4 ms·

Laying out books. The fact that all of this can be done in a text file, without hidden codes and being tied to this file format or another, is extraordinary. Im

Laying out books. The fact that all of this can be done in a text file, without hidden codes and being tied to this file format or another, is extraordinary. Images are easily handled, fonts simply work (XeTeX & friends work well for me), and — with sufficient warnings — these files can be handed over to an author and edited without messing much, if anything, up. The PDFs generated work well with all the PDF tools I've attempted to use on them, and there's none of the weirdness that too-often shows up in Word or other WPs. If all you want is good-looking text, generated from truly basic documents, it will give it to you without effort.

galangalalgol 4y ago
Another poster just finished saying images and tables are hard. Why the disconnect do you think?
- krinchan 4y ago
  Very late but just in case: If you're referring to my post, it was the particular layout I was trying to achieve. The board wanted me to imitate the existing minutes title page layout from their Word "template." The image was inside a table cell, the table had a lot of column/row spans, and things got messy really fast. As with HTML, using tables for layout is just a bad idea all around. Also, as pointed out deeper in other responses, the basic tabular environment is not terrific when you're not just presenting standard table data. Breaking apart the image and table and letting LaTeX handle the layout Just Worked (TM) and looked better in my opinion. That said, LaTeX images and tables are pretty easy and look great by default when you're not doing something weird with them. Edit: A better way to phrase this might actually be that a major principle for LaTeX is that I should be able to just drop in a new chapter in the middle of a large document and LaTeX will automatically reflow and typeset the entire document without any of the very specific fiddling necessary in WYSIWYG word processors. A major example is for instance, figures/images/tables will move to new pages but will remain correctly placed between paragraph X and Y. Because I've marked it up as such, if paragraph Y is on the page following paragraph X, it will bring the figure along with it to the new page. In WYSIWYG word processors, that figure would likely just sit at the end of the page until I manually moved it myself. When you try to micromanage the layout of a very specific page, even if it's just the title page, you're going to have a pretty bad time unless you've written your own \documentclass. :-)
- leephillips 4y ago
  The other poster was wrong.
- flenserboy 4y ago
  Basic LaTeX is easy; ramping up has a significant learning curve, but once that mount has been scaled, things level off quickly. Doing tables in straight LaTeX is miserable — CTAN, however, is filled with fantastic packages that make them easy. XeLaTeX makes inserting images pretty easy without packages. I will say that what may cause difficulty with images for people new to LaTeX are floats — tables, images, and the like may move page to page depending on how the document flows; if you're used to anchoring an image on a particular page in a WP, that may put one's mind a bit out of joint until it makes sense.
  - kzrdude 4y ago
    What's an example of a good tables package? Thanks
    - flenserboy 4y ago
      Calctab is interesting — https://ctan.math.illinois.edu/macros/latex/contrib/calctab/calctab_manual.pdf https://ctan.math.illinois.edu/macros/latex/contrib/calctab/... It's not what it's designed for, but Eledmac has some interesting tabular features — https://ctan.math.washington.edu/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/eledmac/eledmac.pdf https://ctan.math.washington.edu/tex-archive/macros/latex/co... There's a good list here — https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/12672/which-tabular-packages-do-which-tasks-and-which-packages-conflict https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/12672/which-tabular-... Also, with some care, the tabular environment can be made to work very well. Example — % In the preamble: \def\qfont{\usefont{T1}{AlegreyaSans-LF}{m}{}} % only here as used in example document % In the body: {\footnotesize \begin{center} \begin{tabular}[pos]{| >{\qfont}c | >{\qfont}c | >{\qfont}c || >{\qfont}c |} \hline {\textbf{YEAR}} & {\textbf{PLATE OFFERINGS}} & {\textbf{ENVELOPES}} & {\textbf{TOTAL}} \\ \hline 1915 & 1,904.86 & 4,587.50 & 6,492.36 \\ \hline 1916 & 2,165.21 & 5,091.24 & 7,256.45 \\ \hline 1917 & 2,259.34 & 5,441.92 & 7,701.35 \\ \hline 1918 & 2,325.87 & 6,877.40 & 9,203.27 \\ \hline 1919 & 2,848.31 & 8,842.37 & 11,690.68 \\ \hline 1920 & 3,188.90 & 10,785.15 & 13,974.05 \\ \hline 1921 & 3,404.60 & 11,069.74 & 14,474.42 \\ \hline \end{tabular} \end{center} }

galangalalgol 4y ago

Another poster just finished saying images and tables are hard. Why the disconnect do you think?

krinchan 4y ago
Very late but just in case: If you're referring to my post, it was the particular layout I was trying to achieve. The board wanted me to imitate the existing minutes title page layout from their Word "template." The image was inside a table cell, the table had a lot of column/row spans, and things got messy really fast. As with HTML, using tables for layout is just a bad idea all around. Also, as pointed out deeper in other responses, the basic tabular environment is not terrific when you're not just presenting standard table data. Breaking apart the image and table and letting LaTeX handle the layout Just Worked (TM) and looked better in my opinion. That said, LaTeX images and tables are pretty easy and look great by default when you're not doing something weird with them. Edit: A better way to phrase this might actually be that a major principle for LaTeX is that I should be able to just drop in a new chapter in the middle of a large document and LaTeX will automatically reflow and typeset the entire document without any of the very specific fiddling necessary in WYSIWYG word processors. A major example is for instance, figures/images/tables will move to new pages but will remain correctly placed between paragraph X and Y. Because I've marked it up as such, if paragraph Y is on the page following paragraph X, it will bring the figure along with it to the new page. In WYSIWYG word processors, that figure would likely just sit at the end of the page until I manually moved it myself. When you try to micromanage the layout of a very specific page, even if it's just the title page, you're going to have a pretty bad time unless you've written your own \documentclass. :-)
leephillips 4y ago
The other poster was wrong.
flenserboy 4y ago
Basic LaTeX is easy; ramping up has a significant learning curve, but once that mount has been scaled, things level off quickly. Doing tables in straight LaTeX is miserable — CTAN, however, is filled with fantastic packages that make them easy. XeLaTeX makes inserting images pretty easy without packages. I will say that what may cause difficulty with images for people new to LaTeX are floats — tables, images, and the like may move page to page depending on how the document flows; if you're used to anchoring an image on a particular page in a WP, that may put one's mind a bit out of joint until it makes sense.
- kzrdude 4y ago
  What's an example of a good tables package? Thanks
  - flenserboy 4y ago
    Calctab is interesting — https://ctan.math.illinois.edu/macros/latex/contrib/calctab/calctab_manual.pdf https://ctan.math.illinois.edu/macros/latex/contrib/calctab/... It's not what it's designed for, but Eledmac has some interesting tabular features — https://ctan.math.washington.edu/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/eledmac/eledmac.pdf https://ctan.math.washington.edu/tex-archive/macros/latex/co... There's a good list here — https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/12672/which-tabular-packages-do-which-tasks-and-which-packages-conflict https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/12672/which-tabular-... Also, with some care, the tabular environment can be made to work very well. Example — % In the preamble: \def\qfont{\usefont{T1}{AlegreyaSans-LF}{m}{}} % only here as used in example document % In the body: {\footnotesize \begin{center} \begin{tabular}[pos]{| >{\qfont}c | >{\qfont}c | >{\qfont}c || >{\qfont}c |} \hline {\textbf{YEAR}} & {\textbf{PLATE OFFERINGS}} & {\textbf{ENVELOPES}} & {\textbf{TOTAL}} \\ \hline 1915 & 1,904.86 & 4,587.50 & 6,492.36 \\ \hline 1916 & 2,165.21 & 5,091.24 & 7,256.45 \\ \hline 1917 & 2,259.34 & 5,441.92 & 7,701.35 \\ \hline 1918 & 2,325.87 & 6,877.40 & 9,203.27 \\ \hline 1919 & 2,848.31 & 8,842.37 & 11,690.68 \\ \hline 1920 & 3,188.90 & 10,785.15 & 13,974.05 \\ \hline 1921 & 3,404.60 & 11,069.74 & 14,474.42 \\ \hline \end{tabular} \end{center} }