[pdftex] my poor results.

[John Culleton]

On Sunday 23 March 2003 10:51 am, Andy Bontoft wrote:
> Hello,
> Please excuse my ignorance, my knowledge of LaTeX/pdfTeX etc is rather
> limited. I have read most of the tutorials that I've found on the net, but
> none of them have shed any light on how I might be able to produce
> something as beautifully set as this document.
>
> http://www.gutenberg.eu.org/pub/GUTenberg/publicationsPDF/28-29-han.pdf

Now I have found it. The short answer is, we all must do a lot of learning to 
master this level of typesetting. Han The Thanh is one of the masters of TeX. 
I don't know offhand what TeX variant was used for this document. There about 
a dozen altogether. 

There is a source code  example of Han's work, his pdftex manual, 
available under the name of pdftex-t.tex, posted on the Context site. It is 
written in the Context variant. Another interesting file is samplepdf.tex. I 
often "liberate" code from a much older document, gentle.tex by Michael Doob.
Search CTAN or the http://pragma-ade.nl site for these examples. 

There are two approaches I have used. One is to "gut" existing code, my 
own or someone else's. In other words take an existing file and delete the 
text but keep the macros and definitions.  Another is to start with a simple 
file of plain text and add commands and macros until it starts to take shape. 
(As a point of interest, Context, which represents a highly structured and 
abstract approoach, will nevertheless process a file with no embedded 
commands at all and produce output.) 

Neither approach represents instant success.  But it is enough to get one 
going down the learning path. 

If you really want quick success and a decent looking result consider the 
LaTeX front end program called Lyx. This is kind of a pseudo word processor 
:-( but it will produce a correct document based on one of its standard 
templates.  And it generates genuine LaTeX source.

In any case good luck and good hunting! I like to quote the story about the
famous inventor Marconi. In his later years he was very famous and very rich. 
A young experimenter was enthusastically describing his own efforts with 
radio.  Then, realizing the stature of the man he was talking to he said,
"But of course, I am only an amateur."

Marconi replied, "But that is what I am, an amateur!'

John Culleton