[texhax] Interaction with Scientific Word Documents and basic LaTeX questions

[Thomas Jacobs]

Lars,

Thanks very much for the reply.  I appreciate the link to your article in
PracTeX as well.  Unfortunately, getting my coauthor (my PhD adviser) to
switch from Scientific Word will not be an option so I will manage as best I
can!  Thanks again.

Tom

On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 3:24 AM, Lars Madsen <daleif at imf.au.dk> wrote:

> Thomas Jacobs wrote:
>
>> Hi, I am a Windows MiKTeX user working in TeXnicCenter and have a
>> coauthor that is a Scientific Word user.  I have struggled to decipher
>> how to make this operate smoothly as I am the more technology friendly
>> person in the relationship.  Along the way I downloaded a free
>> Scientific Word Viewer whose most recent iteration is from 2005.
>> While it permits me to see the LaTeX file output and print if I save
>> it as read only, much of the material is less than easily accessible
>> such as footnotes and citation references.  I then began trying to
>> build the document directly in TeXnicCenter and after some web
>> searches discovered I needed to comment out this line to enable
>> successful completion:
>>
>> \input{tcilatex}
>>
>> The following topic post was particularly helpful in this regard:
>>
>> http://www.latex-community.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6906&start=0
>>
>> One of the most surprising things about this process is that the LaTeX
>> file generated via Scientific Word uses many LaTeX commands and
>> structures I am completely ignorant of.  The reason I write is to ask
>> several questions.
>>
>> 1.  On working with a Scientific Word user the aforementioned post
>> indicated that they (the SW user) should save their document in
>> Portable LaTeX format.  Can anyone comment on whether there are other
>> things I should ask the coauthor to do in order to manage the editing
>> process with the least difficulty?
>>
>>
> you should be prepared that it may be difficult for an SW user to reimport
> documents prepared by non-SW writers.
>
> tcilatex is something that comes with SW, it defines several commands that
> SW makes use of.
>
> Saving as portable LaTeX should remove most of those macros
>
>
>
>  2.  On simple LaTeX commands I was unable to find (no doubt my fault)
>> in either Kopka and Daly (2004) or Mittelbach and Goossens (2004):
>>
>> a.  What is the purpose of a backslash without an appended command?
>> For example, I find them between all sentences as in this excerpt:
>>
>> TIPS are coupon bonds that have been issued by the U.S. government since
>> 1997. \ They are currently auctioned at 5-, 10-, and 30-year maturities. \
>> Unlike standard Treasury notes and bonds whose coupon and principal are
>> fixed dollar payments, TIPS make payments proportional to the Consumer
>> Price
>> Index (CPI).
>>
>> I have never seen this before and wondered what purpose it serves.
>>
>>
> in english, after the dot that ends a sentence, the space after the dot is
> larger than the interword space.
>
> but, say one writes 'i.e. there is...' then LaTeX thinks the dot after the
> 'e' ends a sentence. Thus one usually writes 'i.e.\ ' to get a normal space
> in this case.
>
>
>
>  b.  Does the following structure
>>
>> &=&
>>
>> serve to keep the = signs aligned in a multiline equation?  If not,
>> what do the & on each side of the equals sign do?
>>
>> Thanks very much for any insight one of you could provide.
>>
>> Tom
>>
>>
> this is native to the eqnarray environment, which sadly most SW
> configurations use.
>
> See http://www.tug.org/pracjourn/2006-4/madsen, as to why one should not
> use eqnarray
>
> For the makers of SW eqnarray is easy to implement because of a very
> precise syntax. But the output is not that good.
>
>
> --
>
> /daleif
>



-- 
Thomas Jacobs
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