TeX

TeX

[Zachary Kline]

Hello,
    I have heard a great deal about the use of TeX and LateX by the blind to do 'structured documents'.  I'm wondering if this package would be appropriate for things like essays, with fairly specific formatting requirements.  (I could always use a Windows word processor to do the same, but I get less feedback with those than I feel comfortable with.)
If this is indeed the case, could anybody recommend a good site for learning the fundamentals?  I've heard of a publication called the TeXbook, but can't find an accessible version.
Thanks much in advance,
Zack.

Re: TeX

[Barry Hadder]

After I learned how to do it I never went back to a word processor.

A good place to get started is:
http://www.andy-roberts.net/misc/latex

The learning curve is of course much steeper than a word processor, but I 
think it's well worth it.
Hope that helps.

On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 04:10:52PM -0700, Zachary Kline wrote:
> Hello,
>     I have heard a great deal about the use of TeX and LateX by the blind to do 'structured documents'.  I'm wondering if this package would be appropriate for things like essays, with fairly specific formatting requirements.  (I could always use a Windows word processor to do the same, but I get less feedback with those than I feel comfortable with.)
> If this is indeed the case, could anybody recommend a good site for learning the fundamentals?  I've heard of a publication called the TeXbook, but can't find an accessible version.
> Thanks much in advance,
> Zack.
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Barry

Re: TeX

[Robin Williams]

Yes, you could indeed use it for producing essays. You can use it to produce 
whatever you want, and have complete control over the formatting. I would 
think that it's most constructive use would be in the preparation of 
scientific documents, which is the purpose for which I use it, but there is 
no reason why written essays shouldn't be prepared in LaTeX.
  You will need to decide on an editor in which to write the LaTeX, and get 
things set up so that you can compile in to your prefered format. Under 
linux Emacspeak is fine for an editor, and there are many shortcuts to 
aleviate the typing of what can be fairly complicated expressions.
  If you google for learn latex, the first thing that comes up should be 
enough to get you started.

hth
Robin Williams
Mobile:
07883017949
Personal email:
robin@robin-williams.co.uk
University business email:
rmw205@ex.ac.uk
MSN:
robster3@hotmail.com
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Zachary Kline" <Z_kline@hotmail.com>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2007 12:10 AM
Subject: TeX


> Hello,
>    I have heard a great deal about the use of TeX and LateX by the blind 
> to do 'structured documents'.  I'm wondering if this package would be 
> appropriate for things like essays, with fairly specific formatting 
> requirements.  (I could always use a Windows word processor to do the 
> same, but I get less feedback with those than I feel comfortable with.)
> If this is indeed the case, could anybody recommend a good site for 
> learning the fundamentals?  I've heard of a publication called the 
> TeXbook, but can't find an accessible version.
> Thanks much in advance,
> Zack.
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

Re: TeX

[C.M. Brannon]

"Zachary Kline" <Z_kline@hotmail.com> writes:

> Hello,
>     I have heard a great deal about the use of TeX and LateX by the blind to do 'structured documents'.  I'm wondering if this package would be appropriate for things like essays, with fairly specific formatting requirements.  (I could always use a Windows word processor to do the same, but I get less feedback with those than I feel comfortable with.)
> If this is indeed the case, could anybody recommend a good site for learning the fundamentals?  I've heard of a publication called the TeXbook, but can't find an accessible version.
> Thanks much in advance,
> Zack.

Yes, this is the case.  I prepare all my printed documents with LaTeX.
It is especially well-suited to mathematical documents.
As an aside, I'm a computer science student.  In several cases,
assignments have required me to draw various sorts of tree structures,
(E.G., binary trees in an algorithms course, proof trees in a logic
course, and so forth).  There is a LaTeX package called qtree that
allows one to draw these things using LaTeX typesetting
commands.
You can also prepare slides (a la Power Point) using LaTeX.

The fundamentals of LaTeX are really easy to learn, because a LaTeX
document is nothing but an ASCII text file with some markup commands.
Try googling for "LaTeX by Example".
This should turn up some useful pages, including an electronic book
written by one of my former professors.
Once you learn the fundamentals, you'll probably pick up the rest by
osmosis.  I've been learning LaTeX for 5 years; it seems to be a
continual process.

PS. I don't think you want to read the TeX book, even if you can find
an accessible version.  I get the impression that it is *not* for
beginners.

-- Chris

Re: TeX

[Michael Whapples]

I would agree with the responses that LaTeX (or TeX which LaTeX is based
on) is good for producing documents, particularly if there are things
like mathematical equations. While it is good, the idea is to try and
remove some of the formatting from the author so that they can
concentrate on the content, but this sometimes means that when you want
a specific formatting  you may need to wrestle with TeX to tell it what
you really want to have shown, and sometimes it can seem like TeX will
not give in. Examples may be things like positioning of images (TeX is
meant to try and pick the best place for it, you can specify you want it
here, top of page, bottom of page, in any order or combination), but if
TeX really feels that it should go elsewhere on the page it will keep
trying and ignore your command, so you need to try and tweak the text
around it or the image size until TeX gives in. I can think of other
examples where I have had to hunt around for a satisfactory solution for
how something should be presented when I have been using LaTeX.

While that above seems unfavourable towards TeX, I don't mean it to be,
I am really glad for TeX in some cases, but sometimes for simple short
documents TeX is more than is really needed and you may end up spending
longer fighting TeX than it would have taken you with a WYSIWYG editor.

There are many different TeX systems and packages, offering all sorts of
features, different output formats, different TeX commands for certain
structures, etc. The other thing is that there is a huge amount of TeX
open source software, allowing you if you have the time to add the
features you want if they don't already exist.

From
Michael Whapples
On Wed, 2007-05-23 at 16:10 -0700, Zachary Kline wrote:
> Hello,
>     I have heard a great deal about the use of TeX and LateX by the blind to do 'structured documents'.  I'm wondering if this package would be appropriate for things like essays, with fairly specific formatting requirements.  (I could always use a Windows word processor to do the same, but I get less feedback with those than I feel comfortable with.)
> If this is indeed the case, could anybody recommend a good site for learning the fundamentals?  I've heard of a publication called the TeXbook, but can't find an accessible version.
> Thanks much in advance,
> Zack.
>