www.aliterate.org/aliterate-page47.pdf The typefaces are Minion and Myriad.

PageMaker has been dead software for like 10 years now, fwiw. InDesign is the modern replacement.

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice environment! But...why do justified on a webpage?

Thanks. I think the pages look better when justified. Also, the width is about the same as a typical book, so you don't have to move your eyes much when reading it.

So since this about latex it feels appropriate to point this out. Justified works well when you have auto word hyphenation turned on, and your layouts are fixed. Web doesn't do word hyphenation (I think?), so the words have odd spacing between them, it sort of stands out right away. Justification works in latex because of word breaking, but even then one has to manually fix underfilled or overfilled lines (I.e. by slightly changing word usage). For web content where you have less control over these things (as opposed to printing for a fixed layout via PDF), ragged right often works better.

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you were downvoted. Most of the academics I know hate it. They use it because certain journals require it, or their advisor makes them use it.

I use TeX. LaTeX also works, but the books are longer and less well written than Knuth's original TeXBook ! :-)! I love TeX -- it's one of my favorite and most important tools. I have a Ph.D. in applied math, and IMHO TeX (or LaTeX) is just essential, call that more than ESSENTIAL for my work. E.g., now I'm a "solo founder" of a startup, a Web site. The crucial core of the work is some original applied math I derived…

If it doesn't compromise your work, can you speak more of the path you took from a Ph.D. to startups/tech, and how your research allowed you to go down that path?

I'm a Ph.D. student in applied math as well, currently.

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#125
post #4

Serious question: Is LaTeX used outside academia these days?

Well, this was in academia and it was a long time ago, but when I was in college at the turn of the century I used it. Once I noticed that the exact same paper got a whole extra grade in LaTeX, I never went back to word processors.

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#126
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, even in academia people hate it =\

I'm not sure why you were downvoted. Most of the academics I know hate it. They use it because certain journals require it, or their advisor makes them use it.

> They use it because certain journals require it, or their advisor makes them use it.

I think that's one of the jobs of an advisor: to encourage his students to strive to be better and do better.

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#127

If you're going to go through all the trouble of typesetting a business card in LaTeX, you really ought to use Computer Modern Roman so that folks know you typeset it in LaTeX. (Related; resumes in CMR always have +10 credibility.)

I'll take the opposing view.

When I see a resume in CMR I get the signal that the applicant still has their head in academia. That can be good or bad, in my particular field it's not that great.

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I think the pages look better when justified. Also, the width is about the same as a typical book, so you don't have to move your eyes much when reading it.

So since this about latex it feels appropriate to point this out. Justified works well when you have auto word hyphenation turned on, and your layouts are fixed. Web doesn't do word hyphenation (I think?), so the words have odd spacing between them, it sort of stands out right away. Justification works in latex because of word breaking, but even then one has to manually fix underfilled or overfilled lines (I.e. by sl…

So when there are large gaps between the words on a line, I should experiment with manual hyphenation until it looks better?

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computer Modern is now one of the most overused typefaces on the planet. It looks great for that “Victorian-era American-style math paper” look. People should mostly avoid it otherwise, IMO. There are plenty of better alternatives for typesetting pretty mathematics. * * * More generally about the thread here, TeX is not a productive or effective tool for making business cards or other heavily graphical documents. The…

Compared to Times New Roman? Arial/Helvetica? Calibri? Comic Sans and Papyrus? I'd hardly put Computer Modern in anywhere near the same category.

You managed to name a bunch of typefaces which are even less suitable for tasks where someone might use Computer Modern (Times is comparable). I’m not sure what that proves....

Instead of Calibri, the Microsoft-provided typeface to use for mathematics is Cambria, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambria_(typeface)#Cambria_Mat...

Personally I like Minion, http://www.typoma.com/en/fonts.html

Or combining some kind of Renaissance-style typeface with AMS Euler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMS_Euler

Or Lucida Math, https://tug.org/store/lucida/opentype.html

If you prefer Times, try MathTime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MathTime TM Math http://www.micropress-inc.com/fonts/tmmath/tmmain.htm or STIX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STIX_Fonts_project

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So since this about latex it feels appropriate to point this out. Justified works well when you have auto word hyphenation turned on, and your layouts are fixed. Web doesn't do word hyphenation (I think?), so the words have odd spacing between them, it sort of stands out right away. Justification works in latex because of word breaking, but even then one has to manually fix underfilled or overfilled lines (I.e. by sl…

So when there are large gaps between the words on a line, I should experiment with manual hyphenation until it looks better?

CSS3 has automatic hyphenation (hyphens: auto) which you can tweak with manual soft-hyphens (­), and there are client-side hyphenators (Hyphenator.js, Hypher) available as fallbacks.
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