[Discuss] TeX Resources?

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2007-07-19 12:13-0700 Adam Parkin wrote:

> Since I'm now starting to reach the point in my graduate studies where I 
> actually have to start doing some work on my thesis I have of course been 
> "encouraged" to become familiar with the TeX typesetting system.
>
> Just was looking for a few favourite resources any of you have on TeX, LaTeX, 
> etc, particularly those geared towards writing academic documents.  I've of 
> course found a few myself already by using my GooFu, but figured there's more 
> than a few TeXGuru's on here and was wondering if there's any wisdom to be 
> imparted upon a TeXN00b like myself. :)

TeX is probably too low level for your needs so go with LaTeX (which is just
a convenient front-end to TeX) or even something higher level such as a
DocBook front-end to LaTeX itself.  For example, if you write your document in
DocBook, you can generate all kinds of document formats (including LaTeX and
html) using various DocBook back ends.  In addition to the multi-format
document advantage, DocBook is an XML language (with all the XML advantages
that pertain), and DocBook also forces you to write logical mark up (e.g., a
DocBook command to insure a particular word is emphasized) and leaves the
detailed typesetting to implement the DocBook commands to the expert back
ends. You can also do logical markup with LaTeX, but if you don't use a good
LaTeX package, it is easy for newbies to start wasting their time with
detailed typesetting that is best left to expert software.

For myself, I use LaTeX to write my scientific papers.  I use the AASTeX
LaTeX package to insure I always do logical markup that makes sense in an
astrophysical context.  I am virtually positive there will be some
equivalent of AASTeX that is suitable in a computer science context.
However, if I were starting over I would take a good long look at the
DocBook possibility because of its tremendous potential advantages over
the pure LaTeX approach.

Alan
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Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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