Hey Esther, thank you very much for the amazing info. Now to just go
and learn how to use this stuff. :) I got a little time off to try and
work with this and see what I can do.
tnx
On Dec 28, 2008, at 12:56 PM, Esther wrote:
Justin and Scott,
There are ways to change a LaTeX document into a Word format
document. They're just rather painful, because they usually aren't
fully automatic. I found two relevant pages for APA style:
• "Writing a research methods paper in APA style using LaTeX" at:
http://www.personality-project.org/revelle/syllabi/205/apa.style.html
This page is actually quite useful, especially if you read "The
LaTeX example document" section and the succeeding sections. The
linked entries show the starting LaTeX document (with lots of
comment lines -- all the lines that start with "%") and the output
PDF manuscript. The next section shows how you can change the
argument of the style file and get output formatted manuscript
(double-spaced) or journal (single-spaced, 2-column) output.
(The only comment I have is that you had to read through too many
pages and links to get to the actual style file links)
• "Tools for Converting APA-format LaTeX files to MSWord" from the
web page "Misc OpenSource Software from Randall O'Reilly" at:
http://psych.colorado.edu/~oreilly/misc_software.html#ltxapa2rtf
This person customized the APA style files to extend support to more
complex citation formats. He's actually talking about a
preprocessor he wrote called ltxapa2rtf and then using a standard
LaTeX to RTF converter called latex2rtf (link to SourceForge given
at the web page). The problem is that you usually have to clean up
lots of things by hand. However, you might want to read this page to
check out his templates for Open Office.
I do recommend that Scott take a look at the first link, because
that seems to be a full description about how to use LaTeX for APA
style papers. I'd skip over the detailed links about APA style at
the start of the page, because that's material that Scott already
has from his course. The later sections deal with the mechanics of
using LaTeX with APA style and give examples of bibliographies.
HTH
Cheers,
Esther
On Dec 26, 2008, at 9:34 AM, Justin Harford wrote:
I'm sorry to say there is no way to change a LaTeX document with
editing elements so extensive as a bibliography and headers, to a
MS word format. This might be where the PDF bibliography combined
with MS word report would be a good idea if you could get your
teacher to accept the PDF. Hmm, maybe you could use Nisus, I think
with some fiddling you could make it do the needed headers.
Doublespacing is easy with it, and footnotes at least are doable.
And it doesn't have smart text so doing the spaces the second line
of each bib entry could maybe be managable. Otherwise I wonder if
you couldn't use multiple word processors. Like maybe OO does
headers better, and Nisus does bib better?
Sure would be nice if they'd accept PDF, I never thought I'd find
electronic homework turn-in so repulsive.
Regards
Justin Harford
On Dec 26, 2008, at 3:30 AM, Scott Howell wrote:
Justin, I do have an interest in Latex if there's a way to turn
out the documents in more than pdf. If I can get instructors to
accept the pdf files then I'm good, but if not, I'll have to find
some other format. If they could even be exported/saved etc. as
rtf files, that would be a good deal. I have not had the
opportunity to dig very far into this, but if you can tell me what
I need to get started and if I can do a bit of rtfm to get up and
running, this might be a solution. I know I saddly haven't enough
hours to really learn all there is to know, but I have done a
little html coding in the past, so inserting characters into my
document as I type won't be a problem for me. Hell if I could type
in commands to center text and all that stuff, at least I'd know I
was getting what I wanted instead of assuming the word processor
actually did it.
I'm going to go out and try to dig up the package you mentioned
and if there is a particular document I should read that would
help me get up and going as quickly as possible., please let me
know.
tnx
On Dec 25, 2008, at 11:03 PM, Justin Harford wrote:
Me too. Not that I would be planning on changing over to
wigiwise word formatting, but I am always interested to know
what's crackin in the mac VO world for normal people who don't
feel like spending hours of their time glooed to a computer
getting headaches over buggy LaTeX documents etc. Not that
that's how it is anymore for me, but the learning curve was a bit
steep.
Now I did write some papers on the mac using textedit a few years
back when I first got it. They turned out fine. I was able to
do doublespacing and that was about as complex as I needed to
make it. I actually had to open the docs in MS word under win to
format with headers.
The impression I have got lately with the short looks I have
taken at wigiwise word processors under OS X such as OO, and
Nisus, has been that it is fine if all you need to do is some
bold and italicized text, double or 1.5 line spacing, a footnote
or endnote here and there, and a big bold title, but for people
with more serious word processing needs such as headers and
footers, and these weird requirements for bibliographies imposed
by the APA society, among others, the word processing world under
mac just doesn't cut it. Note that I am only refering to the
wigiwise processors. As well this does not imply that I have
ever successfully done any of this stuff under windows. My
personal experience has been that before I changed over to the
mac, I never really took word processing seriously, and since my
switch, the quality of my written documents has improved, thanks
to the LaTeX document preparation system with voiceover. Mac OS
X with voiceover offers a LaTeX experience like no other I have
worked with. it is easy to install, it is pleasant to type and
read with, it is relyable, and it just works. I have tried to
use LaTeX solutions under win and found it difficult to read the
error log which is very important for typesetting, and that
typing latex with JAWS just wasn't as enjoyable. I also tried it
under linux and found that nice, but I definitely prefer my mac.
So again, I could be one of those people who contends that
wordprocessing under the mac is better than win based on my own
experiences, but that would not be taking into consideration the
fact that I had to learn to typeset with LaTeX to get any
compelling output from my machine. I would like to note also
that I have tried in the past to query this list for tips on
working with wigiwise to get no answer. All that said, if
someone would like to write us on this and tell us what they have
accomplished with OO or Nisus in terms of word processing, I
would be quite happy. As well if anyone ever decides to take the
LaTeX root, I am always here if you have a buggy document that is
giving you problems, or if you just have a typesetting question.
I am used to these sorts of emails as I teach a class on this
very subject at UC Berkeley. As well I'm sure that Esther would
be willing to do the same.
Regards
Justin Harford
On Dec 25, 2008, at 6:17 PM, David Poehlman wrote:
I'm hoping that someone will post on this but they may actually
hang out on the macvoiceover list.
On Dec 24, 2008, at 6:49 PM, Justin Harford wrote:
Hi David
folk are having pretty good luck with oo.
What have people managed to work out with its word processor?
Scott Howell
[email protected]
Scott Howell
[email protected]
