The \year=2000 TeX calendar

Karpe writes "For those of you who don't read comp.text.tex, they are offering a calender for next year." Click below for more details - it's pretty cool. " The TeX merchandising project proudly presents:

The \year=2000 TeX calendar

Features:

• Y2K compliant :-)
• format ISO A4
• 13 pages (12 month plus titel)
• each month with a picture by Duane Bibby from the books by Donald Knuth
• titel picture by Duane Bibby especially for this calendar
• protective cover and backcover
• wrap-around binding
• printed with 1200 dpi on 120g paper

This is a limited edition - it's printed on demand.

Price: DM 20 plus postage (3 DM Germany, 8 DM Europe, 16 DM rest of the world (air)).

Available \emph{now} from the TeX Merchandising Project.

The title picture and the calendarium can be seen at this web site

Eagerly awaiting your orders Martin"

Comments

Re:They want money?

[martinschrder]

1. The pictures from the books by DEK are (c) American Mathematical Society and Addison-Wesley. They thankfully allow me the use for non-profit.
2. The font used (Lucida Bright) is (c) Y&Y.

TANSTAFL :-p

Confusing sizes. (off topic)

[oneiros27]

I'm still surprised that Americans are so keen on sticking with a measurement system that was so blatantly European to start with. (C'mon...how many of you know how many feet in a rod? Bushels in a peck? Acres in a square mile? Pounds in a stone? or even what type of measurement a hectare is?)

(and the answers -- 16.5; trick question : 0.25, however, the Winchester Bushell is only 2150.42 cu.in., not 2218.2 cu.in.; Trick question: In England/US - 640, Scotland - 508, Ireland - 395; Depends on what you're measuring: hemp - 32, cheese - 16, humans - 14, meat - 8; It's actually metric - 10,000 m2)


And well, to go with the Neil Gaimen theme from last week -- From Good Omens :

*NOTE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND AMERICANS: One shilling = Five Pee. It helps to understand the antique finances of the Witchfinder Army if you know the original British monetary system:

Two farthings = one Ha'penny. Two ha'pennies = One Penny. Three pennies = A Thrupenny Bit. Two Thrupennies = A Sixpence. Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or Bob. Two Bob = A Florin. One Florin and One Sixpence = Half a Crown. Four Half Crowns = Ten Bob Note. Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies). One Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea.

The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated.

So its a math-nerd thing then?

[torpor]

Would it be fair to say that it's mostly math nerds that enjoy a bit of TeX now and then, given it's propensity for equation-layouts?

Because that would probably explain my being scared of it - I'm just not mathematically inclined, even though I have been a programmer for years.

Is TeX good for something other than math stuff, or is that it's primary sticking point... heck, maybe I'll go read a FAQ or two.

Re:What the FUCK are you guys talking about?

[phliar]

Sure, I know TEX is that monster publishing engine... What's the big deal here, folks? I just don't get it.

\TeX is just the best damn typesetting system out there. Actually, a trained human typesetter will do better, but for us mortals, you can't beat \TeX. (There may be some high-end packages out there that are better, but I don't know of any. MS-Word, WordPerfect, Frame etc. etc. don't even come close.)

And setting math - well, nothing does math like \TeX. Nothing.

Flexibility: it is very easy to define a \TeX (or \LaTeX) package that typesets exactly the way you want. If you're writing your Ph.D. dissertation and live in constant fear of those Inquisitors at the Graduate College throwing out your work because the table of contents isn't just so, \TeX is for you. You just tell it to use the approved style and from that point on it's just high-level markup; out comes a perfectly formatted dissertation. (Things like MS-Word can also do templates and things, but it's so hard to get them right no one uses them.)

I also happen to believe that markup languages like \TeX (or HTML) are better for writing in, because they make you concentrate on the content rather than on how pretty the document looks on the screen. (That's why marketing morons don't like markup languages.) And, of course, with a markup language your hands stay on the home row instead of constantly having to reach for the mouse, pull down some damn menu or click on some damn toolbar button.

The idea of entering equation-like scripts just to get a few well-formatted chars up on the screen...

You use HTML, right? Here's some \TeX:

This is some text with \emph{emphasis}.

\begin{center}
This is the next paragraph, centered.
\end{center}

I recommend that you buy the \LaTeX2e book (The LaTeX Companion -- Mittelbach, Samarin, et al). First, admire the typesetting of the book - all done in \LaTeX. Then learn why it's so cool.

Re:DM???

[tuck182]

DM=Deutsch (German) Marks. They're currently approximately 1.9 to the dollar.

y2k compliant?

[PovRayMan]

Ummm what if it weren't y2k compliant? Would it go back to 1900 and have pictures of women in long sleeved bathing suits?


-PovRayMan

Ahh, TeX strings on T shirts

[pq]

The TeX merchandising project? You mean I get to put "Which part of $\frac{\del^2}{\del\phi^2}\Psi(\phi) + m^2\Psi(\phi) = 0$ don't you understand?" on my T-shirt, and it comes out looking perfect? Ahhh, exactly what I need... :-)

Wait, no, they want money for it. And given how slow the site is at 4 am in Europe, I pity its /.ing in the morning...

Re:What the FUCK are you guys talking about?

[YoJ]

Put simply, TeX brought typesetting to the masses. Knuth invented TeX because he was tired of sending manuscripts with complicated equations to the typesetter and getting back garbage. TeX allows anyone with a little patience and willpower to typeset virtually anything they want. (I use LaTeX, an extension to TeX, so my comments might only be applicable to LaTeX).

Advantages of TeX

There are many advantages of (La)TeX over other document creation systems.

• TeX output looks great. Nothing looks more professional than TeX.
• Once you know the basics it is faster to create complicated documents with LaTeX than with anything else. LaTeX automatically handles hyphenation, line spacing, section title placement, equation numbering, figure placement and numbering, etc. When you want to refer to "equation 5", you refer to it by name. When you later add a new equation before "equation 5", your reference is automatically updated. Some word processors have this feature, but it is more of a "tacked on" thing than in TeX.
• Typing in equations is much faster in TeX. Once you know the names of the symbols, it is possible to type mathematical equations faster than writing them on paper. TeX has every symbol imaginable. With Word (for example), you must hunt-and-peck for symbols on a chart. If your symbol isn't there, you're SOL.
• TeX includes many many packages that other people have written for just about anything you could possibly want TeX to do. Want to typeset some Java code so keywords are bold, comments are italics, and everything else is roman font? There's a package to do it. How about a package to draw graphs? Yes. All this is possible because TeX is a programming language for typesetting. Fortunately, you don't need to use all its features just to produce a document. But the power is there, waiting to be used.
• Customizability. If you find yourself typing "with regard to" over and over, you can define a command \wrt that expands to "with regard to". Suppose you invent some new notation. Then just define a command for it and never worry about how the notation is generated. Then if you ever want to change your notation, you can change the definition. All your notation will instantly change, without any of the bother of searching for each time you used the notation. This is incredibly useful. Before I printed out my thesis, I previewed it with vectors written with an arrow above the vector quantity, and with vectors in boldface type. It was a one-line change.

I think that TeX is most appropriate for creating documents that clearly and simply convey information. It is the ideal tool for writing papers to be published in academic journals. Everything about TeX is designed with communication in mind. The default margins are wider than most other word processors. This is because people have a hard time reading wide columns of text. Look at any good book and count the number of words across a column. It will be the same as the number of words in a default TeX column.

Disadvantages of TeX

• There is a learning curve. TeX is a deep system. Learning TeX is a never-ending journey. Initially it can be painful and unproductive. Many people get discouraged.
• Using TeX is not interactive. TeX by itself is a "compiler". Given a source file, it produces an output file suitable for printing. Writing TeX can often become more frustrating than programming. Silly syntactic errors can stop the compile from completing. It gets old reTeXing after every change in your file.
• It is often hard to make formatting changes. The formatting system is complex. For example, to change margins or line spacing is not as simple as grabbing a slider.
• It is sometimes hard to tell what a given section of source file produces. \delta is different than seeing the delta symbol.

There are several expensive commercial systems based on TeX that provide an easy-to-use interface. There is also LyX, which is GPL. I do not have much experience with these, so I don't know effective they are.

-Nathan Whitehead

Hi, my name is Eg0r, and I'm addicted to LaTeX

[Eg0r]

A while back when I started writing up my thesis, I was faced by the challenge of choosing myself a word processor... Would it be word and its magic paper clip that says 'oh I see you are writing a letter, would you like some help?' or that writes Mhz even though what I meant was MHz... Would it be staroffice, LyX or gee!!! LaTeX?

I started to poll around and came to the conclusion that word95 was definitely getting too intelligent for its own good. (word 2 was the last in the series of microsoft half decent word processors)... Even worse, it seems to start crashing when documents get to big... Oh, and then came word97 with its magic compression that made my med images looking all blurred and crappy... (gee, is that a brain section or is it the pelvis?)

By that time (late 96) I had already switched completely to Linux, and was using vi quite a lot to edit my programs.

So I tried LyX and quite frankly, it's really good, and you can't beat the TeX output. So I started to type a long equation, the way I would have done in word, with the equation editor... a few minutes later, pleased with the result, I thought, so,,,, what does it look like in LaTeX. A click on the 'view LaTeX source' or something showed less than an 80 char long line...
Yep, that just proved me, that if you are willing to spend some time learning LaTeX, it can be much faster to type the equation, rather than clicking on buttons and then being really crossed because the char you wanted is not available (IR in office 95/97 equation editor anyone?)

So by that time I was really confused, and asked on slashdot how people were doing with LaTeX, and got a lot of encouraging answers (flames at that time where not at all common on /.), so I made the jump. All my fears were answered straight from the begining, yes you can spellcheck your document or yes you can include pictures (I'm still working on this one :-) or yes, there are packages to draw stuff and include into your LaTeX document

My mix so far is

• rtf2latex2e to convert some early word stuff over to LaTeX
• vim for the editing
• xfig for sketches
• xmgr for graphs
• ispell for spell checking (haven't tried aspell, is it much better?)

Just a word about xfig, opensource (I'm not sure it's GPLed, but you get the source code and an extensive description of the format) means I can generate most of my drawing directly from IDL (haven't jumped from IDL to PDL yet, though) and obtain great stuff I can put staright into my thesis. Same for xmgr

Do I miss office? no! Is LaTeX great for scientific publications? Hell, yes!! If vi/emacs is already your typing interface for programming, you will have no problem switching to compiling your documents as well. Will LaTeX crash on me when I reach 200 pages? say... what?
Will I stop wasting Rob's diskspace? yeah, okay... :-)

---

Re:TeX vs LaTeX

[kipling]

Pretty close. "It" is not an it but a "they". TeX is the engine that does the work of producing ".dvi" files (which are usually dvips'd to ".ps" files). It is a macro-driven programming environment developed by Don Knuth to format text and mathematics in a very controlled, reproducible, efficient manner (the actual processing engine is tiny by today's standards). TeX is also commonly used to refer to "Plain TeX", a format that supplements TeX's primitive (built-in) commands with enough to typeset nice-looking paragraphs, equations, etc, while still remaining flexible enough to tempt TeX hackers (who, me?) to do really strange stuff. LaTeX is a more restrictive TeX format that implements a lot more stuff by default, but is much harder to customise without breaking the built-in stuff.

Okay, that's the one paragraph requested - now a bit more background:

To quote Knuth [from the preface of the TeXbook]:

... a new typeseting system intended for the creation of beautiful books---and especially for books that contain a lot of mathematics. By preparing a manuscript in TeX format, you will be telling a computer exactly how the manuscript is to be transformed into pages whose typographic quality is comparable... etc.

For a mathematician (e.g. me) and anyone wanting to write research articles/books/lecture notes with more than half an equation, TeX is a godsend, as it does mathematics unbelievably well. It can be typed from a keyboard (rodent-free) is fast and efficient to input, and the restriction of tex input files to the uncontroversial 3/8 of ascii makes tex source compact and portable. It is especially useful for international collaborative papers and travelling academics/grad students/postdocs (just need a text editor & one of a few dozen tex engines).

Like Linux, TeX is open source (not "free" in the GPL sense, but Knuth does allow free code forks, such as Omega, pdftex, etex some of which are GPL) and has hoards of evangelists who think that $\TeX \ge \SeX$.

Of course, your opinion of TeX will depend on whether you

1. Write any substatial documents
2. use any equations in those documents
3. have spent the last 20 years hanging out for the long-awaited volume 4 (?) of Knuth's Art of Computer Programming

See www.tug.org for more info.

Because!

[Per Abrahamsen]

But that doesn't mean that TeX is really all that sexy.

Hey, its a lot more sexy than e.g. a kernel (I mean, a kernel manages processes. What's sexy about that?) TeX produces beautiful documents and LaTeX allows you to concentrate on what you want to say, instead of how it is going to look. The combined result is incredibly sexy to intelligent people and to people interested in aestetics.

Stupid people with no taste will of course prefer WordPerfect or MS Word, but what are they doing here?

Re:DM???

[hoefkens]

And yet another correction: the rate is the other way around (trust me, I am a German living in the US who still has a German credit card). And the most recent exchange rate is 1.863 DM for 1 US Dollar. Thus your total would $19.32.

Paste-up boy picks a nit....

[cpt kangarooski]

Please, please don't confuse typesetting (which is what TeX does) with layout (which TeX doesn't do, AFAIK).

These are two very different things, and given that my job frequently revolves around layout, I don't appreciate being confused for a typesetter.

Good definitions would be too long for here, but basically typesetting is concerned with the appearance and formatting of text and textual elements (like equations). Layout is concerned with the arrangement of graphic elements and _blocks_ of text, which have already been typeset.

True, the lines are blurring now that both typesetting and layout are computerized, but for the sake of helping me to avoid boring typsetting work, please use these two terms properly ;)

A mirror

[maan]

I have a local copy for those who want it.

Printed on demand?

[Kaz Kylheku]

Printing on demand, to me means, for instance, ``tex foo.tex'' followed by ``dvips foo.dvi''. Where is the TeX source? How about a calendar of which you can roll your own DVI, adjusted to whatever paper size you wish, featuring unencumbered images? Who cares about Bibby drawings? Maybe some nice mathematical formulas, graphs and diagrams would do instead. ;) Or each page featuring some different area of typesetting that one can engage in: music, organic chemistry, mathematics, Klingon, etc. Or some way out there things done up in MetaPost.

I guess we have two months to cook up a freeware TeX calendar.