[texhax] syllabus (fwd)

Robin Fairbairns Robin.Fairbairns at cl.cam.ac.uk
Fri Oct 1 08:57:26 CEST 2004


"bobby" top-posted:

> On Thu, 30 Sep 2004, Walt Burkhard wrote:
> > how about tex rather than latex?
> 
> you know, call me a newbie, but i'm not too clear on the difference.
> i know that latex is just tex with a buch of macros already defined,
> but i dont really know the difference.

thus far you're right.

> maybe if someone can sum them up, i'd learn that tex would be good enough.

the typeset documented source, with indexes, comes to something in the
order of 700pp of a4.  a convenient summing-up might be "they're
pretty complicated".  which really isn't enough; learning tex is a
good precursor of learning how to duplicate the functionality of
latex, but latex has a lot of useful structures embedded in it that
are useful stuff for the knowledgeable programmer.

> to add, i could write my own in latex, but most of what i do is articles
> and papers, and i suspect that if i just wrote it in article class, it
> would not be the most efficient way to go about it.  that's why i ask for
> some models.

a self-confessed newbie is well-advised to look for examples.  but, as
when i was starting (pre-ctan[*], on my simple problem of memorandum
macros) there don't seem to me to be any publicly-available examples
of syllabus macros.  so you're stuck with doing a deeper search than i
have (i just used http://www.tex.ac.uk/CTANfind.html), or ploughing
ahead on your own.

[*] when i started there wasn't any www, either; to look further than
i have, i would suggest google (or whatever).  



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