[ILUG] LaTeX training

[Brian Foster]

  | Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 11:33:56 +0000
  | From: Andrew McCarthy <andrewmc-ilug at celt.dias.ie>
  | 
  | On Thu, Nov 30, 2006 at 11:02:54AM +0000, Cian Davis wrote:
  | <snipped a little>
  | > Bear in mind that theses take over 6 months to write up.
  | 
  |[ ... ]  I really think people don't realise how much time
  | is wasted with dragging things around, highlighting, changing
  | fonts, etc.

 oh gawds, YES!  this is a point I (and some others)
 keeping making to my company's management:  trying
 to "require" WWWYSIAYG (World's Worse What You See
 Is All You Get, alias M$-Worthless) vastly increases
 the amount of time to write something, discourages
 the doc from ever being written or kept updated,
 and results in shite-looking Junk (illustrated with
 manager-written docs   ;-)  ).   it's Junk not only
 because it looks shite, but — more importantly — too
 much time was spent fiddling with the formatting and
 not enough on the content:  Andrew's point.

 an invented† rule-of-thumb is that if I can write
 the doc as simple UTF-8 text in time N, then either
 LaTeX or troff(1) is N+10%, and WWWYSIAYG is >2×N.
 and, of course, with UTF-8/LaTeX/troff, I can (and
 do) include Linux code examples (important for most
 of the docs I work with) hassle-free, but which is a
 major pain with WWWYSIAYG (made worse by the company's
 templates being a mixture of Français and English (both
 USAian and UK) and not at all suited for this sort of
 technical writing).   which is Andrew's point:  lots
 of time spent on the wrong things.

 up to a point maths is Ok in UTF-8, but really shines
 in LaTeX or eqn (troff), whilst yet again being a pain
 in WWWYSIAYG (the equation editor _never_ does what I
 want!).  tables in UTF-8 and troff (tbl) are simple,
 can be annoying in LaTeX, and, yet again, are totally
 shite in WWWYSIAYG (cue again template silliness to
 make it even worse).‡   Andrew's point, yet again.

 tools can (and do) generate UTF-8, LaTeX, or troff;
 again, WWWYSIAYG looses.  badly.  a script I recently
 wrote took some diagnostic output from the compiler
 I maintain, stuffed it into m4(1), which generated
 pic(1), whose output was \include'd into a LaTeX
 doc:  an automatically generated drawing of a parse
 tree (AST).  excerpts of the LaTeX output of Doxygen
 for that same compiler were also included.  as part
 of the carefully-written content:  Andrew's point.

 with an index.  I've no idea how to index in WWWYSIAYG.
 (I did, once, play with OO.org indexing, but quickly
 gave up, albeit I can no longer recall the problems.)

 using the TUG TeXLive CD, I've found LaTeX as easy
 to install as OO.org or Firefox or Sun's Java (JDK).
 that CD installs on both Linux and Windross (and I
 _think_ on some Unix's and Mac's also?).  I _think_
 the ISO is available from CTAN.  IIRC, the physical
 CDs can be bought for a nominal fee from TUG.
 (the CD — there's a new one each year — is one of the
 benefits of TUG membership, which is how I get mine.)

cheers!
	-blf-

  †  “invented” as in I've no hard data to back up the
    claims of N+10% (1.1×N) or >2×N.

  ‡  I have used a WYSIAYG which does a reasonable job
    with both maths and tables (and drawing diagrams):
    FrameMaker.  and it's possible to generate FM docs,
    etc etc.  I'll guess it rates around N+70% (1.7×N).
    but it's very expensive, and last I looked, is not
    available for Linux.

-- 
Experienced (20+ yrs) kernel/software Eng: | Brian Foster   Montpellier,
 • Unix, embedded, &tc;  • Linux;  • doc;  | blf at utvinternet.ie   FRANCE
 • IDL, automated testing, process, &tc.   |  Stop E$$o (ExxonMobile)!
Résumé (CV) http://www.blf.utvinternet.ie  |     http://www.stopesso.com