[pstricks] [pracjourn-announce] PracTeX Journal: Issue 2012-1

[Lance Carnes]

Dear PracTeX Journal Readers,

The 2012-1 issue of the PracTeX Journal* LaTeX in the IT World* is now
available <http://tug.org/pracjourn/2012-1/toc.html>online<http://tug.org/pracjourn/2012-1/toc.html>
.

The authors and journal editors worked hard to present these articles, and
we hope you enjoy reading them. If you find an article you like or which
you want to comment on, please click the "Comment on this article" link to
send a note to the author or to the editors.

*Next issue: 2013-1  Spring 2013

*Theme:* Collaborative Writing

*Articles welcome on methods and experiences of sharing documents between
coauthors.  Let us know your results if you have used a web service, a
version control system, or other method to coauthor a LaTeX or TeX document.
*
*Articles on other topics are also welcome.  If you would like to write an
article for the Journal send your idea or outline to the
editors<pracjourn at tug.org%3Fsubject=Article%20idea>
.

Best regards,
Francisco "Rei" Reinaldo
Paul Blaga
Lance Carnes
PracTeX Journal Editors

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The PracTeX Journal <http://tug.org/pracjourn/2012-1/toc.html>
An online journal of the TeX Users Group focusing on practical uses of
LaTeX and TeX.

 2012-1 Table of Contents

Editorial — LaTeX in the IT World<http://tug.org/pracjourn/2012-1/editor.html>
Francisco Reinaldo, Paul Blaga. Software systems for document preparation,
project management, and requirements analysis are continually evolving.
There is no limit to how much these systems can expand and become a more
significant force in computerized automation. In this issue of the PracTeX
Journal we present several articles by authors involved in these areas,
with the hope that their experiences and techniques using LaTeX and other
TeX tools will be useful to others.

News From Around <http://tug.org/pracjourn/2012-1/news.html>
The LaTeX Community blog.

Feedback from readers <http://tug.org/pracjourn/2012-1/readers.html>
Comments on previous articles: Math formatting, missing chess piece.

 Formatting Sweave and LATEX Documents in APA
Style<http://tug.org/pracjourn/2012-1/beitzel.html>
Brian D. Beitzel. Journals in the social sciences typically require
manuscripts to be formatted according to the American Psychological
Association's Publication Manual, which is now in its 6th Edition. The apa6
class is an update of the popular apa class (often referred to as
“apa.cls”), bringing it into compliance with 6th Edition requirements and
adding a few new features. This article describes the major features of
apa6 and presents results from testing apa6 with four bibliographic package
scenarios; the output of these bibliographic packages is compared with 6th
Edition requirements. The article concludes with information regarding how
to easily convert a document from LaTeX to Microsoft Word for the purpose
of submitting manuscripts to journals that require APA style.

The Vocal Tract LaTeX Package<http://tug.org/pracjourn/2012-1/ververidis.html>
Dimitrios Ververidis, Daniel Schneider, and Joachim Köhler. VocalTract.sty
is a package to visualize the vocal tract. Vocal tract is manipulated by a
vector of articulation parameters according to S. Maeda model. Animation
can be achieved by providing a sequence of vectors over time, e.g. from
Matlab©. An embedded sequence of vectors in the VocalTract.sty for certain
German phonemes allows for a sequence of phonemes animation when no vector
is available.

 Writing Posters with Beamerposter Package in
LaTeX<http://tug.org/pracjourn/2012-1/shang.html>
Han Lin Shang. The beamerposter package in LaTeX is an excellent tool for
the creation of posters. There are several options available using the
beamerposter package, when writing a poster in LaTeX. Here, I would like to
present some of these options associated with the beamerposter package. I
shall introduce the basics and some useful companion packages that make a
poster look neat and nice.

 Seeing Stars <http://tug.org/pracjourn/2012-1/hefferon.html>
Jim Hefferon. MetaPost is a great tool for line art. We walk through
creating a rate one-to-five graphic with it, highlighting some of its
advantages over a mouse-driven graphics tool.

TeX in the eBook Era <http://tug.org/pracjourn/2012-1/luca.html>
Luca Merciadri. We discuss some advantages of using eBooks, and creating
them with LaTeX. We continue by explaining technical aspects that might
improve and help you with your LaTeX eBook. We end with a short discussion
about the PDF file format and its use with eBook documents.

 Easy-to-use Chinese MTeX Suite<http://tug.org/pracjourn/2012-1/hongbin.html>
Hongbin Ma. Although there are many free and commercial TeX collections and
distributions, Chinese TeXers still have many difficulties in TeXing
Chinese documents. Some of the problems Chinese TeX users confront with TeX
distributions are: the huge size, complex structure, nontrivial
installation and configuration, lack of a full-featured Chinese editor, and
lack of other needed add-ons. These difficulties may prevent many people
from becoming TeXers or TeX experts. Motivated by these issues and many
other practical demands, the author and several friends developed an
easy-to-use and easy-to-learn Chinese MTeX Suite, which is a green,
compact, free, convenient, pragmatic and powerful TeX distribution with
many add-ons and unique features which are seldom available in other TeX
distributions.

 Bashful Writing and Active Documents<http://tug.org/pracjourn/2012-1/gil.html>
Yossi Gil. Active documents is an emerging technology by which the product
of computerized typesetting is more than an aesthetically pleasing
composition of letters, words and punctuation characters broken into lines
and pages. An active document offers modes of interaction with its reader,
while the document itself may change its content in response to events
taking place in the external world. Bashful documents, the concept proposed
by the bashful package, and discussed in this article, extend the user
interaction offered by active documents to the time of the document
creation.

 Documenting ITIL processes with LaTeX
(Portuguese)<http://tug.org/pracjourn/2012-1/rayans.html>
Rayans Carvalho, Francisco Reinaldo. Many companies have evolved with the
implementation of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL),
using the best practices and processes to achieve practical results. Good
practice suggests what to do, but at the same time raise doubts about how
to do it and which tools to use to get better work performance in ITIL.
Noting these facts, this article presents a LaTeX-based processes and
services documentation tool, as suggested by ITIL. (In Portuguese)

 Avoid eqnarray! <http://tug.org/pracjourn/2012-1/madsen.html>
Lars Madsen. Whenever the eqnarray environment appears in a question or
example of a problem on comp.text.tex, tex.stackexchange.com or other
forums there is a high probability that someone will tell the poster not to
use eqnarray. This article will provide some examples of why many of us
consider eqnarray to be harmful and why it should not be used.

The article is an updated edition, first published in PracTeX Journal
2006-4.

 Ask Nelly <http://tug.org/pracjourn/2012-1/asknelly.html>
How to customize lists and produce logos.

 Distraction - Guitar Chords and Font
quizzes<http://tug.org/pracjourn/2012-1/distract.html>
A very recent package, gtrcrd, by Riccardo Bresciani, some quizzes on
typography terms, and a kerning test.

 Book Review: LaTeX and Friends<http://tug.org/pracjourn/2012-1/reviews.html>
This new feature of the PracTeX Journal includes, from time to time, short
reviews of newly published textbooks or reference books on LaTeX and
friends. For this issue, we selected a Springer book, LaTeX and Friends by
Marc R.C. van Dongen

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