LaTex

[Elizabeth J Allen]

Hi Joel,

At my $dayjob, we use LaTeX to publish technical reference manuals  
for semiconductor products as PDF files. The documents are not  
academic nor do they have a lot of equations (although the LaTeX  
equation handling puts everybody else to shame).  LaTeX is probably  
the original single sourcing solution—files can insert other files at  
any point and the conditional text handling is the most robust on the  
planet.

The thing about LaTeX is that it *is* code, pure and simple. LaTeX is  
a language for typesetting documents. It is easily the most powerful  
typesetting tool I have ever used (and I've used Frame, Quark, and  
InDesign). As such, it is also easily the most complex.

Note: LaTeX is not WYSIWYG. Authoring LaTeX is a lot like editing  
HTML in a text editor. The files have to be compiled in order to  
generate output (that is, the final PDF).

I love it, but I've been told I'm weird, so YMMV. If you don't like  
writing code, LaTeX is not for you.

That said, I am not a professional programmer and I was able to  
create manuals in LaTeX after only a few weeks of practice. However,  
LaTeX is so powerful that I still consider myself a relative newbie.  
For some really amazing examples of what TeX (and LaTeX) can do, see  
http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/

For more info, "Guide to LaTeX" by Helmut Kopka and Patrick W. Daly  
is invaluable (http://tinyurl.com/2744l8). The LaTeX site (http:// 
www.latex-project.org/) has lots of good info and introductions, as  
does http://www.ctan.org/. We use the MikTeX distribution: http:// 
miktex.org/.

If you're interested, follow the instructions to download a  
distribution and give it a try.

Elizabeth
--
Elizabeth J. Allen
Samurai Consulting Inc.
eja at samurai.com

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." —Albert  
Einstein


On 28-Aug-07, at 9:00 AM, Wilhelm, Joel wrote:

> I'm wondering if it makes sense to use for something like manuals,  
> if it
> supports single-sourcing, and many other basic questions like that. Is
> it possible to use as a desktop publisher, or is it more geared  
> towards
> academia and papers?
>
> Joel
>