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But it's there.

InDesign's H&J system for example is based on TeX's, Adobe having acquired the HZ system from URW which took TeX's H&J algorithm and extended it to include character expansion/contraction and optical margin adjustments. These improvements have been folded into TeX by way of Han The Thanh's (sorry, his name has Vietnamese accents not easily entered here) pdftex (interesting Adobe funded his studies at Masaryk University). His doctoral thesis is available here:

http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Contents/contents21-4.h tml

As regards fonts themselves, while William Donelson's work wasn't TeX, it was quite ground-breaking and influential:

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macin tosh&story=Origins_of_Spline-Based_and_Anti-Aliase d_Fonts.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date

And of course, there's the classic meeting of Steve Jobs and Knuth:

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macin tosh&story=Close_Encounters_of_the_Steve_Kind.txt& sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date

William

Recently at work I wrote the back-end of a phone book line ad typesetting system using TeX (a programmer here at work created the web-based front-end).

My previous employer has a nifty system which uses TeX to typeset XML databases, demo of it here:

http://cuspub.atlis.com/

And there are a lot of non-academic examples in ``The TeX Showcase'':

http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/

Using Quark and InDesign is fine, so long as one works within their feature limitations --- anything which steps beyond that involves large amounts of repetitive work and tediousness. Interesting discussion on that on comp.text.tex once:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.text.tex/msg/3 6401bceced0ee9a

William

In transportation terms, he's looking for a vehicle that can:

• transport several people / several tons of kit
• rapidly (>100mph)
• to / from endpoints without infrastructure (ie. no roads / runways etc.)
• over inhospitable terrain ...but is not a helicopter.

In other words, he wants an airship. :)

There are some airship-quality tools available, including OmniGraffle Pro and the venerable but amazing TeX, especially CONTEXT, and even Apple's Pages.

But if you're dealing with print shops, they're going to expect that your documents have been put together with certain applications, and that's all they'll do. So professional work is going to require professional tools, and that may mean ponying up for Adobe applications until another company decides to challenge them and create a competitive product.

I'm a CS major, too, and I suggest that you learn LaTeX. Just start using it for small things at first to get the hang of it. That's what I did (glad I did, too, since that semester I was taking a linguistics class and it eventually came in handy for typing characters in the IPA!), and now I type almost all of my papers in it for any class, even though I have NeoOffice/OpenOffice on all my computers. (In fact, I really haven't had to use it yet in computer science, although it was nice for typing up study guides for my discrete math class. It's just so nice for all of my classes.)

Obviously it's known for typesetting math and such well, but it's great for pretty much anything I need it for. And it's free, and lucky me, my schools have it on all the lab computers. It's not just for Linux. On Windows, I'd recommend proTeXt for getting youself set up with all you need (I am a fan of the editor it comes with, TeXnic Center), and on the Mac I recommend MacTeX (although TeXShop, the editor it installs, could be a bit better--but it is still good).

Don't be afraid, just read a tutorial or two ... and remember that Google is your friend as you are learning. :)

I'm a CS major, too, and I suggest that you learn LaTeX. Just start using it for small things at first to get the hang of it. That's what I did (glad I did, too, since that semester I was taking a linguistics class and it eventually came in handy for typing characters in the IPA!), and now I type almost all of my papers in it for any class, even though I have NeoOffice/OpenOffice on all my computers. (In fact, I really haven't had to use it yet in computer science, although it was nice for typing up study guides for my discrete math class. It's just so nice for all of my classes.)

Obviously it's known for typesetting math and such well, but it's great for pretty much anything I need it for. And it's free, and lucky me, my schools have it on all the lab computers. It's not just for Linux. On Windows, I'd recommend proTeXt for getting youself set up with all you need (I am a fan of the editor it comes with, TeXnic Center), and on the Mac I recommend MacTeX (although TeXShop, the editor it installs, could be a bit better--but it is still good).

Don't be afraid, just read a tutorial or two ... and remember that Google is your friend as you are learning. :)

Actually, equation editor is one of the few things I absolutely cannot figure out. I mean I can produce equations with it, but it seems like a real pain, and I think I must be doing something wrong. I always tought that microsoft equation editor was the worst possible way to create math equation and formulas. Once I had a part time job working for a textbook publisher, where I had to enter a lot of equation with MS word, and I was cursing it all the way through. However, I now believe that OO's equation editor is even worse that what microsoft came up with

MS does not make you pay extra for equation editor. I think what confuses you is that there is a more powerful version available from a third party, which you have to pay for. I never used it, but people tell me that it is quite good. Supposedly you can even enter LaTeX formulas into it. I would like to see how it compares to LyX.

I personaly use TeX for everything these days. If you are using Windows, give the proTeXt distribution a try. The cd comes with installers for most of the software you need (possibly all, I believe I only had to install Vim that was not included, but you may not need that), and it has an interesting pdf based installation. Basically, you pop in the cd, open a pdf file from it if it doesn't autostart, and follow instructions on the screen. Seemed pretty easy to me. Head over to http://www.tug.org/protext/ and give it a try.

Also, if you are a TUG member, they mail you a proTeXt cd with the latest version every year.

And getting versions and filepaths of anything lined up on Windows is a nightmare. Windows is just a mess in this aspect. One day, when I have nothing to do, I am going to count how many different copies of slightly different versions of Python I have on my work computer. I positively know that there are at least three different versions of ghostsctipt on that machine, and when I need to process some postscript file, I never quite know which one of them is going to start. Just give me good old /usr/bin, please!

There, end of rant.

nick.ian.k said:
> Indesign and its amazing typesetting algorithms

Uh, you really should know that InDesign's mult-line composer is URW's HZ algorithm, which was developed as an extension of TeX's H&J (see the paper by Knuth & Plass on linebreaking for the original) and that Han The Than (sorry, his name is Vietnamese and should have several accents which can't easily be shown here w/ robustness) in developing pdftex added the HZ features to his pdftex, see http://www.pdftex.org/ and his doctoral thesis which was published as an issue of TUGboat: http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Contents/contents21-4.h tml

Also look at the TeX Showcases:

http://www.tug.org/texshowcase
and
http://www.tug.org/xetexshowcase/

The latter is especially interesting since it shows the new font technologies in use by TeX and which are being worked on for luatex, pdftex's successor.

William

nick.ian.k said:
> Indesign and its amazing typesetting algorithms

Uh, you really should know that InDesign's mult-line composer is URW's HZ algorithm, which was developed as an extension of TeX's H&J (see the paper by Knuth & Plass on linebreaking for the original) and that Han The Than (sorry, his name is Vietnamese and should have several accents which can't easily be shown here w/ robustness) in developing pdftex added the HZ features to his pdftex, see http://www.pdftex.org/ and his doctoral thesis which was published as an issue of TUGboat: http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Contents/contents21-4.h tml

Also look at the TeX Showcases:

http://www.tug.org/texshowcase
and
http://www.tug.org/xetexshowcase/

The latter is especially interesting since it shows the new font technologies in use by TeX and which are being worked on for luatex, pdftex's successor.

William

nick.ian.k said:
> Indesign and its amazing typesetting algorithms

Uh, you really should know that InDesign's mult-line composer is URW's HZ algorithm, which was developed as an extension of TeX's H&J (see the paper by Knuth & Plass on linebreaking for the original) and that Han The Than (sorry, his name is Vietnamese and should have several accents which can't easily be shown here w/ robustness) in developing pdftex added the HZ features to his pdftex, see http://www.pdftex.org/ and his doctoral thesis which was published as an issue of TUGboat: http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Contents/contents21-4.h tml

Also look at the TeX Showcases:

http://www.tug.org/texshowcase
and
http://www.tug.org/xetexshowcase/

The latter is especially interesting since it shows the new font technologies in use by TeX and which are being worked on for luatex, pdftex's successor.

William

I think you have absolutely no idea of what is possible with LaTeX and friends.

http://www.tug.org/applications/Xy-pic/Xy-pic.html
http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/hobby/mppubs.html#man

First choice: Mac OS X, and install MacTeX.

My next choices, in order, would be FreeBSD, SimplyMEPIS and KUbuntu. Your mileage will vary, however, and you'll get different responses from pretty much everyone you ask. My neighbor who's a math professor, for instance, prefers SuSE.

Have you tried Latex? It does essentially the same thing - it separates out the formatting from the content, and lets you get on with writing the content quickly and easily. I recently switched to it from Word, and found that although it didn't have the nice graphical interface, once I'd got a style set up it actually sped my work up. If you're on a Mac, try MacTex from http://tug.org/mactex/ .

Your path begins here. Praise be to His Almighty Knuthiness and Blessed Angel Lamport.

using TeX or whatever

And that's bad because...?

You want a programmatic way to generate PDF,
yet you eschew pdfTeX, which is a
compiled language that produces PDF as native output,
and is a descendent of TeX, a language invented by
Knuth, a programmatic fellow if there ever was one.

Rather than compare LaTeX to MS Word, it's far better to compare LyX, http://www.lyx.org/ --- I'm very fond of it, and think it's one of the most innovative opensource applications available --- maybe even more innovative than commercial apps as well.

And of course, no mention of (La)TeX would be compleat w/o suggesting people look at the TeX Showcase:

http://www.tug.org/texshowcase

William

Bugs (a.k.a. Entomology)

Donald Knuth, a professor of computer science at Stanford University and the author of numerous books on computer science and the TeX composition system, rewards the first finder of each typo or computer program bug with a check based on the source and the age of the bug. Since his books go into numerous editions, he does have a chance to correct errors. Typos and other errors in books typically yield $2.56 each once a book is in print (pre-publication "bounty-hunter" photocopy editions are priced at $.25 per), and program bugs rise by powers of 2 each year from $1.28 or so to a maximum of $327.68. Knuth's name is so valued that very few of his checks - even the largest ones - are actually cashed, but instead framed. (Barbara Beeton states that her small collection has been worth far more in bragging rights than any equivalent cash in hand. She's also somewhat biased, being Knuth's official entomologist for the TeX system, but informal surveys of past check recipients have shown that this holds overwhelmingly for nearly everyone but starving students.) This probably won't be true for just anyone, but the relatively small expense can yield a very worthwhile improvement in accuracy.

I haven't used it myself, but Alexander Grahn's movie15 package purports to embed animations into LaTeX PDF documents.

How do you turn on automatic word wrapping in a tabular block?

You define the column as a p, followed by the width in braces; for example, p{1.25in}.

Lamport's LaTeX: A Document Preparation Manual still has one of the best summaries of basic LaTeX commands. For math, Gratzer's Math into LaTeX is an excellent book. Kopka and Daly's Guide to LaTeX is also well spoken of.

Gratzer also has a new book, The LaTeX Book , in preparation.

And, of course, there's lots of free documentation, as well.

LaTeX [...] has one drawback in comparision to reStructuredText -- it cannot easily output different formats, basically just DVI

Publishers using (La)TeX include Elsevier, Addison-Wesley, Bartlett Press, Springer Verlag, Prentice Hall, and the American Mathematical Society. And this was in 1992.
Many of them even provide their own style packages (noticed that all Springer's books look alike?); see http://www.tug.org/interest.html#publishers.

The quickest way (as for most things!) is to find someone who knows it and start asking them (or just start copying what they do).
More seriously, you can start at http://www.latex-project.org/ and start following links. Take a look at their intro page, then maybe start reading the usual The (Not So) Short Introduction to LaTeX2e. Be careful not to give up — when something gets overwhelming, skip it and move on.

Cygwin
TXMouse
Virtuawin
gvim
proTeXt

This is off-topic but may be a help to you. I don't know what academic area your ph.d students are in, but in the sciences, math, and economics, the use of LaTeX is very common. (I'm guessing if you were in one of those areas you would already know about it.) LaTeX performs wonderfully with arbitrarily huge documents --- I published a 900-page book using it. On the other hand, if you need to do a lot of fine-grained page-by-page formatting, it probably isn't for you. There are LaTeX solutions for the Mac, but I haven't used them.

To be honest I find Word to be a mess. I know some people love it but I find it unusable.

"PDF belongs to adobe and to develop using it you have to pay them for their patents use. So if you want to distribute yourself some PDF that's OK but if you want to use any generating PDF or reading PDF programs you need to pay adobe the big money."

Just in case the previous posters haven't sufficiently beaten you with your own club, I'll also point out pdfTeX, which is distributed as part of the major free TeX distributions.

I wish some companies look towards and invest money in http://www.tug.org/ and http://www.latex-project.org/ as well.
TeX is a far-far superior way of formatting and writing documents compared to any of the word packages.

I use the "unstable" fink tree. It has tetex-3.0 as of today. It works just fine: I wrote my dissertation with it with no troubles. See here: http://pdb.finkproject.org/pdb/package.php/tetex That link also shows that tetex-3.0 is available on the stable tree. Just do "fink install tetex" (or maybe "fink install bundle-tetex".

teTeX is a complete bundled LaTeX installation: http://www.tug.org/teTeX/

There are GUI TeX environments for OS X, but I never bothered to learn them (like iTeXMac or something). See this: http://ii2.sourceforge.net/tex-index.html

This is interesting. On Windows, you have Foxit. On OS X the Preview, on X11, ghostscript, xpdf, gpdf, kpdf and evince, at least. None of these does evrything Adobe Reader does, but they are all faster and smaller. I wonder how is this going to affect the pdf format.

Pdf files can do a lot of things. You can create interactive documents, with animations, scripted with javascript, you can embed movies into documents. Few examples, just from the top of my head:

a calculator
Lorenz Attractor

I have seen much more and better ones, I just don't seem to be able to find them right now.

Most of these things will not work in any of the small pdf viewers. I wonder if as the small viewers become more common, authors will have to avoid using any advanced features of pdf, therefore effectively dumbing down the format.

There is another great feature of adobe reader, a feature most people don't know about. In adobe reader, you can annotate, comment, and even draw on pdf files. That is great, because I could send my pdf files to proofreaders, all they need to do is open them in reader and write their comments. Why don't people know about that? Because Adobe made it in such a way that you have to specifically enable it in each frigging document using the newest vestion of the frigging Acrobat Professional!
That means if I make my document using pdflatex, it cannot be annotated, if you make your document using OpenOffice, it cannot be annotated. If you made your document using an older version of Acrobat, it cannot be annotated. And even if you used the right version of Acrobat but forgot to enable the annotation, it still cannot be annotated. As a result, very few documents you come across will have this enabled. So you have this great feature in reader which you can never use!

I wonder if competition from all these small pdf viewers will force Adobe to reconsider this IMHO very stupid decision and if they will enable annotations by default, disabling them perhaps only for encrypted/digitally signed documents.

http://www.tug.org/applications/pdftex/

I have been using Linux and various other Unices for years. I actually never used windows seriously until my current job, I went straight from DOS to Unix, then to Solaris, and then to Linux, with couple of BSD flavors for short periods of time sprinkled here and there.

In my current job I have a windows laptop for my office computer. I suffered for a while with the user interface and lack of any decent software, but after a while I found and installed bunch of programs that made it actually possible for me to get my work done. Curiously enough, lot of them are the exact same programs I have been using on Linux for years. Now most of the time, my windows box feels sort of like my linux box at home, as long as I don't try to do something special, and as long as I don't need to interact with the actual system (configure things, etc.). The worst problem is keybindings. It seems that in windows, the system reserves many key combinations so I cannot use them for my custom keybindings. Unfortunately, many of those seem to be exactly the combinations I have been using for years in my own custom FVWM setup.

Here are the applications I use on windows:

1) cygwin. From that, I mostly use rxvt, bash or zsh (I am a zsh junkie, but bash seems to work better for me on windows), and grep, less and couple of similar basic commands. Oh, and ssh and ncftp.

2) VirtuaWin with several modules for desktop switching and some basic window managment. Can't be compared to FVWM, but at least makes the system usable.

3) TXMouse (http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/nt/TXMouse/) for focus follow mouse and X11-like cut and paste. This is absolutely wonderful application, which I haven't seen mentioned in this discussion yet.

4) proTeXt (http://www.tug.org/protext/) for my TeX distro. I used TeXLive before, which had more packages, but proTeXt integrates with windows better, and is based on MikTeX. For some reason, almost all windows applications that use TeX in any way expect to find MikTeX, and come preconfigured for it. With TeXLive, I usually had to do whole bunch of changes.

5) Vim with LaTeX-suite. I have been using this for a while on Linux, and I was very pleased to discover that it works just as well on Windows.

6) IPE (http://ipe.compgeom.org/) for my drawings. Again something I have been using on Linux for a while.

7) LyX (http://www.lyx.org/) when I don't feel like editing TeX by hand. I used to use LyX quite a bit before discovering LaTeX-suite for vim. Now I find using vim much faster and more flexible, but I think LyX should definitely be mentioned in this discussion.

8) Treeline (http://www.bellz.org/treeline/) for quick outlining, planning, to-do lists, notes etc. This is the only program which I didn't use on Linux before, and which I picked specifically because it works on both Windows and Linux.

9) Gimp and Inkscape for any graphics work. I have those installed, but rarely use them on Windows. For some reason I prefer to wait till I get home. I guess for this type of work, the windows user interface still gets too much in the way. Maybe it's also because it's a laptop. Also, the MathMap plugin for Gimp doesn't work on windows, and I use it a lot.

Anyway, with these, I can get most of my work done without the os getting too much in the way. If I need something extra, or something unusual, I just wait and do it at home.

Depends on your search terms.

I happen to use a certain typesetting system[1] whose most prevalent macro package is named for a fetishist material[2] --- it can be downright embarrassing sometimes at work trying to look up solutions for specific difficulties.

And of course, this sort of thing isn't helped by bookmarked sites going away and being purchased by others for far different uses[3]

Other inocuous terms can have similar difficulties --- try ``baby doll'' sometime.

William
[1] TeX http://www.tug.org/
[2] LaTeX http://www.latex-project.org/
[3] the company which was Y&Y and sold fonts web site isn't about fonts anymore. http://www.yandy.com/

Personally I prefer LaTeX and send pdf files. That works ok till I am working alone. But if we have to work and interact, keeping track of changes is not the easiest thing to do in LaTeX.

Keeping track of changes is as easy as RCS/Subversion/version control system of choice (I've even used Visual SourceSafe when I was in an MS shop). Sharing changes can be done easily enough via PDF annotations, or LaTeXdiff depending on what tools you have available.

LaTeX also offers possiblities that simply aren't available in word processors like MS Word and OO.o Writer. Using packages like xcomment it is possible to write a single document that is both a paper report and slide presentation - just change the document class and recompile. I've written document classes such that I have a couple of extra environments available: \begin{summary} and \begin{shared}. Anything in a summary environment is included in the presentation, but not in the report, and anything in shared is in both report and presentation. Anything not in either environment is left out of the presentation. With that done it is easy enough to start writing your report, adding a little set of bullet points summarising each paragraph in a summary environment as you go (and sharing any equations and diagrams as needed) and once you're done you've got your presentation complete as well as your report. You've also go the whole package encapsulated in a single file: any changes are easy to propogate from report to presentation of vice-versa, and maintenance is far easier. Try that with your standard office suite.

Jedidiah.

. But if we have to work and interact, keeping track of changes is not the easiest thing to do in LaTeX.

Bullshit.

I don't have a PhD, and I've managed to get every font I've ever wanted installed, with far nicer results than are possible with Word (being able to kern in 1sp units (about the size of a nitrogen atom) doesn't compare to .rtf's limitation of a twip (1/20th of a PostScript (Big) point).

I'm also currently finishing up a typeface design which'll push the boundaries of what TeX can handle, and which can't be easily managed in InDesign 'cause of it's OpenType UI/feature-access limitations.

Hanging punctuation, to quote DEK's TeXbook ``is an easier problem'' and there's code for it --- you can see an example of this in use at http://www.tug.org/texshowcase --- look for Okakura Kakuzo's _The Book of Tea_ pdftex makes it happen automagically in the tex engine itself, see _The LaTeX Companion, 2nd Edition_ for an example of this done for a dvips processed file.

XeTeX ( http://scripts.sil.org/xetex ) allows one to access _any_ OpenType or AAT font installed in Mac OS X and have access to _all_ of its features. There's been some discussion of making a version not tied to Apple's pdf engine.

Funny you should mention Zapfino --- here's a technique for fully taking advantage of it in TeX (well, Omega):

http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb24-2/tb77ada ms.pdf

and here's an example file:

http://members.aol.com/willadams/portfolio/typogra phy/peace_on_earth.pdf

William
(who would be glad of further translations for ``Peace on earth, good will to men.'' --- I've gotten Arabic, and am going to extend it beyond using just Zapfino)

Bullshit.

I don't have a PhD, and I've managed to get every font I've ever wanted installed, with far nicer results than are possible with Word (being able to kern in 1sp units (about the size of a nitrogen atom) doesn't compare to .rtf's limitation of a twip (1/20th of a PostScript (Big) point).

I'm also currently finishing up a typeface design which'll push the boundaries of what TeX can handle, and which can't be easily managed in InDesign 'cause of it's OpenType UI/feature-access limitations.

Hanging punctuation, to quote DEK's TeXbook ``is an easier problem'' and there's code for it --- you can see an example of this in use at http://www.tug.org/texshowcase --- look for Okakura Kakuzo's _The Book of Tea_ pdftex makes it happen automagically in the tex engine itself, see _The LaTeX Companion, 2nd Edition_ for an example of this done for a dvips processed file.

XeTeX ( http://scripts.sil.org/xetex ) allows one to access _any_ OpenType or AAT font installed in Mac OS X and have access to _all_ of its features. There's been some discussion of making a version not tied to Apple's pdf engine.

Funny you should mention Zapfino --- here's a technique for fully taking advantage of it in TeX (well, Omega):

http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb24-2/tb77ada ms.pdf

and here's an example file:

http://members.aol.com/willadams/portfolio/typogra phy/peace_on_earth.pdf

William
(who would be glad of further translations for ``Peace on earth, good will to men.'' --- I've gotten Arabic, and am going to extend it beyond using just Zapfino)

As TFA points out, there is a "coding language for diagrams" called PSTricks. You might take a look at that.

Of course, I would just do like one of the sibling posters said and learn LaTeX... It'll save you an awful lot of time and energy over learning raw PS.

Interestingly, though, PS is Turing complete. It has been used, I believe, to write an implementation of Conway's Game of Life... Which is itself Turing complete. Twisted, eh?

http://www.tjhsst.edu/~edanaher/pslife/

Incidentally, that page contains a link to a PS tutorial.

It's been done.

Don Hosek did the first couple of issues of his magazine, _Serif_ using TeX a while back.

The nascent _Free Software Magazine_ is done using LaTeX.

That said, it's important to remember that the limiting factor in TeX usage is human ingenuity (and to a lesser extent available computer processing power --- though pages generate almost instantly for all but the most computationally intensive layouts these days, not like the _minutes_ or even hours it used to take)--- it's a Turing compleat programming language, so it can do anything once one figures out how to explain to TeX how to do it. DH often likened using TeX to playing Chess, requiring an awareness of what would be happening in the future. There has been some interesting work done on expanding this sort of thing though.

By contrast, the limitations of using Quark XPress and InDesign are available manpower/time and computer equipment. One can do anything, but not much can be automated ``merely'' using stylesheets and graphic placement rules. Numbering often is done by hand, (re)generating an index can be especially tedious, cross-references are primitive at best, and equations &c. require special proprietary plug-ins.

FWIW, people who're using InDesign are using TeX to a certain degree --- Adobe licensed URW's HZ hyphenation & justification algorithm which was based on TeX's. Turning things around, pdftex now affords many of Adobe InDesign's H&J features including hanging punctuation and character expansion.

http://www.tug.org/texshowcase

affords some interesting examples of what TeX can do.

William

http://www.tug.org/whatis.html - details of the bug bounty are at the bottom of the page. Typos in the books are $2.56 each (he's a computer scientist, what did you expect?).

There are bugs that just don't get flushed out until you port to: non-x86; 64-bit; bigendian; Win32; OS X; etc, etc, etc. Drepper should know better: All the world's not a VAX, etc. (though a VAX port is a fine start :-)

Also, every port makes the process of porting itself easier. It's no coincidence that the most reliable and defect-free software is typically the most-ported software. This has always been true: TeX and METAFONT (where the monetary bug bounty doubled for every bug report, so assured was Knuth of its quality); Apache; Linux itself; NetBSD; GCC and friends; etc.

Yup. It's a great package. :-) I never liked using Powerpoint (or OO.o Impress), especially when I required a lot of math. I did presentations in Latex before (don't remember what I used, slitex? foiltex?), but the beamer package is what convinced me to never touch ppt again. Doing all these overlays in latex is of course a bit of a pain (you don't want to see the tex source ;)), but at least I get a nice PDF with (almost) all the benefits of a regular powerpoint-like presentation.

It's now already included as a standard package in tetex-3.0.

After all, why would they want to increase the possibility of someone reverse-engineering the PDF format and writing free/open source Acrobat production applications, when they're currently selling about seven of them, and all for a hefty chunk of change?

Except, of course, that there is no need at all to reverse-engineer the PDF format, since the full PDF specifications are available for download from Adobe, free of charge. And since there are oodles of open-source software that will write PDF.

Regards, Felix!

I wonder how much documentation/community support CodeZoo is going to get. The reason things like the CPAN and CTAN work as well as they do is because of the enormous contributions from places like comp.text.tex, the TUG, and comp.lang.perl.*

There's enough code on the C?AN to make finding anything impossible without help.

Here, I guess. It's too bad he doesn't realize it runs on Mac OS too...

"GMZ: Was this always meant to be free software ? Did you ever try to "get rich" with it? Do you regret that you didn't?
LL: At the time, it never really occurred to me that people would pay money for software. I certainly didn't think that people would pay money for a book about software. Fortunately, Peter Gordon at Addison-Wesley convinced me to turn the LaTeX manual into a book. In retrospect, I think I made more money by giving the software away and selling the book than I would have by trying to sell the software. I don't think TeX and LaTeX would have become popular had they not been free. Indeed, I think most users would have been happier with Scribe. Had Scribe been free and had it continued to be supported, I suspect it would have won out over TeX. On the other hand, I think it would have been supplanted more quickly by Word than TeX has been." (From TUGboat 22 (2001)

Just a very succesful case of money made out of free/open source software that is often overlooked (and maybe one of the oldest cases as well!)

Also, OpenOffice.org handles royalty-free, open, XML-based file formats like OpenDocument, unlike MS-Office which cannot/does not. That ought to have been in the article summary.

• R, including several add-on packages (such as tseries, RODBC, coda, mcmcpack, gtkdevice, rgtk, rquantlib, qtl, dbi, rmysql), out-of-the box support for the powerful ESS modes for XEmacs as well as the Ggobi visualisation program;
• A complete teTeX, TeX, and LaTeX setup for scientific publishing, along with TeXmacs and LyX for wysiwyg editing;
• Perl and Python with loads of add-ons, plus ruby, tcl, Lua, and Scientific and Numeric Python;
• The Emacs and Vim editors, as well as Gnumeric, kate, Koffice, jed, joe, nedit and zile;
• Octave, with add-on packages octave-forge, octave-sp, octave-epstk, and matwrap;
• Computer-algebra systems Maxima, Pari/GP, GAP, GiNaC and YaCaS;
• the QuantLib quantitative finance library including its Python interface;
• GSL, the Gnu Scientific Library (GSL) including example binaries;
• The GNU compiler suite comprising gcc, g77, g++ compilers;
• the OpenDX, Plotmtv, and Mayavi data visualisation systems;
• it includes apcalc,aribas,autoclass,

Generate a LaTeX document file, compile it using PDFLatex and print. Or, use normal LaTeX and print directly from it, depending if .dvi files offend you.

what do you use for word processing and desktop publishing?

Latex and Lyx

Do not promote this government granted business methord intellectual monopoly.

You can always burn a TeXLive cdr. The demo version is a complete functional TeX distribution that runs from cdrom on win32, linux and macos.

MathType is a great tool to convert all of your word equations to latex as well. If you start from scratch, they have a free editor to create latex equations.