[Vox-Outreach] Re: [Lug-Nuts] LUG handout for saturday's writers conf

[Peter Jay Salzman]

begin Roscinante <rosc@rosc2112.net> 
> On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Bill Kendrick wrote:
> > What do you all think?
> >
> >   ftp://ftp.sonic.net/pub/users/nbs/lugod-writersconf-lugs.pdf
> 
> PDF? eww :P
> 
> Did you write that in Linux, and if so, what app can write pdf?

yeah, it's easy!  other than things like ps2pdf, jade, epstopdf and
gimp:


% <----    cut here
\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\begin{document}

Hello world

\end{document}
% <----    cut here


then:

pdflatex helloworld.tex


the quality of ps2pdf and epstopdf is quite poor, especially for text.
they're ok for pictures.  definitely not text.

gimp's quality is stellar, but again, it's not an appropriate tool for
text.

docbook has the benefit that you can convert documents into ANY format,
including pdf.  but then you have to learn docbook.   it's easier than
it looks, as long as you keep a template around.  image handling is
possible, but i don't know how to do it.

thanks to norm matloff who taught me the joys of pdflatex.  it's a text
based application, but image handling is /much/ easier in pdflatex than
vanilla latex.  and displayed math is what *latex does best!


pete

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