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Unless you have the mindset of a programmer and enjoy writing
everything from scratch, I would go with XeLaTeX rather than plain
XeTeX.<br>
<br>
William's advice about gradually locating packages that will help
you is good. I have used the memoir class to typeset a fairly
complex book (side margins, many tables, etc.). Memoir gives you a
lot of control over your page layout. Its documentation is
excellent and very extensive. As is usually the case with computer
stuff, power = complexity; you might want to work for a bit with one
of the simpler classes to get the hang of how things are done in
XeLaTex before plunging into learning memoir (or koma, which I don't
have experience with). <br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 4/26/2018 8:20 AM, Carrs wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:9563b627-7c59-f6e5-30d4-683a2bf9fd0a@sil.org">
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<p>Hi,</p>
<p>a newbie question. I would like advice on which TeX-based
software it would be best to learn in detail for my typesetting
plans. So far, I have learned a little TeX and a little LaTeX,
but not enough of either to tell me which will work best for me.</p>
<p>The features I want to be able to typeset are:<br>
</p>
<p>+ Roman script, in a Unicode environment. Some of the documents
will have special characters, but nothing exotic. (So I am
thinking XeTeX or XeLaTeX or something else Unicode-y ...)<br>
</p>
<p>+ handles a document with plenty of styles e.g. dictionary<br>
</p>
<p>+ double or single column on the page<br>
</p>
<p>+ can place cross references at bottom of page, or in L or R
margin lined up with caller, or in text area at end of
paragraph, or in text area at end of section.</p>
<p>+ plenty of illustrations of various sizes (that have to share
the page with footnotes, cross references etc)<br>
</p>
<p>+ the range of the paragraph numbers on a page can be shown in
its header</p>
<p>+ with numbered sentences, can place the number in the margin
without messing up the paragraphing.</p>
<p>Other features I am looking for:<br>
</p>
<p>+ runs on Linux (and preferably also on Windows and Mac)</p>
<p>+ no recurring license fees</p>
<p>+ ideally would have some pre-existing materials/courses to
help me learn to use it<br>
</p>
<p>If all the software can do these things, I would appreciate any
recommendations you can make regarding the strengths and
weaknesses of the various options there are.</p>
<p>thanks<br>
</p>
<p>Chris</p>
<br>
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