On Tue, Jan 18, 2000 at 12:26:32PM -0800, Jay Hays wrote:
> Most esteemed gurus of the linux path, this newbie is in need of
> guidance/suggestions. I have Slakware 4.0 installed with the
> 2.2.6 kernel, and I would like to learn how to be able to get
> output like I get from the Winderz Off. 97 program. I don't have
> any snazzy Word Processing programs set up. I am hoping that
> emacs, which I am also in the larval stages with, is capable of
> giving me esthetically pleasing output that will awe my college
> professors. Presently I can "cat filename | lpr" and it dumps
> the text file to the printer. I suspect there is a more
> sophisticated way to obtain a more formal output, but I haven't
> made it there yet. I have tried searching down what HOWTO's I
> could find and one suggested APSfilter, which I tried setting up
> but eventhough I didn't get any nasty/criptic messages, and it
> appeared to do whatever it was supposed to do, and I really don't
> have any idea what that was, I'm still lost. I suspect there is
> something I needed to learn that I missed, so
> guidance/suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in
> advance!..Jay Hays
Two different routes come to mind. I've used both in various classes
here at different times.
1) WordPerfect from Corel. I used that one when my prof insisted on
receiving Word files - had no troubles other than getting the damn
thing set-up (some library troubles - don't remember how I solved them).
It's the typical GUI word processor.
2) Latex. It's a markup language - same basic concept as HTML but Latex
is aimed at producing a printed final product. It's *outstanding* for
doing papers that require mathematical equations - after all that's
what is was designed for in the first place. If you are comfortable
doing HTML by hand Latex should be a snap. There's also a GUI tool
called Lyx - I've only looked at it briefly but it seems to work well.
Lyx will generate the Latex code behind the scenes for you as you generate
a document in the standard GUI fashion, but will then let you get to the
raw Latex code if you want to do fine-tuning.
The final product is usually a Postscript file, but there are tools to
produce other formats such as HTML, PDF, text, etc ... I usually go
to Postscript.
These two are very different routes, designed for doing different types of
documents. I've used Latex more than WordPerfect - even doing essays for
English classes in Latex. There are certainly many other choices out there -
these are the two I'm most familiar with.
--
Mike Werner KA8YSD | "Where do you want to go today?"
ICQ# 12934898 | "As far from Redmond as possible!"
'91 GS500E |
Morgantown WV | Only dead fish go with the flow.
