Book writing mode?

Book writing mode?

[juman]

Is there any more then me out there who write articles, books or longer
storys and uses Emacs? If so what mode do you use for easy editing and
do write your text using HTML, DocBook etc or so for easy publishing?

/juman

Book writing mode?

[juman]

Is there any more then me out there who write articles, books or longer
storys and uses Emacs? If so what mode do you use for easy editing and
do write your text using HTML, DocBook etc or so for easy publishing?

/juman

Re: Book writing mode?

[Bastien]

juman@jumans.net writes:

> Is there any more then me out there who write articles, books or longer
> storys and uses Emacs? If so what mode do you use for easy editing and
> do write your text using HTML, DocBook etc or so for easy publishing?

Last year, i wrote a small mode - bhl.el : it enables you to write
your text directly, then convert it to HTML, LaTeX, SGML (Linuxdoc),
Texinfo and TXT again.  I would like to rewrite it thoroughly, but
cannot find time for the moment.

May be of interest for you.

http://www.nongnu.org/bhl/
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/BhlMode

-- 
Bastien

Re: Book writing mode?

[Michael Slass]

juman@jumans.net writes:

>Is there any more then me out there who write articles, books or longer
>storys and uses Emacs? If so what mode do you use for easy editing and
>do write your text using HTML, DocBook etc or so for easy publishing?
>
>/juman
>
>

If you're going to make a habit/career of writing documents for
publication, and you like emacs for your text editing, I would
recommend that you learn to use LaTeX, a document preparation system.

LaTeX uses embedded commmands somewhat analogous to HTML tags that
tell the program about the content of your document so it can
determine appropriate formatting.

There is a wealth of information on the web about LaTeX, but I would
go buy a copy of the canonical work on the subject:
Lamport, Leslie, _LaTeX: A Document Preparation System, 2/E_.
ISBN: 0-201-52983-1

Also, there is an excellent mode for working with LaTeX documents from
within emacs, called auctex, available here:
http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex
-- 
Mike Slass

Re: Book writing mode?

[gebser]

I'm sure that latex is very nice, but if you want to get published, you
should submit manuscripts in a format which the agent or editor desires.  
For electronic submissions this is generally Word (.doc) format or plain
text (ASCII).  If you're submitting only hardcopy, then this matters
much less.  If you don't care about being published, then you can use 
whatever you want.  :)


At 15:36 (UTC-0000) on Wed, 26 May 2004 Michael Slass said:

= juman@jumans.net writes:
= 
= >Is there any more then me out there who write articles, books or longer
= >storys and uses Emacs? If so what mode do you use for easy editing and
= >do write your text using HTML, DocBook etc or so for easy publishing?
= >
= >/juman
= >
= >
= 
= If you're going to make a habit/career of writing documents for
= publication, and you like emacs for your text editing, I would
= recommend that you learn to use LaTeX, a document preparation system.
= 
= LaTeX uses embedded commmands somewhat analogous to HTML tags that
= tell the program about the content of your document so it can
= determine appropriate formatting.
= 
= There is a wealth of information on the web about LaTeX, but I would
= go buy a copy of the canonical work on the subject:
= Lamport, Leslie, _LaTeX: A Document Preparation System, 2/E_.
= ISBN: 0-201-52983-1
= 
= Also, there is an excellent mode for working with LaTeX documents from
= within emacs, called auctex, available here:
= http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex
= 

Re: Book writing mode?

[Brad Collins]

juman@jumans.net writes:

> Is there any more then me out there who write articles, books or longer
> storys and uses Emacs? If so what mode do you use for easy editing and
> do write your text using HTML, DocBook etc or so for easy publishing?

While it's still in development, I'm moving over to Muse mode (do a
search for emacs-wiki and muse mode on Emacs Wiki) which is based on
emacs-wiki.

Muse does inline formating of wiki-markup and can then be converted
to docbook, latex, pdf, html, texinfo etc.

I'm nearly finished writing a new extension for converting to TEI-XML.

There are also tools for pulling together longer texts into books.

You'll likely need to do more than a little tweaking to get it
working the way you want, but it's a solid framework for both
authoring and published book length prose.

b/

--
Brad Collins
Chenla Labs
Bangkok, Thailand

Re: Book writing mode?

[Roodwriter]

juman@jumans.net wrote:

> Is there any more then me out there who write articles, books or longer
> storys and uses Emacs? If so what mode do you use for easy editing and
> do write your text using HTML, DocBook etc or so for easy publishing?
> 
> /juman


That's exactly what I do. I'm a free-lance news reporter (local government 
and features) in the U.S. who works from home. I figure Emacs makes me at 
least a third more productive, at least I like to think so. I'm also 
working on my third book.

For news stories, which are short, I write in paragraph-indent-text-mode 
generally with refill-mode turned on. I use the block style, which is what 
you see here, because I don't need to tab so I don't have problems hitting 
the caps lock key. Plus it just seems to me more natural and quicker.

I have a macro to convert the blocks to tabbed paragraphs and long-lines 
when I'm done. This is because Emacs' hard carriage return method of line 
breaking is not what newspapers want. No editor is going to want to 
assemble lines by hand. Also it facilitates searching my old articles by 
grep, which I do daily, since for many news stories I need background 
material, or at least a small fact, like how to spell the copy machine 
company's name.

Another reason to use block style is that Emacs' tabbing is more set up for 
programmers than writers.

I have tons of words programmed into flyspell-mode to fix frequent typos, to 
capitalize uncapitalized proper nouns and to expand personal abbreviations 
I take on the fly like "gonna" for "going to" or "hs" for "high school."

I use dired after I've completed and saved my story to remove the write 
permissions for archival purposes. Faster than using an outside file 
manager. I have an index with the entire pathway to the files for which I 
have a macro that copies the name into the find-file function and pops up 
that file at the push of a button. Yup. I don't work hard.

I have a large file with phone numbers, names and titles that I always have 
going in a buffer. It's bookmarked so I can get to it easily. Since it has 
the names I can use M-/ for completion of names that tangle my fingers and 
for which I don't have flyspelled. I always have a minimum of five buffers 
going: the list of phone numbers, my schedule, notes, my current work and 
list of people I have to call.

I suspect we're getting into "More than you really wanted to know" here. But 
I think that writers that use Emacs are a little underrepresented and maybe 
we should trade productivity ideas. For example, I made a macro to take a 
date of birth (I write about criminal sentencings also), delete it and 
replace it with the proper age. Also another to perform simple addition.

I have three old Tandy 102 portables (only 32K, not Emacs compatible) that I 
use to take notes when I'm covering events and meetings. They're great for 
this. Obviously when typing furiously I make typos. Also to save time I 
take notes all in lowercase. When I get back I feed the raw notes into the 
Linux box by modem. After that I take a sed script with Emacs which fixes 
many of the typos and capitalizes many of the words. That means I have less 
fixing when cutting and pasting quotations.

When I originally started with Emacs I worked with auto-fill off so I could 
tab. Now that I don't tab I use either auto-fill on with 
auto-capitalization or with refill on without auto-capitalization. The 
refill sometimes fools the auto-capitalization and capitalizes in the wrong 
place. Since I don't really have a problem with not capitalizing words at 
the start of sentences, in the last few weeks I've been switching back to 
refill mode so I don't have to M-q.

Yeah, I switch back and forth on a lot of things.

I have refill and auto-fill modes bound to function keys so I can switch 
them on and off as the occasion demands. They're both toggles.

As you can see from my signature I've written two books. I'm working on a 
third. I wrote them using LaTeX using Auctex mode. It's quite handy (Thanks 
David Kastrup). It colors the tags and even puts in some of them using 
keyboard shortcuts. There's are even shortcuts for processing (compiling) 
the LaTeX file and popping up the viewer. Emacs and Auctex make LaTeX 
fiendishly efficient. Its only drawback is it doesn't seem to like refill 
mode so you're back to M-qing again. For printing on paper, or for making 
PDFs, LaTeX is the best.

So I've come to the conclusion that for people that spend a lot of time 
writing--professional writers and probably secretaries--Emacs is the way to 
go. The problem is that so few people want to learn something new even if 
in the long run they're working less.

I already thanked David Kastrup but there are many others, including some in 
this group, that have worked on Emacs, including the person that started it 
all, Richard Stallman. Just two more I know of are Kai Grossjohann and 
Kevin Rogers. Obviously there are many more and I would name them if I knew 
all of them. But again, thank all of you for for helping make the greatest 
writing tool in the world.


--Rod

__________

Author of "Linux for Non-Geeks--Clear-eyed Answers for Practical Consumers" 
and "Boring Stories from Uncle Rod." Both are available at 
http://www.rodwriterpublishing.com/index.html

To reply by e-mail, take the extra "o" out of the name.

Re: Book writing mode?

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

juman <juman@chello.se> writes:

> Is there any more then me out there who write articles, books or
> longer storys and uses Emacs? If so what mode do you use for
> easy editing and do write your text using HTML, DocBook etc or
> so for easy publishing?

depends on what you mean by "easy publishing".  in my lost-youth-
wandering-around-on-two-wheels phase, i found it easiest to write
and use a "trip log" program that created a simple file from
template in which i would scribble html directly.  publishing
involved fiddling w/ delicate pcmcia analog modems and phone
cords, while twisted.[1][2]

these days i find it easiest to avoid writing text altogether (not
always possible) and stick w/ code and the occasional usenet post
(and definitely not while twisted ;-).  were i to begin afresh i
would probably choose texinfo over html.

in any case, for "easy editing", probably all you need is emacs
and some time to find/grow your preferred style.  just keep an
empty line between all paragraphs and your personal tools (which
are best developed as you go) will be happy.

thi

____________________________________________
[1] http://www.glug.org/people/ttn/trips/
[2] http://www.glug.org/people/ttn/software/ttn-pers-elisp/
    (see dist-lisp-index.html and look for trl.el and wup.el)

Re: Book writing mode?

[Kevin Rodgers]

Roodwriter@core.com wrote:

> I have a macro to convert the blocks to tabbed paragraphs and long-lines 
> when I'm done. This is because Emacs' hard carriage return method of line 
> breaking is not what newspapers want. No editor is going to want to 
> assemble lines by hand. Also it facilitates searching my old articles by 
> grep, which I do daily, since for many news stories I need background 
> material, or at least a small fact, like how to spell the copy machine 
> company's name.

Check out longlines.el: http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/LongLines


-- 
Kevin Rodgers

Re: Book writing mode?

[David Abrahams]

juman@jumans.net writes:

> Is there any more then me out there who write articles, books or longer
> storys and uses Emacs? If so what mode do you use for easy editing and
> do write your text using HTML, DocBook etc or so for easy publishing?

I'm writing a book in ReStructuredText format using Emacs; see
http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html; almost done with it and ReST
has been very satisfactory for most things.  You can turn it into lots
of different output formats, including LaTeX and HTML.  There's an
rst-mode.el for it.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
http://www.boost-consulting.com

Re: Book writing mode?

[Raimund Kohl-Fuechsle]

On Wed, 26 May 2004 12:44:19 -0400
"Roodwriter@core.com" <Roodwriter@core.com> wrote:

> juman@jumans.net wrote:
> 

> > Is there any more then me out there who write articles, books or
> >longer storys and uses Emacs? If so what mode do you use for easy
> >editing and do write your text using HTML, DocBook etc or so for
> >easy publishing?
> >
> > /juman
> 

>  That's exactly what I do. I'm a free-lance news reporter (local
> government and features) in the U.S. who works from home. I figure
> Emacs makes me at least a third more productive, at least I like to
> think so. I'm also working on my third book.
> 
> [...]
>
>  As you can see from my signature I've written two books. I'm
> working on a third. I wrote them using LaTeX using Auctex mode. It's
> quite handy (Thanks David Kastrup). It colors the tags and even puts
> in some of them using keyboard shortcuts. There's are even shortcuts
> for processing (compiling) the LaTeX file and popping up the
> viewer. Emacs and Auctex make LaTeX fiendishly efficient. Its only
> drawback is it doesn't seem to like refill mode so you're back to
> M-qing again. For printing on paper, or for making PDFs, LaTeX is
> the best.

To the best of my knowlegde there is a modification of AucTeX (or so?)
to have it as a tool creating ConTeXt scripts ... I haven't had time
yet to discover on my own.  I want to mention ConTeXt for two reason:
It's far closer to ascii and it's very handsome to also produce pdf,
or pdf and ps in one process, so to say.  Postscript and pdf is
usually accepted from publishers.

ray

Re: Book writing mode?

[Roodwriter]

Kevin Rodgers wrote:

> Roodwriter@core.com wrote:
> 
>> I have a macro to convert the blocks to tabbed paragraphs and long-lines
>> when I'm done. This is because Emacs' hard carriage return method of line
>> breaking is not what newspapers want. No editor is going to want to
>> assemble lines by hand. Also it facilitates searching my old articles by
>> grep, which I do daily, since for many news stories I need background
>> material, or at least a small fact, like how to spell the copy machine
>> company's name.
> 
> Check out longlines.el: http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/LongLines
> 
> 

Forgot about that one.

Also misspelled your name. Sorry. 

--Rod

__________

Author of "Linux for Non-Geeks--Clear-eyed Answers for Practical Consumers" 
and "Boring Stories from Uncle Rod." Both are available at 
http://www.rodwriterpublishing.com/index.html

To reply by e-mail, take the extra "o" out of the name.

Re: Book writing mode?

[Roodwriter]

Roodwriter@core.com wrote:

> 
> I have tons of words programmed into flyspell-mode to fix frequent typos,
> to capitalize uncapitalized proper nouns and to expand personal
> abbreviations I take on the fly like "gonna" for "going to" or "hs" for
> "high school."
> 

Y'know. Sometimes I should just shut up. It's not flyspell-mode. It's 
abbrev-mode. Flyspell-mode points out misspelled words.

Jeez. I think I need a nap.


--Rod

__________

Author of "Linux for Non-Geeks--Clear-eyed Answers for Practical Consumers" 
and "Boring Stories from Uncle Rod." Both are available at 
http://www.rodwriterpublishing.com/index.html

To reply by e-mail, take the extra "o" out of the name.

Re: Book writing mode?

[Stefan Monnier]

> Is there any more then me out there who write articles, books or longer
> storys and uses Emacs? If so what mode do you use for easy editing and
> do write your text using HTML, DocBook etc or so for easy publishing?

I used LaTeX, together with the latex-mode in Emacs (which I spiffed up
for that occasion, some of it is in Emacs-CVS now).


        Stefan

Re: Book writing mode?

[LEE Sau Dan]

>>>>> "gebser" == gebser  <gebser@speakeasy.net> writes:

    gebser> I'm sure that latex is very nice, but if you want to get
    gebser> published, you should submit manuscripts in a format which
    gebser> the agent or editor desires.

Many academic publishers, esp. those specializing in computer science,
math, do accept LaTeX manuscripts.


    gebser> For electronic submissions this is generally Word (.doc)
    gebser> format or plain text (ASCII).

Postscript has  been the industry  standard for decades, and  more and
more electronic submissions accept also  PDF files.  Both of these can
be easiliy generated from LaTeX.


    gebser> If you're submitting only hardcopy, then this matters much
    gebser> less.  If you don't care about being published, then you
    gebser> can use whatever you want.  :)

I've published a  few journal articles and conference  papers.  I only
use LaTeX.

Nowadays, I use Emacs with AUCTeX and preview-latex.  Also 'pclcvs' so
that I can use CVS to keep track of the revisions and branches.


-- 
Lee Sau Dan                     李守敦                          ~{@nJX6X~}

E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

Re: Book writing mode?

[Peter Milliken]

Last time I looked publishers accepted Latex format - it was around before
Word and it was created to be used by publishers and the publishing of
books - something that is still not that wonderful an experience to do in
Word - the number of times I have lost work because of a Word crash......
Emacs doesn't crash and Latex does what you tell it without complaining like
Microsoft Word.

Writing with Word is like a continual battle (technical documents at least -
if you want to write a novel then I am sure it would be OK) between you and
the bugs that seem to be perpetuated from one version of Word to the next -
I guess they (the programmers) are striving for backward compatibility i.e.
the same tried and true bugs are in each version :-).

Peter



<gebser@speakeasy.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.7535.1085590987.1061.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org...
>
> I'm sure that latex is very nice, but if you want to get published, you
> should submit manuscripts in a format which the agent or editor desires.
> For electronic submissions this is generally Word (.doc) format or plain
> text (ASCII).  If you're submitting only hardcopy, then this matters
> much less.  If you don't care about being published, then you can use
> whatever you want.  :)
>
>
> At 15:36 (UTC-0000) on Wed, 26 May 2004 Michael Slass said:
>
> = juman@jumans.net writes:
> =
> = >Is there any more then me out there who write articles, books or longer
> = >storys and uses Emacs? If so what mode do you use for easy editing and
> = >do write your text using HTML, DocBook etc or so for easy publishing?
> = >
> = >/juman
> = >
> = >
> =
> = If you're going to make a habit/career of writing documents for
> = publication, and you like emacs for your text editing, I would
> = recommend that you learn to use LaTeX, a document preparation system.
> =
> = LaTeX uses embedded commmands somewhat analogous to HTML tags that
> = tell the program about the content of your document so it can
> = determine appropriate formatting.
> =
> = There is a wealth of information on the web about LaTeX, but I would
> = go buy a copy of the canonical work on the subject:
> = Lamport, Leslie, _LaTeX: A Document Preparation System, 2/E_.
> = ISBN: 0-201-52983-1
> =
> = Also, there is an excellent mode for working with LaTeX documents from
> = within emacs, called auctex, available here:
> = http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex
> =
>
>
>

Re: Book writing mode?

[Stefan Monnier]

[...]
> Emacs doesn't crash
[...]

Thanks for the praise.  I wouldn't put it so boldly, tho,


        Stefan

Re: Book writing mode?

[David Kastrup]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> [...]
> > Emacs doesn't crash
> [...]
> 
> Thanks for the praise.  I wouldn't put it so boldly, tho,

It's like "the sun is bright".  If you have just the moon for
comparison, this feels quite absolutely true.  If you are visiting
from Sirius, you'd probably laugh about that idea.

I've had Emacs (mostly the developer version) crash on me quite a bit.
But I can't remember the last time it did serious damage (auto-save
files exist, and since they are in ASCII, "inconsistent" documents are
easily repaired again).

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: Book writing mode?

[Miles Bader]

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:
> I've had Emacs (mostly the developer version) crash on me quite a bit.
> But I can't remember the last time it did serious damage (auto-save
> files exist, and since they are in ASCII, "inconsistent" documents are
> easily repaired again).

This the key for me:  crashes in Emacs are almost _never_ catastrophic,
merely annoying (and usually only a little annoying too -- typically
when I recover a file after crash, it's only missing a few words; my
biggest gripe is losing my gdb state if I was using gdb-mode).

-Miles
-- 
((lambda (x) (list x x)) (lambda (x) (list x x)))

Re: Book writing mode?

[upro]

"Peter Milliken" <peterm@resmed.com.au> writes:

> Last time I looked publishers accepted Latex format - it was around before
> Word and it was created to be used by publishers and the publishing of
> books - something that is still not that wonderful an experience to do in
> Word - the number of times I have lost work because of a Word crash......
> Emacs doesn't crash and Latex does what you tell it without complaining like
> Microsoft Word.

My publisher wouldn't accept any LaTeX format, only doc or odf, as
long as the pdf is formatted exactly as he whishes - which is not _so_
easy with LaTeX...

I use emacs for writing the contents, then, if I have to, convert it
into pdf using LaTeX or submit it as txt -- but normally I use many
different font enxodings so pdflatex is a choice once you're
proficient in LaTeX...

>
> Writing with Word is like a continual battle (technical documents at least -
> if you want to write a novel then I am sure it would be OK) between you and
> the bugs that seem to be perpetuated from one version of Word to the next -
> I guess they (the programmers) are striving for backward compatibility i.e.
> the same tried and true bugs are in each version :-).
>
> Peter
>
>
>
> <gebser@speakeasy.net> wrote in message
> news:mailman.7535.1085590987.1061.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org...
>>
>> I'm sure that latex is very nice, but if you want to get published, you
>> should submit manuscripts in a format which the agent or editor desires.
>> For electronic submissions this is generally Word (.doc) format or plain
>> text (ASCII).  If you're submitting only hardcopy, then this matters
>> much less.  If you don't care about being published, then you can use
>> whatever you want.  :)
>>
>>
>> At 15:36 (UTC-0000) on Wed, 26 May 2004 Michael Slass said:
>>
>> = juman@jumans.net writes:
>> =
>> = >Is there any more then me out there who write articles, books or longer
>> = >storys and uses Emacs? If so what mode do you use for easy editing and
>> = >do write your text using HTML, DocBook etc or so for easy publishing?
>> = >
>> = >/juman
>> = >
>> = >
>> =
>> = If you're going to make a habit/career of writing documents for
>> = publication, and you like emacs for your text editing, I would
>> = recommend that you learn to use LaTeX, a document preparation system.
>> =
>> = LaTeX uses embedded commmands somewhat analogous to HTML tags that
>> = tell the program about the content of your document so it can
>> = determine appropriate formatting.
>> =
>> = There is a wealth of information on the web about LaTeX, but I would
>> = go buy a copy of the canonical work on the subject:
>> = Lamport, Leslie, _LaTeX: A Document Preparation System, 2/E_.
>> = ISBN: 0-201-52983-1
>> =
>> = Also, there is an excellent mode for working with LaTeX documents from
>> = within emacs, called auctex, available here:
>> = http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex
>> =
>>
>>
>>
>
>

-- 
Michael

r-znvy: zvpunry.wryqra  jro.qr (chg gur "@" jurer vg svgf...)
ab fcnz cyrnfr

Re: Book writing mode?

[Micha Feigin]

On Thu, May 27, 2004 at 12:44:16AM +0200, upro wrote:
> "Peter Milliken" <peterm@resmed.com.au> writes:
> 
> > Last time I looked publishers accepted Latex format - it was around before
> > Word and it was created to be used by publishers and the publishing of
> > books - something that is still not that wonderful an experience to do in
> > Word - the number of times I have lost work because of a Word crash......
> > Emacs doesn't crash and Latex does what you tell it without complaining like
> > Microsoft Word.
> 
> My publisher wouldn't accept any LaTeX format, only doc or odf, as
> long as the pdf is formatted exactly as he whishes - which is not _so_
> easy with LaTeX...
> 

You can always use a latex to rtf converter and then open it in work
and save it as doc.

Anyway, I don't understand the word requirement. Its hell for the
publisher to format it consistently unless the author is proficient
with styles, and even then its a major head ache, and its not a very
publisher friendly format. Plus it really restricts the available
platforms. Mac looks like a much nicer platform for authors then
windows and I am not sure of the state of word for the mac (there are
surely better solutions), not to mention Linux (although you can
always use openoffice to convert to word/pdf from wither the original or
latex2rtf).

> I use emacs for writing the contents, then, if I have to, convert it
> into pdf using LaTeX or submit it as txt -- but normally I use many
> different font enxodings so pdflatex is a choice once you're
> proficient in LaTeX...
> 

The nice thing about latex is that you can write it in latex not
worrying about format and then either set up a style file that gives
the required formating or get someone to make one for. From there you
can just use pdflatex or whatever.

> >
> > Writing with Word is like a continual battle (technical documents at least -
> > if you want to write a novel then I am sure it would be OK) between you and
> > the bugs that seem to be perpetuated from one version of Word to the next -
> > I guess they (the programmers) are striving for backward compatibility i.e.
> > the same tried and true bugs are in each version :-).
> >
> > Peter
> >
> >
> >
> > <gebser@speakeasy.net> wrote in message
> > news:mailman.7535.1085590987.1061.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org...
> >>
> >> I'm sure that latex is very nice, but if you want to get published, you
> >> should submit manuscripts in a format which the agent or editor desires.
> >> For electronic submissions this is generally Word (.doc) format or plain
> >> text (ASCII).  If you're submitting only hardcopy, then this matters
> >> much less.  If you don't care about being published, then you can use
> >> whatever you want.  :)
> >>
> >>
> >> At 15:36 (UTC-0000) on Wed, 26 May 2004 Michael Slass said:
> >>
> >> = juman@jumans.net writes:
> >> =
> >> = >Is there any more then me out there who write articles, books or longer
> >> = >storys and uses Emacs? If so what mode do you use for easy editing and
> >> = >do write your text using HTML, DocBook etc or so for easy publishing?
> >> = >
> >> = >/juman
> >> = >
> >> = >
> >> =
> >> = If you're going to make a habit/career of writing documents for
> >> = publication, and you like emacs for your text editing, I would
> >> = recommend that you learn to use LaTeX, a document preparation system.
> >> =
> >> = LaTeX uses embedded commmands somewhat analogous to HTML tags that
> >> = tell the program about the content of your document so it can
> >> = determine appropriate formatting.
> >> =
> >> = There is a wealth of information on the web about LaTeX, but I would
> >> = go buy a copy of the canonical work on the subject:
> >> = Lamport, Leslie, _LaTeX: A Document Preparation System, 2/E_.
> >> = ISBN: 0-201-52983-1
> >> =
> >> = Also, there is an excellent mode for working with LaTeX documents from
> >> = within emacs, called auctex, available here:
> >> = http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex
> >> =
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> 
> -- 
> Michael
> 
> r-znvy: zvpunry.wryqra  jro.qr (chg gur "@" jurer vg svgf...)
> ab fcnz cyrnfr
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Re: Book writing mode?

[Micha Feigin]

On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 11:33:42PM +0200, LEE Sau Dan wrote:
> >>>>> "gebser" == gebser  <gebser@speakeasy.net> writes:
> 
>     gebser> I'm sure that latex is very nice, but if you want to get
>     gebser> published, you should submit manuscripts in a format which
>     gebser> the agent or editor desires.
> 
> Many academic publishers, esp. those specializing in computer science,
> math, do accept LaTeX manuscripts.
> 

Thats understandable after you recover from the first had trauma caused
by bashing you head against the wall trying to write a mathematical
equation in word ;-)

> 
>     gebser> For electronic submissions this is generally Word (.doc)
>     gebser> format or plain text (ASCII).
> 
> Postscript has  been the industry  standard for decades, and  more and
> more electronic submissions accept also  PDF files.  Both of these can
> be easiliy generated from LaTeX.
> 

Although also from just about anything else that can print. Under
windows you define a virtual postscript printer that prints to a file
(any printer driver for a postscript printer will do), under linux it
is already the default format when printing to a file (non-english can
be a pain under mozilla though).
 
> 
>     gebser> If you're submitting only hardcopy, then this matters much
>     gebser> less.  If you don't care about being published, then you
>     gebser> can use whatever you want.  :)
> 
> I've published a  few journal articles and conference  papers.  I only
> use LaTeX.
> 
> Nowadays, I use Emacs with AUCTeX and preview-latex.  Also 'pclcvs' so
> that I can use CVS to keep track of the revisions and branches.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Lee Sau Dan                     ?Z05biGVm-                          ?{@nJX6X?}
> 
> E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
> Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/?danlee
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>  
>  ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Re: Book writing mode?

[Joe Corneli]

   My publisher wouldn't accept any LaTeX format, only doc or [p]df, as
   long as the pdf is formatted exactly as he whishes - which is not _so_
   easy with LaTeX...

Maybe you can bring this difficulty up with the publisher.  If the
publisher can supply an appropriate LaTeX .sty file, it will save
future authors the formatting hassle.

Re: Book writing mode?

[gebser]

Again, I'll repeat, it depends upon what the particular editor or agent
will accept.  I've been writing and publishing on and off since the '70s
and both in the US and in Germany and have *never* encountered an editor
who requested I submit my work in latex.  It would be a disservice to
the questioner to recommend he learn and use latex unless the editor to
whom he is submitting his work will accept submissions in latex.

Would you agree that it's best to submit in a form which the editor or 
agent wants?  Or should you simply always submit all work in latex 
regardless of what the editor or agent wants?


At 23:33 (UTC+0200) on 26 May 2004 LEE Sau Dan said:

= >>>>> "gebser" == gebser  <gebser@speakeasy.net> writes:
= 
=     gebser> I'm sure that latex is very nice, but if you want to get
=     gebser> published, you should submit manuscripts in a format which
=     gebser> the agent or editor desires.
= 
= Many academic publishers, esp. those specializing in computer science,
= math, do accept LaTeX manuscripts.
= 
= 
=     gebser> For electronic submissions this is generally Word (.doc)
=     gebser> format or plain text (ASCII).
= 
= Postscript has  been the industry  standard for decades, and  more and
= more electronic submissions accept also  PDF files.  Both of these can
= be easiliy generated from LaTeX.
= 
= 
=     gebser> If you're submitting only hardcopy, then this matters much
=     gebser> less.  If you don't care about being published, then you
=     gebser> can use whatever you want.  :)
= 
= I've published a  few journal articles and conference  papers.  I only
= use LaTeX.
= 
= Nowadays, I use Emacs with AUCTeX and preview-latex.  Also 'pclcvs' so
= that I can use CVS to keep track of the revisions and branches.
= 
= 
= 

Re: Book writing mode?

[Luis O. Silva]

Hi,

On Fri, 28 May 2004 00:05:30 -0500, Joe Corneli writes:

   Joe> Maybe you can bring this difficulty up with the
   Joe> publisher.  If the publisher can supply an appropriate
   Joe> LaTeX .sty file, it will save future authors the
   Joe> formatting hassle.

I agree. LaTeX is the best option for both the writer and the
publisher. Moreover, it is difficult for me to imagine how I
could write a serious text, even when it is not so large,
without RefTeX.

Nevertheless, I've found myself, more than once, in the case
when I need just plain text; for example when your work will
be read in an e-mail and there is no way of displaying a pdf
or a dvi file. This is the case when you need just a well
formatted easy-to-read text file. Well, even in these cases, I
prefer to use LaTeX and later recur to pdftotext. This formula
works almost perfectly. The only problem may occur when you
don't write in English, as is usually the case for me :-(
Acknowledging that this is out of theme, I would appreciate
some hint of other applications for converting dvi or pdf
files to text files and that could handle different encodings.

Thanks,
luis

Re: Book writing mode?

[Kai Grossjohann]

gebser@speakeasy.net writes:

> Again, I'll repeat, it depends upon what the particular editor or agent
> will accept.  I've been writing and publishing on and off since the '70s
> and both in the US and in Germany and have *never* encountered an editor
> who requested I submit my work in latex.

Requesting LaTeX submissions and accepting LaTeX submissions are two
different things.  Lee Sau Dan said that many publishers accept LaTeX
submissions.

> Would you agree that it's best to submit in a form which the editor
> or agent wants?

This goes without saying.  However, if somebody tells you that they
accept submissions in Word, it doesn't hurt to ask whether they also
accept submissions in LaTeX.

Kai

Re: Book writing mode?

[Micha Feigin]

On Fri, May 28, 2004 at 03:55:04PM -0400, gebser@speakeasy.net wrote:
> 
> Again, I'll repeat, it depends upon what the particular editor or agent
> will accept.  I've been writing and publishing on and off since the '70s
> and both in the US and in Germany and have *never* encountered an editor
> who requested I submit my work in latex.  It would be a disservice to
> the questioner to recommend he learn and use latex unless the editor to
> whom he is submitting his work will accept submissions in latex.
> 

>From what I saw up to now, most publishers won't accept raw latex but
do accept ps or pdf, and if there are enough writers interested in
using latex they would supply a sty file to format the output the way
they want.

> Would you agree that it's best to submit in a form which the editor or 
> agent wants?  Or should you simply always submit all work in latex 
> regardless of what the editor or agent wants?
> 
> 
> At 23:33 (UTC+0200) on 26 May 2004 LEE Sau Dan said:
> 
> = >>>>> "gebser" == gebser  <gebser@speakeasy.net> writes:
> = 
> =     gebser> I'm sure that latex is very nice, but if you want to get
> =     gebser> published, you should submit manuscripts in a format which
> =     gebser> the agent or editor desires.
> = 
> = Many academic publishers, esp. those specializing in computer science,
> = math, do accept LaTeX manuscripts.
> = 
> = 
> =     gebser> For electronic submissions this is generally Word (.doc)
> =     gebser> format or plain text (ASCII).
> = 
> = Postscript has  been the industry  standard for decades, and  more and
> = more electronic submissions accept also  PDF files.  Both of these can
> = be easiliy generated from LaTeX.
> = 
> = 
> =     gebser> If you're submitting only hardcopy, then this matters much
> =     gebser> less.  If you don't care about being published, then you
> =     gebser> can use whatever you want.  :)
> = 
> = I've published a  few journal articles and conference  papers.  I only
> = use LaTeX.
> = 
> = Nowadays, I use Emacs with AUCTeX and preview-latex.  Also 'pclcvs' so
> = that I can use CVS to keep track of the revisions and branches.
> = 
> = 
> = 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Help-gnu-emacs mailing list
> Help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnu-emacs
>  
>  +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System
>  at the Tel-Aviv University CC.
> 

Re: Book writing mode?

[Joe Corneli]

   I would appreciate some hint of other applications for 
   converting dvi or pdf files to text files and that could  
   handle different encodings.

Since you were using DVI and PDF as part of the pipeline from TeX to
TXT, perhaps the program Detex would meet your need more directly.
It simply removes LaTeX formatting from a file. I'm not sure how
aware it is of different encodings but still I suspect you would see
fairly good results.

Re: Book writing mode?

[Micha Feigin]

On Fri, May 28, 2004 at 08:30:12PM -0600, Luis O. Silva wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Fri, 28 May 2004 00:05:30 -0500, Joe Corneli writes:
> 
>    Joe> Maybe you can bring this difficulty up with the
>    Joe> publisher.  If the publisher can supply an appropriate
>    Joe> LaTeX .sty file, it will save future authors the
>    Joe> formatting hassle.
> 
> I agree. LaTeX is the best option for both the writer and the
> publisher. Moreover, it is difficult for me to imagine how I
> could write a serious text, even when it is not so large,
> without RefTeX.
> 
> Nevertheless, I've found myself, more than once, in the case
> when I need just plain text; for example when your work will
> be read in an e-mail and there is no way of displaying a pdf
> or a dvi file. This is the case when you need just a well
> formatted easy-to-read text file. Well, even in these cases, I
> prefer to use LaTeX and later recur to pdftotext. This formula
> works almost perfectly. The only problem may occur when you
> don't write in English, as is usually the case for me :-(
> Acknowledging that this is out of theme, I would appreciate
> some hint of other applications for converting dvi or pdf
> files to text files and that could handle different encodings.
> 

There are several applications that can export from latex directly to
text. I don't know how they handle non-english but its worth a try.

You could try hevea for one. Exports to html/text/info. Only had an
english document to test on. Text converted ok, math had some problems.

Lyx will also convert to text and can import latex (may need some small
corrections).

You could also try one of the many latex to rtf packages and then save
as text from openoffice or rtf to text converters.

> Thanks,
> luis
> 
> 
> 
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