[texhax] Address Book
Lars Madsen
daleif at imf.au.dk
Sat Feb 7 09:18:00 CET 2009
Perry Smith wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I need to produce what is essentially an address book. At least one
> section of the book, (the section I'm worried about) is a sequence of
> what I'll call "stanzas". The first line is the person's name. Then
> company. Then address. Then other items like web address, email,
> etc. The end customer wants two column output and wants a stanza to
> not ever be split. Then, whatever stanzas fit in a particular column
> will be equally spaced out.
>
> I know TeX can do this fairly easily. I've used TeX in the distant
> past. Both Plain TeX and LaTeX. The page also has some decorations
> like a line down the middle to divide the two columns and a header and
> page number in the footer. Two sided output where the header flips on
> even and odd pages.
>
> Questions:
>
> 1) Is there a pre-written set of macros that would give me a leg up on
> this?
>
> 2) I've used LaTeX and Plan TeX. The default output of LaTeX never
> pleased me. And, for that matter, Computer Modern Roman font never
> lite my fire either. At the time (and environment) I used TeX, I
> could not switch fonts, etc. (This was back in 1984-88 on a Unix
> machine.) I'm using a Mac now with the latest Tug distribution. Is
> changing fonts going to be a problem?
>
> 3) The classic question: would you recommend LaTeX or Plain TeX for
> this? I'm leaning towards Plain TeX but its been a long time and I'm
> sure things have changed. The other sections of the book are very
> trivial to format.
>
> Thank you for your help and advice,
> Perry
>
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I don't see any problems about using LaTeX for this, I would using
something like multicol(s) plus a minipage around each stanza.
regarding fonts, see http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/ for other samples
--
/daleif
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