Re: Thesis/Dissertation authoring application
On Apr 24 2005, Andrey Andreev wrote:
> You would probably also want to check XFig, gnuplot, etc.
Of course, as can be seen by this thread, most "serious" documents are
typed with LaTeX and if you want a good typesetting environment, then I
guess that you should install Debian's tetex.
Install tetex-extra and tetex-doc if you have the space. Using Emacs +
AUCTeX + RefTeX + preview-latex + makeindex + bibtex is highly recommended,
with lots of documentation regarding how to prepare basic (and not so
basic) documents.
There are many introductory documents out there in PDF format (since it is
soooo easy to create beautiful PDF documents with hyperlinks to the WWW if
you wish), but I highly recommend Leslie Lamport's "LaTeX: A Document
Preparation System" and, after that, "The LaTeX Companion".
Another good resource of wisdom on the system is the comp.text.tex
newsgroup (Usenet *isn't* dead, contrary to popular belief!).
You really won't believe how beautiful your documents will be and how you
could live without LaTeX for producing texts (of course, it *is* possible
to generate bad-looking documents with a good tool, but LaTeX makes it hard
to deviate from the "normal" ways one should typeset the documents).
Oh, and, BTW, if you're in the field of Computer Science, be sure to check
the algorithms package (see my signature for more information). I hope to
update it frequently with many improvements and suggestions that I have
already received.
I also second the recommendation of using xfig for creating figures or
diagrams. It is a good compromise if you don't want to learn metapost (a
language for generating postscript figures).
The only problem, in my experience, is my lack of talent to draw things
that can match the quality of the output that LaTeX generates. :-)
And all this with the lack of platform dependency (read: complete
portability of your texts, written by you and owned by you, without any
necessity of using a proprietary system to gain access to your intellectual
property).
Hope this helps, Rogério Brito.
--
Rogério Brito : rbrito@ime.usp.br : http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito
Homepage of the algorithms package : http://algorithms.berlios.de
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