Re: need suggestion on book
On 2011-06-26, Steve Litt wrote: > On Sunday 26 June 2011 15:09:41 Shantanu N Kulkarni wrote: > On my setup, Century Schoolbook is the least pale font. I use Century > Schoolbook on all my books, although I'm looking for a more screen- > readable font for my pure eBooks. Free screen-optimized fonts are e.g. DejaVu (package Bera in standard TeX or via (Lua|Xe)TeX) and Googles Droid fonts (also available for standard TeX on CTAN but not (yet) supported by LyX's font GUI (i.e. set to Default and load the package in the user preamble). Günter
Re: need suggestion on book
On Sunday 26 June 2011 17:38:12 Trevor Jenkins wrote: > On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 10:13 PM, Steve Litt wrote: > > > I am interested in which font do I use, because usually lyx > > > fonts are somewhat "pale". > > > > On my setup, Century Schoolbook is the least pale font. I use > > Century Schoolbook on all my books, although I'm looking for a > > more screen- readable font for my pure eBooks. > > Some recent work has suggested that "readable" fonts are not that > useful. Try listening to this segment of the BBC's premier morning > news programme, the Today Programme. > > http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_936/9360166.stm > > Or there's a printed report on the Telegraph's web site > > http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/amazon/8256899/E-readers-too- > easy-to-read.html > > Alternatively you can read comments from a neuroscientist about the > research on the blogs reachable from here > > https://policypress.wordpress.com/tag/jonah-lehrer/ > > Or there's a pre-print of the original paper that started this > series of news reports to be had here > > http://web.princeton.edu/sites/opplab/papers/Diemand-Yauman_Oppenhe > imer_2010.pdf :-) Statistics are a funny thing. If my readers were all between 18 and 40, paid to read and remember, and need only read for 90 seconds at a time, I'd indeed use a less readable font. But the two studies you quote have little to do with my readers. My readers tend to skew 30-60, so a lot of them have very real visual problems. I'm not going to subject them to skinny little Times Roman or Paladino. My latest book, which I hope to offer for sale around midnight tonight, is 110,000 words. I'm not going to make the visually challenged pull out a software magnifying glass, or horizontal scroll every line for 110,000 words. That's just not the way I roll. Disfluent fonts will simply cause many of my readers to stop in the middle of an otherwise good book. One of the quoted studies showed a 14% increase in retention with disfluent fonts. Fine -- I'll use fluent fonts and write 30% more interestingly. That way people of all visual acuities will benefit. SteveT Steve Litt Recession Relief Package http://www.recession-relief.US Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt
Re: need suggestion on book
On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 9:09 PM, Shantanu N Kulkarni wrote: > I am interested in which font do I use, because usually lyx fonts > are somewhat "pale". > In many cases the fonts pre-selected by default are indeed ghastly. Personally I tend to stick to Palatino & Optima (URW Classico) or Libertine & Biolinum (when using XeTeX). I'm not sure if they fit your perceptions of pale. Regards Liviu
Re: need suggestion on book
On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 10:13 PM, Steve Litt wrote: > > I am interested in which font do I use, because usually lyx fonts > > are somewhat "pale". > > On my setup, Century Schoolbook is the least pale font. I use Century > Schoolbook on all my books, although I'm looking for a more screen- > readable font for my pure eBooks. > Some recent work has suggested that "readable" fonts are not that useful. Try listening to this segment of the BBC's premier morning news programme, the Today Programme. http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_936/9360166.stm Or there's a printed report on the Telegraph's web site http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/amazon/8256899/E-readers-too-easy-to-read.html Alternatively you can read comments from a neuroscientist about the research on the blogs reachable from here https://policypress.wordpress.com/tag/jonah-lehrer/ Or there's a pre-print of the original paper that started this series of news reports to be had here http://web.princeton.edu/sites/opplab/papers/Diemand-Yauman_Oppenheimer_2010.pdf Regards, Trevor. <>< Re: deemed!
Re: need suggestion on book
On Sunday 26 June 2011 15:09:41 Shantanu N Kulkarni wrote: > * Marcelo Acu?a [110626 09:18]: > > > 2. Yes, I remember this is a lyx list, but ... are there > > > any advantages or > > > writing this book in plain latex instead of lyx? > > > > If you work in plain latex, while you write it, you get a text > > pestered with commands. That makes difficult the work to write > > up and to correct the text. > > Thanks all for the mails and rightly said. > I have almost decided to go ahead using tufte book class, since one > of the members of the list highly recommened it. > > The book might have maximum of 100 pages, so do I write it as one > document only or have one main and other child documents. With LyX's high efficiency and the speed of modern computers, I see no upside to the complication of child documents -- I do all my books as a monolithic file, and it makes things very easy. > I am interested in which font do I use, because usually lyx fonts > are somewhat "pale". On my setup, Century Schoolbook is the least pale font. I use Century Schoolbook on all my books, although I'm looking for a more screen- readable font for my pure eBooks. SteveT Steve Litt Recession Relief Package http://www.recession-relief.US Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt
Re: need suggestion on book
* Marcelo Acu?a [110626 09:18]: > > 2. Yes, I remember this is a lyx list, but ... are there > > any advantages or > > writing this book in plain latex instead of lyx? > > If you work in plain latex, while you write it, you get a text pestered > with commands. That makes difficult the work to write up and to correct the > text. > Thanks all for the mails and rightly said. I have almost decided to go ahead using tufte book class, since one of the members of the list highly recommened it. The book might have maximum of 100 pages, so do I write it as one document only or have one main and other child documents. I am interested in which font do I use, because usually lyx fonts are somewhat "pale". Shantanu --
Re: need suggestion on book
On Saturday 25 June 2011 22:09:36 Liviu Andronic wrote: > On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 1:52 AM, Steve Litt wrote: > > On Saturday 25 June 2011 19:17:18 Marcelo Acuña wrote: > >> > 2. Yes, I remember this is a lyx list, but ... are there > >> > any advantages or > >> > writing this book in plain latex instead of lyx? > >> > >> If you work in plain latex, while you write it, you get a text > >> pestered with commands. That makes difficult the work to write > >> up and to correct the text. > >> > >> Marcelo > > > > I couldn't have said it better myself. And because of what > > Marcelo said, I find LyX is a MUCH faster authoring environment > > than anything in which I need to see markup. > > As much as I agree with this, the one drawback of LyX is that you > have to put up with its bugs. The big advantage of using LaTeX is > its reliability: as long as you know exactly what you do, you only > need a robust text editor (or another, or yet another one) to do > the job. LyX on the other hand can throw surprises from time to > time. Hi Liviu, Yes, LaTeX reliability is indeed a pro-LaTeX factor. Another pro-LaTeX factor is simplicity. Not simplicity from the typist's viewpoint -- LyX is simpler from that point of view. But when you start doing complex stuff and making your own commands and environments, LyX is more complex. Plus LyX native format is different from LaTeX, and you need to use both. For all these reasons, when I create a Beamer presentation, I use LaTeX with Vim rather than LyX. I find the former less complex. SteveT Steve Litt Recession Relief Package http://www.recession-relief.US Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt
Re: need suggestion on book
On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 3:09 AM, Liviu Andronic wrote: > I couldn't have said it better myself. And because of what Marcelo > > said, I find LyX is a MUCH faster authoring environment than anything > > in which I need to see markup. > > > As much as I agree with this, the one drawback of LyX is that you have > to put up with its bugs... That is true of *every* piece of software. I'm sure that Knuth would say there are still bugs in TeX; not many since it's at version 3.14159... but there are some. And when it finally comes time to bump the version number to PI there will still be bugs in it. His old colleague Edsger Dijkstra said you can't test for the absence of bugs only their presence. > The big advantage of using LaTeX is its > reliability: as long as you know exactly what you do, you only need a > robust text editor (or another, or yet another one) to do the job. Yup, by choice I'd use emacs (because I prefer to markup my client's document using DOcBook and LyX's support for that is not robust or general enough). > LyX on the other hand can throw surprises from time to time. > > This said, LyX is generally rock-solid. See above; emacs is usually rock solid but even that throws surprises. Hey Adobe is finding and fixing day zero bugs in Acrobat and Flash. Regards, Trevor. <>< Re: deemed!
Re: need suggestion on book
On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 04:09:36 +0200 Liviu Andronic wrote: > On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 1:52 AM, Steve Litt > wrote: > > On Saturday 25 June 2011 19:17:18 Marcelo Acuña wrote: > >> > 2. Yes, I remember this is a lyx list, but ... are there > >> > any advantages or > >> > writing this book in plain latex instead of lyx? > >> > >> If you work in plain latex, while you write it, you get a text > >> pestered with commands. That makes difficult the work to write up > >> and to correct the text. > >> > >> Marcelo > > > > I couldn't have said it better myself. And because of what Marcelo > > said, I find LyX is a MUCH faster authoring environment than > > anything in which I need to see markup. > > > As much as I agree with this, the one drawback of LyX is that you have > to put up with its bugs. The big advantage of using LaTeX is its > reliability: as long as you know exactly what you do, you only need a > robust text editor (or another, or yet another one) to do the job. LyX > on the other hand can throw surprises from time to time. > > This said, LyX is generally rock-solid. Cheers I agree also, but I have an old very large project with lots of custom macros that simply won't translate well into LyX. I use emacs + auctex + reftex and find it very good. Auctex supplies a "folding" mode that allows you to hide most of the markup (actually, as much or as little as you want). Not quite a slick as LyX, but not far behind either. It is a viable alternative. Cheers, Alan > Liviu -- Alan L Tyreehttp://www2.austlii.edu.au/~alan Tel: 04 2748 6206
Re: need suggestion on book
On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 1:52 AM, Steve Litt wrote: > On Saturday 25 June 2011 19:17:18 Marcelo Acuña wrote: >> > 2. Yes, I remember this is a lyx list, but ... are there >> > any advantages or >> > writing this book in plain latex instead of lyx? >> >> If you work in plain latex, while you write it, you get a text >> pestered with commands. That makes difficult the work to write up >> and to correct the text. >> >> Marcelo > > I couldn't have said it better myself. And because of what Marcelo > said, I find LyX is a MUCH faster authoring environment than anything > in which I need to see markup. > As much as I agree with this, the one drawback of LyX is that you have to put up with its bugs. The big advantage of using LaTeX is its reliability: as long as you know exactly what you do, you only need a robust text editor (or another, or yet another one) to do the job. LyX on the other hand can throw surprises from time to time. This said, LyX is generally rock-solid. Cheers Liviu
Re: need suggestion on book
On Saturday 25 June 2011 19:17:18 Marcelo Acuña wrote: > > 2. Yes, I remember this is a lyx list, but ... are there > > any advantages or > > writing this book in plain latex instead of lyx? > > If you work in plain latex, while you write it, you get a text > pestered with commands. That makes difficult the work to write up > and to correct the text. > > Marcelo I couldn't have said it better myself. And because of what Marcelo said, I find LyX is a MUCH faster authoring environment than anything in which I need to see markup. StevET Steve Litt Recession Relief Package http://www.recession-relief.US Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt
Re: need suggestion on book
> 2. Yes, I remember this is a lyx list, but ... are there > any advantages or > writing this book in plain latex instead of lyx? If you work in plain latex, while you write it, you get a text pestered with commands. That makes difficult the work to write up and to correct the text. Marcelo
need suggestion on book
Hi all, I am going to write a small (100 pages) book on specific Perl topics. This will be given as notes in my session. Can anyone please help me with these queries? 1. I plan to make it 5x7 or 5x8 with class as memoir or koma. I want to avoid tufte book cos I do not have many footnotes and I will waste space. Am I right in my selection? 2. Yes, I remember this is a lyx list, but ... are there any advantages or writing this book in plain latex instead of lyx? Thanks. Shantanu