(Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

(Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Elaine Sims]

(Sorry for the double post - just found the correct newsgroup).

I'm new to Xemacs and want to know if there is a way to undo Auto-Fill 
mode after I've saved my doc and reopened it.

Basically, I want to be able to work on a document in autofill-mode, 
save as is, multiple times.  Then when the doc is completely done, open 
it, remove all the artificial line breaks and resave as a simple text 
file.

I don't know much about LaTex or TeX, would they be more efficient for 
this purpose?

Thanks,
Elaine Sims

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Michael Slass]

Elaine Sims <esims@mac.com> writes:

>(Sorry for the double post - just found the correct newsgroup).
>
>I'm new to Xemacs and want to know if there is a way to undo Auto-Fill 
>mode after I've saved my doc and reopened it.
>
>Basically, I want to be able to work on a document in autofill-mode, 
>save as is, multiple times.  Then when the doc is completely done, open 
>it, remove all the artificial line breaks and resave as a simple text 
>file.
>
>I don't know much about LaTex or TeX, would they be more efficient for 
>this purpose?
>

Hi:

It will be easier to give you a good answer with a more specific
notion of your target.  Tell us what your ultimate goal is, and what's
wrong with what emacs is doing for you now, (ie - what are you doing
with the doc that makes you not like the line breaking?) and you're
likely to get a good answer.

-- 
Mike Slass

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Elaine Sims]

Michael Slass  wrote:

>
>Elaine Sims <esims@mac.com> writes:
>
>>(Sorry for the double post - just found the correct newsgroup).
>>
>>I'm new to Xemacs and want to know if there is a way to undo Auto-Fill 
>>mode after I've saved my doc and reopened it.

>>
>
>Hi:
>
>It will be easier to give you a good answer with a more specific
>notion of your target.  Tell us what your ultimate goal is, and what's
>wrong with what emacs is doing for you now, (ie - what are you doing
>with the doc that makes you not like the line breaking?) and you're
>likely to get a good answer.
>
>-- 
>Mike Slass

I'm a writer.  And I have just started learning Xemacs and have found that it's editing capabilities are superior to any wordprocessor I've ever used. (like C-x-t, C-x-e, C-t, etc,etc).

But the problem is: typing in text-mode and seeing the little arrow at the end of the line and the breaks mid-word  is a distraction.  I'm much more comfortable looking at the screen in auto-fill mode. 

But then if I open the text in a word processor (AbiWord, Word) it retains the line breaks, which I have to manually delete to reform the paragraphs.  If I have to do that to a 100,000 word manuscript I'll go crazy.  

Actually the only reason I'm opening the file at all in a word processor is because I haven't learned how to format and print out my manuscripts from Xemacs (with double spacing and headers and page numbers) yet.

If I could do it all from within Xemacs that would be preferrable.

And I'm not adverse to learning a little LISP to do it.

Any help I can get would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Elaine

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Michael Slass]

Elaine Sims <esims@mac.com> writes:

>
>I'm a writer.  And I have just started learning Xemacs and have found
>that it's editing capabilities are superior to any wordprocessor I've
>ever used. (like C-x-t, C-x-e, C-t, etc,etc).
>
>But the problem is: typing in text-mode and seeing the little arrow
>at the end of the line and the breaks mid-word is a distraction.  I'm
>much more comfortable looking at the screen in auto-fill mode.
>
>But then if I open the text in a word processor (AbiWord, Word) it
>retains the line breaks, which I have to manually delete to reform
>the paragraphs.  If I have to do that to a 100,000 word manuscript
>I'll go crazy.
>
>Actually the only reason I'm opening the file at all in a word
>processor is because I haven't learned how to format and print out my
>manuscripts from Xemacs (with double spacing and headers and page
>numbers) yet.
>
>If I could do it all from within Xemacs that would be preferrable.
>
>And I'm not adverse to learning a little LISP to do it.
>
>Any help I can get would be appreciated.
>
>Thanks.
>
>Elaine
>

OK.  You should learn LaTeX.  It has a fairly steep learning curve,
but it is the standard UNIX way of producing typeset documents, and
there's a very good reason.  The standard LaTeX styles produce all the
things you mention above, and many more, and there are additional
style files to do anything else you can think of.

Your document will consist of your words and strings of commands to
LaTeX.  The length of your lines will be irrelevant, because LaTeX
will typeset each paragraph appropriately, so you can turn on
auto-fill at a width that's comfortable for you during editing, and
not think about it any more.

You will *definitely* need a copy of Leslie Lamport's book:

_LaTeX: A Document Preparation System_

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201529831/qid=1038080753/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_2/104-7996619-8519144


Also, you will be very happy with auctex-mode, an elisp package
designed to facilitate preparation of LaTeX documents.  It may or may
not have been included with your distrubution of emacs, but you can
find it and instructions for installing it by google-ing for
auctex.el.  AucTex lets you control all of your document preparation
from within emacs.

LaTeX is not WYSIWYG -- there is a cycle of edit, compile, view to see
how your document will look, but with a reasonably fast computer (the
thesis I'm not writing at this moment while I'm chatting with you is
25K words, and renders in about 20sec on my P3 450) the cycle is not
unduly long.

The web is full of LaTeX tutorials, and comp.text.tex has a large and
knowledgeable reader base.

Good luck.
-- 
Mike Slass

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Elaine Sims]

Michael Slass  wrote:

>
>Elaine Sims <esims@mac.com> writes:
>
>>
>>I'm a writer.  And I have just started learning Xemacs and have found
>>that it's editing capabilities are superior to any wordprocessor I've
>>ever used. (like C-x-t, C-x-e, C-t, etc,etc).
>>
>>But the problem is: typing in text-mode and seeing the little arrow
>>at the end of the line and the breaks mid-word is a distraction.  I'm
>>much more comfortable looking at the screen in auto-fill mode.
>>
>>But then if I open the text in a word processor (AbiWord, Word) it
>>retains the line breaks, which I have to manually delete to reform
>>the paragraphs.  If I have to do that to a 100,000 word manuscript
>>I'll go crazy.
>>
>>Actually the only reason I'm opening the file at all in a word
>>processor is because I haven't learned how to format and print out my
>>manuscripts from Xemacs (with double spacing and headers and page
>>numbers) yet.
>>
>>If I could do it all from within Xemacs that would be preferrable.
>>
>>And I'm not adverse to learning a little LISP to do it.
>>
>>Any help I can get would be appreciated.
>>
>>Thanks.
>>
>>Elaine
>>
>
>OK.  You should learn LaTeX.  It has a fairly steep learning curve,
>but it is the standard UNIX way of producing typeset documents, and
>there's a very good reason.  The standard LaTeX styles produce all the
>things you mention above, and many more, and there are additional
>style files to do anything else you can think of.
>
>Your document will consist of your words and strings of commands to
>LaTeX.  The length of your lines will be irrelevant, because LaTeX
>will typeset each paragraph appropriately, so you can turn on
>auto-fill at a width that's comfortable for you during editing, and
>not think about it any more.
>
>You will *definitely* need a copy of Leslie Lamport's book:
>
>_LaTeX: A Document Preparation System_
>
>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201529831/qid=1038080753/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_2/104-7996619-8519144
>
>
>Also, you will be very happy with auctex-mode, an elisp package
>designed to facilitate preparation of LaTeX documents.  It may or may
>not have been included with your distrubution of emacs, but you can
>find it and instructions for installing it by google-ing for
>auctex.el.  AucTex lets you control all of your document preparation
>from within emacs.
>
>LaTeX is not WYSIWYG -- there is a cycle of edit, compile, view to see
>how your document will look, but with a reasonably fast computer (the
>thesis I'm not writing at this moment while I'm chatting with you is
>25K words, and renders in about 20sec on my P3 450) the cycle is not
>unduly long.
>
>The web is full of LaTeX tutorials, and comp.text.tex has a large and
>knowledgeable reader base.
>
>Good luck.
>-- 
>Mike Slass

Exactly the information I was hoping for.  Thanks so much for the help.
And good luck on your thesis.

Elaine

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[ken]

Elaine (and other emacsers in the writing business),

I was a writer for awhile and a copyeditor as well.  What you need to
format documents depends on what kind of writing you will be doing, who
you will be submitting it to, and what format they want.

E.g., if your doing technical writing for a company and they want
hardcopy without having you send out your manuscripts to a
typesetter/printer, then I would agree with Michael.  LaTeX will give
you all you want in terms of typesetting.

However, if you don't need all of that, if you don't need to include
formulas and if your publisher is going to be producing the published
hardcopy, then LaTeX is probably overkill; you'll be spending too much 
time learning it and a lot less time actually writing.

If the kind of document your writing is no more typographially complex
than, say, a master's thesis, then I would suggest using HTML.  It'll do
superscripts and subscripts (e.g., for footnotes), italics, bold,
various and variable-sized fonts, tables, and a lot more and quite a bit
more easily than LaTeX.  You can also include diagrams, photos, and 
other images into html docs.  If I were doing my master's thesis today, 
it's what I'd use.  The only thing I could never figure out how to do in 
html was page breaks.  Maybe they've added a tag for that in the past 
five or so years.  Finally, most word processors will read in html, so 
if there's some reason that, in the end, you *absolutely* *must* make 
another change, just about any ole wordprocessor will handle it.

Oh, and emacs has an html-helper-mode to make the work go even faster.


hth,
ken

Elaine Sims at 19:38 (UTC-0000) on Sat, 23 Nov 2002 said:

= Michael Slass  wrote:
= 
= >
= >Elaine Sims <esims@mac.com> writes:
= > ...
= >It will be easier to give you a good answer with a more specific
= >notion of your target.  Tell us what your ultimate goal is, and what's
= >wrong with what emacs is doing for you now, (ie - what are you doing
= >with the doc that makes you not like the line breaking?) and you're
= >likely to get a good answer.
= >
= >-- 
= >Mike Slass
= 
= I'm a writer.  And I have just started learning Xemacs and have
= found that it's editing capabilities are superior to any
= wordprocessor I've ever used. (like C-x-t, C-x-e, C-t, etc,etc).
= 
= But the problem is: typing in text-mode and seeing the little arrow
= at the end of the line and the breaks mid-word is a distraction.  
= I'm much more comfortable looking at the screen in auto-fill mode.
= 
= But then if I open the text in a word processor (AbiWord, Word) it
= retains the line breaks, which I have to manually delete to reform
= the paragraphs.  If I have to do that to a 100,000 word manuscript
= I'll go crazy.
= 
= Actually the only reason I'm opening the file at all in a word
= processor is because I haven't learned how to format and print out
= my manuscripts from Xemacs (with double spacing and headers and page
= numbers) yet.
= 
= If I could do it all from within Xemacs that would be preferrable.
= 
= And I'm not adverse to learning a little LISP to do it.
= 
= Any help I can get would be appreciated.
= 
= Thanks.
= 
= Elaine
= 
= _______________________________________________
= Help-gnu-emacs mailing list
= Help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
= http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnu-emacs
= 


-- 
AMD crashes?  See http://cleveland.lug.net/~ken/amd-problem/.

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Alan Shutko]

ken <ken@cleveland.lug.net> writes:

> If the kind of document your writing is no more typographially complex
> than, say, a master's thesis, then I would suggest using HTML.  It'll do
> superscripts and subscripts (e.g., for footnotes), italics, bold,
> various and variable-sized fonts, tables, and a lot more and quite a bit
> more easily than LaTeX.

If you're doing anything with footnotes, or anything you want to
number, you do not want to be writing superscripts and subscripts by
hand.  Or section or figure numbers, etc.  Unless you happen to like
renumbering everything when you change something.

You'd end up doing it with a word processor which would autogenerate
all that and output HTML.

For that kind of thing, it would be about as easy to learn LaTeX, and
you'd spend a whole lot less time doing things manually.

-- 
Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> - In a variety of flavors!
Oxymoron: Voluntary Contributions.

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[ken]

Alan,

You bring up a good point.  Adding, deleting, editing, and renumbering
footnotes is not at all something which should be done when you're
trying to put your thoughts "on paper" (Wow!  Archaic in a fraction of a
lifetime).  While composing the manuscript, you don't want to deal with
the trivialities of footnotes.  First and foremost is the writing.  
Until the text of the manuscript is completed, footnotes would be a
distraction.

The method I use when composing is to leave the reference in the body of
the text, e.g.:

... and that, according to Heidegger, "every metaphysical thought is
ontological or it is nothing at all."<fn>(Holzwege, p. 206)</fn>

The invented tags <fn>...</fn> mark off a simplified note but one which
is sufficient when composing the document and which make a search or
search-and-replace easy.  After the composing and proofreading and
rewriting is finished, then begins the task of visual formatting, 
including creating the footnotes or-- what I prefer-- endnotes.  This is 
the way I would go regardless of which text formatter was adopted.

If I didn't already have so many projects on my agenda, I'd consider 
elisp code which would pull out the "<fn>...</fn>" tags, grab the 
corresponding full citation from another, bibliographic file, and create 
from these footnotes and/or endnotes for an html doc.

Just my $0.02,
ken

-- 
AMD crashes?  See http://cleveland.lug.net/~ken/amd-problem/.

Alan Shutko at 02:07 (UTC-0000) on Sun, 24 Nov 2002 said:

= ken <ken@cleveland.lug.net> writes:
= 
= > If the kind of document your writing is no more typographially complex
= > than, say, a master's thesis, then I would suggest using HTML.  It'll do
= > superscripts and subscripts (e.g., for footnotes), italics, bold,
= > various and variable-sized fonts, tables, and a lot more and quite a bit
= > more easily than LaTeX.
= 
= If you're doing anything with footnotes, or anything you want to
= number, you do not want to be writing superscripts and subscripts by
= hand.  Or section or figure numbers, etc.  Unless you happen to like
= renumbering everything when you change something.
= 
= You'd end up doing it with a word processor which would autogenerate
= all that and output HTML.
= 
= For that kind of thing, it would be about as easy to learn LaTeX, and
= you'd spend a whole lot less time doing things manually.
= 
= 

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Kai Großjohann]

ken <ken@cleveland.lug.net> writes:

> ... and that, according to Heidegger, "every metaphysical thought is
> ontological or it is nothing at all."<fn>(Holzwege, p. 206)</fn>

That's a good approach to the problem.  But with LaTeX, it's even
easier.  You write this;

    and that, according to Heidegger, ``every metaphysical though is
    ontological or it is nothing at all.''\footnote{Holzwege, p.\ 206}

And then LaTeX will create a footnote for you and number it and all
that stuff.  Note that, for completeness, I've also included the
strange backslash after the `p.' which tells LaTeX that this dot is
not a sentence-end period.  There are a couple of commands like this
that you need to learn, but there is a 20 page document that explains
about these things and you can read that in half an hour or so.

As another example, you write

    \section{Introduction}
    \label{sec:intro}

    ...some text...

And then elsewhere you can refer to this section, like so:

    As we already mentioned in section \ref{sec:intro}, ...

You can see that LaTeX does those things which you wanted to write
Lisp for.  So why bother writing Lisp!

kai
-- 
~/.signature is: umop ap!sdn    (Frank Nobis)

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[David Kastrup]

kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> ken <ken@cleveland.lug.net> writes:
> 
> > ... and that, according to Heidegger, "every metaphysical thought is
> > ontological or it is nothing at all."<fn>(Holzwege, p. 206)</fn>
> 
> That's a good approach to the problem.  But with LaTeX, it's even
> easier.  You write this;
> 
>     and that, according to Heidegger, ``every metaphysical though is
>     ontological or it is nothing at all.''\footnote{Holzwege, p.\ 206}
> 
> And then LaTeX will create a footnote for you and number it and all
> that stuff.  Note that, for completeness, I've also included the
> strange backslash after the `p.' which tells LaTeX that this dot is
> not a sentence-end period.

In this case one would rather use p.~206 in order to tell LaTeX never
to break the line at that point which would be excessively ugly.

> There are a couple of commands like this that you need to learn, but
> there is a 20 page document that explains about these things and you
> can read that in half an hour or so.

lshort.tex or so.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[ken]

Kai,

Thanks for the introduction.  :)  

Years ago I gave LaTeX a fair try-- much more than a half hour-- and
came away from it quite unsatisfied.  To my way of thinking, html is
more intuitive and much easier to write in as well as to read.  
Moreover, html is the lingua franca of the web and docs so formatted
drop into it without modification and without need for a plug-in;
correct me if I'm mistaken, but LaTex docs don't.

Of course LaTeX has its place.  If I were involved in high-end 
typesetting, I'd definitely revisit it.  But its not the only tool 
available for formatting documents and not necessarily always the best 
for every job.


Thanks for the input,
ken

-- 
AMD crashes?  See http://cleveland.lug.net/~ken/amd-problem/.

Kai Großjohann at 16:06 (UTC+0100) on Sun, 24 Nov 2002 said:

= ken <ken@cleveland.lug.net> writes:
= 
= > ... and that, according to Heidegger, "every metaphysical thought is
= > ontological or it is nothing at all."<fn>(Holzwege, p. 206)</fn>
= 
= That's a good approach to the problem.  But with LaTeX, it's even
= easier.  You write this;
= 
=     and that, according to Heidegger, ``every metaphysical though is
=     ontological or it is nothing at all.''\footnote{Holzwege, p.\ 206}
= 
= And then LaTeX will create a footnote for you and number it and all
= that stuff.  Note that, for completeness, I've also included the
= strange backslash after the `p.' which tells LaTeX that this dot is
= not a sentence-end period.  There are a couple of commands like this
= that you need to learn, but there is a 20 page document that explains
= about these things and you can read that in half an hour or so.
= 
= As another example, you write
= 
=     \section{Introduction}
=     \label{sec:intro}
= 
=     ...some text...
= 
= And then elsewhere you can refer to this section, like so:
= 
=     As we already mentioned in section \ref{sec:intro}, ...
= 
= You can see that LaTeX does those things which you wanted to write
= Lisp for.  So why bother writing Lisp!
= 
= kai
= 

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Michael Slass]

ken <ken@cleveland.lug.net> writes:

>Kai,
>
>Thanks for the introduction.  :)  
>
>Years ago I gave LaTeX a fair try-- much more than a half hour-- and
>came away from it quite unsatisfied.  To my way of thinking, html is
>more intuitive and much easier to write in as well as to read.  
>Moreover, html is the lingua franca of the web and docs so formatted
>drop into it without modification and without need for a plug-in;
>correct me if I'm mistaken, but LaTex docs don't.
>
>Of course LaTeX has its place.  If I were involved in high-end 
>typesetting, I'd definitely revisit it.  But its not the only tool 
>available for formatting documents and not necessarily always the best 
>for every job.
>

No one is arguing either of these points; I believe most of the
contention has been about what degree of complexity of a document
warrants the transition from HTML to LaTeX.  IIRC, in your first post
on this subject, you said that HTML was good for anything up to and
including a master's thesis, and I suspect that common opinion is
against you on this head.  I'm not sure where is a better spot to
plant the arbitrary transition point, but I am sure that it's well
south of the master's thesis.

All the best,

-- 
Mike Slass

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[ken]

Michael,

"Common opinion" has been about three or four people.  I just did a
quick search of the web for "master's thesis" and got nearly twenty-six
thousand (26,000) hits.  Granted, not all were actually master's theses,
but well more than half of the first several pages were, and at least
one of those came from a Harvard grad student.  I'd imagine that there
are many more which wouldn't turn up from such a simple search.  

I didn't hear anyone say that it's impossible to use html to format a
master's thesis-- it's obviously not--, only that LaTeX is more
convenient and perhaps more powerful (for them).  Heck, if there was a
way to underline with it, a silly little ASCII editor would serve just
fine.  I'm sure there's still people writing these things using a manual
typewriter.  The question, then, was and remains one of appropriate
technology and what the situation calls for.  It's not always the case
that the biggest hammer is the best.  Nor is there an ineluctably
Boolean path to every conclusion.  It's much more of a judgment call.

My original concern was to offer Elaine an alternative to LaTeX along
with general guidelines and had no intention of making this list into a
replay of "The Shoot-Out at the OK Corral".  Let's just leave it (the
Final Judgment on one of the several general guidelines I first
espoused) at this:

One guy says you could probably get enough from html to format a
master's thesis.  Three or four other guys disagree, say you absolutely
must use LaTeX, and that the first guy is non compis mentis.


Cheers,
ken

-- 
AMD crashes?  See http://cleveland.lug.net/~ken/amd-problem/.

Michael Slass at 21:31 (UTC-0000) on Sun, 24 Nov 2002 said:

= ken <ken@cleveland.lug.net> writes:
= 
= >Kai,
= >
= >Thanks for the introduction.  :)  
= >
= >Years ago I gave LaTeX a fair try-- much more than a half hour-- and
= >came away from it quite unsatisfied.  To my way of thinking, html is
= >more intuitive and much easier to write in as well as to read.  
= >Moreover, html is the lingua franca of the web and docs so formatted
= >drop into it without modification and without need for a plug-in;
= >correct me if I'm mistaken, but LaTex docs don't.
= >
= >Of course LaTeX has its place.  If I were involved in high-end 
= >typesetting, I'd definitely revisit it.  But its not the only tool 
= >available for formatting documents and not necessarily always the best 
= >for every job.
= >
= 
= No one is arguing either of these points; I believe most of the
= contention has been about what degree of complexity of a document
= warrants the transition from HTML to LaTeX.  IIRC, in your first post
= on this subject, you said that HTML was good for anything up to and
= including a master's thesis, and I suspect that common opinion is
= against you on this head.  I'm not sure where is a better spot to
= plant the arbitrary transition point, but I am sure that it's well
= south of the master's thesis.
= 
= All the best,
= 
= 

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Alan Shutko]

ken <ken@cleveland.lug.net> writes:

> I just did a quick search of the web for "master's thesis" and got
> nearly twenty-six thousand (26,000) hits.  Granted, not all were
> actually master's theses, but well more than half of the first
> several pages were, and at least one of those came from a Harvard
> grad student.

I wonder how many were originally written in HTML?  It's trivial to
convert from Word to HTML, and not fairly easy to convert from LaTeX
to HTML.

-- 
Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> - In a variety of flavors!
It's 1,000 to 1, but it's our only chance-a flame hurling catapult!

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Eli Zaretskii]

On Mon, 25 Nov 2002, Alan Shutko wrote:

> It's trivial to
> convert from Word to HTML, and not fairly easy to convert from LaTeX
> to HTML.

Actually, there are a few programs to produce HTML from TeX.  Check out 
TeX4HT on CPAN, for example.

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Eli Zaretskii]

On Mon, 25 Nov 2002, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> Check out DTeX4HT on CPAN, for example.
                       ^^^^
Oops!  Should have said CTAN, of course.  Sorry.

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Peter S Galbraith]

Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> wrote:

>                                                     It's trivial to
> convert from Word to HTML, and not fairly easy to convert from LaTeX
> to HTML.

Package: latex2html
Description: LaTeX to HTML translator.
 LaTeX2HTML is a conversion tool that that converts documents written
 in LaTeX to HTML format. In addition, it offers an easy migration
 path towards authoring complex hypermedia documents using familiar
 word-processing concepts.
 .
 LaTeX2HTML replicates the basic structure of a LaTeX document as a
 set of interconnected HTML files which can be explored using
 automatically generated navigation panels. The cross-references,
 citations, footnotes, the table of contents and the lists of figures
 and tables, are also translated into hypertext links. Formatting
 information which has equivalent ``tags'' in HTML (lists, quotes,
 paragraph breaks, type styles, etc.) is also converted
 appropriately. The remaining heavily formatted items such as
 mathematical equations, pictures or tables are converted to images
 which are placed automatically at the correct positions in the final
 HTML document.
 .
 LaTeX2HTML extends LaTeX by supporting arbitrary hypertext links and
 symbolic cross-references between evolving remote documents. It also
 allows the specification of conditional text and the inclusion of raw
 HTML commands. These hypermedia extensions to LaTeX are available as
 new commands and environments from within a LaTeX document.
 .
 Pstoimg, the part of latex2html that produces bitmap images from the
 LaTeX source, can support both GIF and PNG format. Because of certain
 legal limitations on the use of the GIF image format, GIF support is
 disabled in this package.

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Kester Clegg]

Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> writes:

> ken <ken@cleveland.lug.net> writes:
> 
> > I just did a quick search of the web for "master's thesis" and got
> > nearly twenty-six thousand (26,000) hits.  Granted, not all were
> > actually master's theses, but well more than half of the first
> > several pages were, and at least one of those came from a Harvard
> > grad student.
> 
> I wonder how many were originally written in HTML?  It's trivial to
> convert from Word to HTML, and not fairly easy to convert from LaTeX
> to HTML.

???  have you used LaTeX2HTML?  Does an excellent job IMO.  Plus the
same latex document can easily have a pdf output...  and pdf is the
linguafranca for *typeset* documents on the web, not HTML because it's
typesetting capabilities are zilch.  Almost as bad as Word's in fact,
but without the cute viruses.

-- 
************************************************************************
Kester Clegg				Dept. of Computer Science,
Research Assistant (UTC)		University of York, 
Tel (01904) 43 27 49			email: kester at cs.york.ac.uk
************************************************************************

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com>]

>> convert from Word to HTML, and not fairly easy to convert from LaTeX
>> to HTML.
> Package: latex2html

Check out google://Hevea as well.


        Stefan

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Kai Großjohann]

ken <ken@cleveland.lug.net> writes:

> I didn't hear anyone say that it's impossible to use html to format a
> master's thesis-- it's obviously not--, only that LaTeX is more
> convenient and perhaps more powerful (for them).  Heck, if there was a
> way to underline with it, a silly little ASCII editor would serve just
> fine. 

So maybe I should point out M-x enriched-mode RET (which saves faces
with the text) and M-x ps-print-buffer-with-faces RET (which can
print it).

> I'm sure there's still people writing these things using a manual
> typewriter.  The question, then, was and remains one of appropriate
> technology and what the situation calls for.

Maybe numbering footnotes is not enough to switch to LaTeX, but IMHO
more than one such item is.

kai
-- 
~/.signature is: umop ap!sdn    (Frank Nobis)

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Benjamin Lewis]

On Sun, 24 Nov 2002, ken@cleveland.lug.net wrote:

> Years ago I gave LaTeX a fair try-- much more than a half hour-- and
> came away from it quite unsatisfied.  To my way of thinking, html is
> more intuitive and much easier to write in as well as to read.  

Well, like with emacs, it may take longer to learn at first but it will
save you time in the long run.  Your documents will also look nicer.

I find LaTeX files at least as easy to read as HTML, especially if you let
AUC-TeX handle your formatting for you.

> Moreover, html is the lingua franca of the web and docs so formatted
> drop into it without modification and without need for a plug-in;
> correct me if I'm mistaken, but LaTex docs don't.
> 
> Of course LaTeX has its place.  If I were involved in high-end 
> typesetting, I'd definitely revisit it.  But its not the only tool 
> available for formatting documents and not necessarily always the best 
> for every job.

I even use LaTeX for short overviews now, just as I edit even simple text
files with emacs.

It's all a matter of preference of course, but probably using LaTeX for
only hours is not long enough to really start appreciating it.

-- 
Benjamin Lewis

Give yourself a chance to enjoy cycling and making it
part of your life.  -- jon isaacs, on rec.bicycles.misc

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Benjamin Lewis]

On Sat, 23 Nov 2002, ken@cleveland.lug.net wrote:

> If the kind of document your writing is no more typographially complex
> than, say, a master's thesis, then I would suggest using HTML.  

For a master's thesis?!  You've gotta be kidding.

I'm too astounded by this suggestion to properly articulate all my
objections to this idea.

Even for these ease of handling references alone, LaTeX is worth learning
for a master's thesis.

-- 
Benjamin Lewis

Snakes.  Why did it have to be snakes?
		-- Indiana Jones, "Raiders of the Lost Ark"

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Jim Janney]

Elaine Sims <esims@mac.com> wrote:
 
> I'm a writer.  And I have just started learning Xemacs and have found that
> it's editing capabilities are superior to any wordprocessor I've ever
> used. (like C-x-t, C-x-e, C-t, etc,etc).
> 
> But the problem is: typing in text-mode and seeing the little arrow at the
> end of the line and the breaks mid-word  is a distraction.  I'm much
> more comfortable looking at the screen in auto-fill mode.
> 
> But then if I open the text in a word processor (AbiWord, Word) it retains
> the line breaks, which I have to manually delete to reform the paragraphs.
> If I have to do that to a 100,000 word manuscript I'll go crazy.
> 
> Actually the only reason I'm opening the file at all in a word processor
> is because I haven't learned how to format and print out my manuscripts
> from Xemacs (with double spacing and headers and page numbers) yet.
> 
> If I could do it all from within Xemacs that would be preferrable.
> 
> And I'm not adverse to learning a little LISP to do it.
> 
> Any help I can get would be appreciated.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Elaine

Removing line breaks is something I do often enough that I wrote a
little function to do it.  It may not handle every situation, but I
haven't noticed any problems.

(defun remove-line-breaks ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((fill-column 9999))
    (fill-individual-paragraphs (point-min) (point-max))))

-- 
Jim Janney

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Kester Clegg]

Elaine Sims <esims@mac.com> writes:

> I'm a writer.  And I have just started learning Xemacs and have found
> that it's editing capabilities are superior to any wordprocessor I've
> ever used. (like C-x-t, C-x-e, C-t, etc,etc).

Don't forget M-q, I couldn't live without that one!!

But yes, learn latex / pdflatex and discover what beautifully typeset
documents look like.  :-)

-- 
************************************************************************
Kester Clegg				Dept. of Computer Science,
Research Assistant (UTC)		University of York, 
Tel (01904) 43 27 49			email: kester at cs.york.ac.uk
************************************************************************

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Oliver Scholz]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@is.elta.co.il> writes:

> On Mon, 25 Nov 2002, Alan Shutko wrote:
>
>> It's trivial to
>> convert from Word to HTML, and not fairly easy to convert from LaTeX
>> to HTML.
>
> Actually, there are a few programs to produce HTML from TeX.

While we are at it. I started to learn the Texinfo format and I happen
to like it. I wonder whether I could use it for my philosophical
papers, too. Or is it too much taylored for writing technical
documentation?

Hmm ... Bibliographies might be a problem ...

    Oliver
-- 
5 Frimaire an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Alan Shutko]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@is.elta.co.il> writes:

> On Mon, 25 Nov 2002, Alan Shutko wrote:
>
>> It's trivial to convert from Word to HTML, and not fairly easy to
>> convert from LaTeX to HTML.
>
> Actually, there are a few programs to produce HTML from TeX.  Check out 
> TeX4HT on CPAN, for example.

Duh... sorry, in editing I switched "not too hard" to "fairly easy"
and left the "not" there.

-- 
Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> - In a variety of flavors!
"You know with love come strange currencies."