On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 9:38 PM, John Jason Jordan <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:59:10 -0700 > Rogan Creswick <[email protected]> dijo: > >> On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 5:51 PM, John Jason Jordan >> > lately I have been working >> > on a book that requires extensive use of characters not found on a >> > standard US keyboard. I have been tearing my hair out getting correct >> > print output. >> >> <snip> >> >> > In other cases OOo substitutes another font for certain glyphs on >> > screen, but fails to print them. And when I take the text and paste it >> > into Abiword, KWord or Scribus the glyphs drop out on screen as well as >> > in the printout. >> >> IMO, writing a book in OO.org, abiword, kword, Scribus, or even Word, >> for that mater is friken' insane. >> >> Please, please, please (re)consider using LaTeX or one of the LaTeX >> front ends (eg: KyLyX). I know that in years past you've rallied >> against the idea of using a programming language, but I strongly >> encourage you to reconsider. I won't belabor the benefits of LaTeX, >> because I know we've been over this before (Given the number and >> gravity of the issues you're having here, it seems like it'd be worth >> revisiting the problems you had with LaTeX in years past--I'm pretty >> sure I've tried to get you to switch before ;) > > I am not smart enough to learn TeX. Besides, anyone who would use > something like TeX to layout a document must be freakin' nuts. :)
Taking the spirit of what Rogan said and applying your complaint with LaTeX, you could look at an alternative to LaTeX such as docbook or reST (re-structured text). Something Rogan probably didn't mention is that he writes proposals at work fairly often and he has considerable experience authoring and collaborating in Word, OO.org and LaTeX. I recently went through the thesis writing processes in LaTeX and I understand intimately why someone would choose a different system. The next time I go to write something the size of a book I will try learning docbook myself. But, the bottom line is, the extra time I spent fighting with LaTeX is nothing compared to the time I would have spent fussing with Word or OO.org. > Besides, I suspect I would have the same problems printing the TeX > document. There is a problem with fonts and CUPS on Intrepid. That's fine. The the fonts/CUPS problems on Intrepid are orthogonal to the merits of the markup language you choose, or not, to use. And good luck with CUPS, I hope you get it working to satisfaction. But, I will say that mostly people generate pdf from LaTeX, and a pdf may just render those special characters as vector graphics or use a font that is part of TeX -- so you may actually have different luck, I'm not sure. Jason _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
