[math-fun] Re: Tool for writing mathematical documents
Thanks for all the suggestions on a math paper tool. I guess I should have been more specific. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Choice of language I am stuck with Windows XP Home, and I am sometimes tempted to write papers for the JIS, but I'm daunted by the task. If I had looked at the current JIS home page, I wouldn't have had to ask about the format, since the JIS accepts only LaTex documents. That settles the format issue. Besides, the overwhelming majority of recommendations were to use LaTeX anyway. AMS articles require AMS LaTeX, but I don't think I'm in danger of writing one of those for the moment. I am not exactly sure what TeX is all about. I used to think it was pretty much a markup language, a format as it were. But now it appears that there are associated fonts and other baggage. I'll have to educate myself better on TeX. I'll check out MikTeX when I can. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Choice of editor With regards to wysiwyg equation editor versus text editor, I think it is a moot issue. The best of all possible worlds includes both. The equation editor makes the big projects and messy equations tractable and gives you a view of the final product, while the text editor helps you do the fine tuning. Most enviroments have at least a text editor, so the issue boils down to whether the word processor includes an TeX-capable equation editor. Here are the suggestions I got for editors: TeXmacs. On the plus side, a true TeX editor. Installs under Cygwin, which I already use. Looks as if the TeXmacs project envisions broad support for TeX. On the downside, I'm not a Lisp weenie, so emacs will be a learning curve. Hopefully one can configure and use emacs without having to know Lisp indepth. Also, I remember that emacs used to have a "vi" mode for us "vi" weenies. Definitely worth a look. OpenOffice. I had a short experience with StarOffice, a precursor to OpenOffice, as a means to deal with MS Word files on an UNIX system. I don't know much about the Writer word processor. It seems to have equation writing capabilties, but is not TeX capable. Open to education on this point though. TeX Live and Kile appear to be non-Windows; ego I can't use them. MS Word. I am a reluctant Microsoft user. I hear the warnings that MS Word has problems for large documents, and I believe it. MS apps aren't widely used because they are reliable. I'm still using Word '97. I haven't tried Works Word Processor. Word has a pretty lame equation editor, which can be upgraded to Design Science's MathType editor for $130. MathType apparently gives you math capabilities in Word, HTML, and the major TeX variants. I have had good experiences with Design Science's MathPlayer. As far as Eequation suggested by Steve Gray, I can't seem to find it on the Web, a link would be good. If I choose to avoid MathType, I can use Chikrii Softlab's Word2Tex to convert Word to TeX, for $99. Also, I heed the warnings that MS Word itself has problems for large documents. ASCIIMathML will be very useful to me, thanks Mr. Stay. - David W. Wilson "Truth is just truth -- You can't have opinions about the truth." - Peter Shickele, from P.D.Q. Bach's oratorio "The Seasonings"
----- Original Message ----- From: "David Wilson" <davidwwilson@comcast.net>
I am not exactly sure what TeX is all about. I used to think it was pretty much a markup language, a format as it were. But now it appears that there are associated fonts and other baggage. I'll have to educate myself better on TeX. I'll check out MikTeX when I can. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Choice of editor
With regards to wysiwyg equation editor versus text editor, I think it is a moot issue. The best of all possible worlds includes both. The equation editor makes the big projects and messy equations tractable and gives you a view of the final product, while the text editor helps you do the fine tuning. Most enviroments have at least a text editor, so the issue boils down to whether the word processor includes an TeX-capable equation editor.
From my experience, the best choice of (La)TeX environment for Windows (XP or not XP) is MiKTeX (complete), http://www.miktex.org/setup.html and the best TeX editor for it (configured for working with MiKTeX by default) is TeXnicCenter, http://www.toolscenter.org/front_content.php?idcat=50 . It is not wysiwyg, but the output can be produced and seen just by clicking 2 buttons - build and view, so it is as close to wysiwyg as a TeX editor can be.
Alec Mihailovs http://math.tntech.edu/alec/
I am stuck with Windows XP Home, and I am sometimes tempted to write papers for the JIS, but I'm daunted by the task. If I had looked at the current JIS home page, I wouldn't have had to ask about the format, since the JIS accepts only LaTex documents. That settles the format issue. Besides, the overwhelming majority of recommendations were to use LaTeX anyway. AMS articles require AMS LaTeX, but I don't think I'm in danger of writing one of those for the moment.
What I recommend: Install Ghostview for looking at postscript files. Install MiKTeX. Put \MiKTeX\Main\miktex\bin on your path. Download http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/journals/JIS/VOL8/Stay/stay44.tex and put it in your working directory. MiKTeX doesn't have a couple of the style files that JIS uses installed by default, so put a % sign in front of lines 17, 20, and 40 to comment them out. 17: %\usepackage{fullpage} 20: %\usepackage{psfig} 40: %\leavevmode\epsffile{logo129.eps} The JIS editors will uncomment those. At a command prompt in your working directory: copy con texps.bat @echo off latex %1.tex latex %1.tex dvips %1.dvi del *.log del *.aux del *.dvi<CTRL Z> This takes the filename (no extension) of a tex document in the current directory and renders it to postscript. One line is repeated twice because TeX uses a two-pass system to make sure references are OK. It also deletes all the intermediate files. You wouldn't want to do this if you were writing a book, but for small articles it's fine. In this case, at the command prompt in your working directory type texps stay44 The result will be a .ps article without the JIS logo.
From here, make a copy of the file and name it template.tex, then strip out the abstract, sections, and bibitems. Compile the blank article to make sure you didn't strip too much. Copy the template; name it after your article.
Now you can write up your article. If you want to do something in TeX, find someone else's article that does something similar, download it, and look at the source. When you want to see your work, rerun the texps batch file. The compilation will stop and give you a line number and position in the line if it thinks something went wrong. <Return> lets it take a guess at a correction; <x> abandons the compilation. Use Ghostview to look at the result. It will refresh when you switch focus, so you can see what your changes look like. Make sure you follow the guidelines on writing style and bibliography found on the JIS homepage. Mine was returned a few times because I didn't do everything just right. -- Mike Stay staym@clear.net.nz http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~msta039
participants (3)
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Alec Mihailovs -
David Wilson -
M. Stay