Editorial — LaTeXniques
- Articles
The articles in this issue describe LaTeX techniques that can make creating documents easier and more efficient. Each author has taken great care to present topics and techniques that have worked for them and may work for you as well.
Fabien Leboeuf is a medical researcher who has been working on creating patient summaries containing graphics, photos, videos, and more from a variety of sources, and combining them into a unified PDF file (LaTeX patient summaries). The comprehensive reports he has generated have been well-received by the staff at the hospital where he works, and the techniques he describes will be useful in other disciplines as well.
The next article, Integrating LaTeX and Moodle Questionnaires, L. Garcia-Forte and others, shows a technique similar to Leboeuf's but for combining teaching materials generated by different applications into a unified document using LaTeX.
Ryan Higginbottom is a mathematics professor who has developed an amazingly complete LaTeX course for undergraduates (Teaching LaTeX at a Liberal Arts College). His course has 15 lecture sessions with accompanying hands-on projects. In addition to reading his article, be sure to visit his LaTeX Course lectures and materials web site.
Lenore Horner is a physics professor who has put together a set of LaTeX tools for creating teaching materials (LaTeX teaching techniques). Her goal is to free herself from LaTeX formatting so that she can focus on the content. She provides several sample documents that show how a single document source can be used in a variety of different ways by adjusting a few keywords.
The next article demonstrates a LaTeX undergraduate thesis style, used at the National University of Piura, Perú (Thesis style (Spanish), Roberto Ipanaqué Chero, Gloria Solvey Crespo Guerrero). Again, the goal here is to present a single document source that has complete formatting built in, so that students writing their theses can concentrate on the content.
- Technical notes
Longtime LaTeX guru Claudio Beccari proposes a standard method of writing e=2.718 or e=2,718 and other notations that depend on local formatting conventions for decimal separators (Intelligent commas).
For those who use LaTeX on the Mac, Lenore Horner has provided a set of tricks and techniques specific to that platform (Speedy LaTeX on the Mac).
- Columns
Ask Nelly answers some questions about page numbering in bibliographies, and generating teaching materials for the instructor's eyes only.
The Distraction demonstrates a package for course outlines, and shows one answer for last issue's KenKen puzzle challenge.
Who reads The PracTeX Journal?
The PracTeX Journal first appeared nearly six years ago, and since then we have received a fairly steady stream of comments, suggestions and other communications from readers. Even with all this, though, it's difficult to find out who is reading the journal, where they are from, which features are most read, and other useful data.
Beginning this issue, we have installed Google Analytics tracking, a free service from Google. It tracks visitors to the PracTeX Journal site and notes which pages are viewed, how long a visitor spends at the site, and many other data points. It generates a wealth of reports and graphs, and even has a world map showing where readers are located.
Once enough data has been collected we will begin analyzing it and let you know what we find. If you have expertise in this data analysis area and would like to help please contact the editors.
Thanks
Many people have collaborated directly or indirectly on the success of this issue: the authors, particularly the ones who have worked with me in the revision process, the production editors, and the readers.
Our production editors, Paul Blaga, Yuri Robbers, and Francisco "Rei" Reinaldo, did their usual great work producing this issue. A new volunteer, Yogeshwarsing Calleecharan, assisted with reviewing and producing articles. Thanks to all for helping out.
Many thanks also to the reviewers and proofreaders who checked the articles and sent comments and corrections.
