[OS X TeX] Re: Preparing A Textbook Using Mac/TeX

[Axel E. Retif]

On Oct 3, 2006, at 07:02 , William Adams wrote:

> On Oct 3, 2006, at 7:50 AM, Bruno Voisin wrote:
>
>> From the original page for the book:
>>
>> <http://www.awprofessional.com/bookstore/product.asp?
>> isbn=0321193121&rl=1>
>>
>> there's a sample available at:
>>
>> <http://www.awprofessional.com/content/images/0321193121/
>> samplechapter/lie_ch03.pdf>
>>
>> I think that's what Axel was speaking about,

Yes, indeed. Thank you.

>> and in it I can't see the widow etc. you were speaking of -- apart  
>> from the resolution of the screenshots, which is bad indeed.
>
> Well, low resolution and they don't seem to've turned on the
> interpolation key.

I have to agree. But they are readable, nonetheless.

> Okay, instead we have:
>
>   - single word as last line of a paragraph

Which for many is acceptable, as long as the text is longer than  
paragraph indent, as in last paragraph of page 54; though I admit  
that penultimate paragraph of the document (p. 60) looks rather ugly.

>   - spreads don't cross-align (and yes, I did take into consideration
> the matter of the chapter beginning on a left and compared pgs. 56
> and 57 which face each other)
>   - marginal notes are obnoxiously large and confusable w/ text
>   - some pretty bad hyphenations typogra-
> phy or breaking a unit away from its value, e.g., 10
> points or hyphenating the last word of a paragraph, Chap-
> ter 5.
>   - two word stack, ``...testing
>                       ...testing''
>
> Not quite as egregious as the sample in question, but still not what
> I'd term ``excellent''

Of course you're right ---not excellent and not even acceptable.  
Originally, I was only mentioning that the sample chapter from A-W  
was justified, hyphenated, with acceptable screenshots and no widows.

Apparently, this book was produced with an application designed for  
the Web:

http://www.princexml.com

They have samples in their site ---the mathematical sample is really  
horrible, worst than Word's. Quite better are the Publicon results:

http://www.wolfram.com/products/publicon/samples/aps/ 
APS_PhysRevSample.xml

(viewed with Firefox, that is, as Victor Ivrii pointed out to me).


Best,


Axel
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