[OS X TeX] Books?

[Christopher Creutzig]

Julien Diard <Julien.Diard at imag.fr> writes:

> What would you recommend instead of using \textwidth? Tu be more precise,

 koma-script classes, textarea.sty, or geometry.sty.

> width seems too small to me. So I just wanted to enlarge the thing a bit,
> and I found this \textwidth command in a colleague's thesis. Any advice?

 Before fiddling with layout yourself, read why generations of
typesetters did what they did.  Let me just recommend two books for
this: "The Elements of Typographic Style" by Robert Bringhurst and,
for readers understanding German, any book by Hans Peter Willberg and
Friedrich Forssman (to me, "Erste Hilfe in typographie" is way too
shallow with its ~100 pages, I prefer "Lesetypographie", which comes
at about 330 pages and covers much more detail).

> While I'm at it, another issue I face is the headings content. Using the

 As others pointed out, read the documentation of fancyhdr.sty, even
if you are not going to use it.

> go beyong the pages borders, yuck... I know a way to prevent this, using the
> optional arguments to the section and chapter commands, but the problem is,
> I would like to keep the full titles in the table of contents. Any way to

 Not necessarily a good idea.  In any case, you can call \markright
and \markboth yourself, right after the \section or \chapter command:

\chapter{Some Long Title that Tries to Summarize the Whole Chapter,
with the Aim of Confusing and Distracting The Reader}
\markboth{Just Joking}{Just Joking}

\section{Why Reading the Headlines Should be Sufficient to Get the
Gist of the Paper}
\markright{Headlines}

 Again, for easier navigation, I strongly prefer to have exactly the
same text appear in the title, the headlines, and the table of
contents.  Always remember that the goal is to help the reader and
that the best typography is the invisible one.

-- 
    +--+
   +--+|   
   |+-|+            Christopher Creutzig (ccr at mupad.de)
   +--+                     Tel.: 05251-60-5525

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