[texhax] Designing books with LaTeX

Lars Madsen daleif at imf.au.dk
Fri Jun 6 13:43:04 CEST 2008


Andy Farnell :

>
>
> Stacy, there is a ready-rolled class called Memoir that has most
> of what you need for a textbook. Of course there is also the LaTeX
> standard book class, but this usually needs a bit of additional
> programming to make it do what you want.
>

I agree memoir would be a good starting point. Note that memoir has just 
been released in a new version including a revised edition of its aprox. 
500-600 page manual (which also include discussions about layout).



> On Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:46:54 -0400
> Stacy Claxton <sclaxton at scribenet.com> wrote:
>
>> To Whom It May Concern:
>>
>> I am familiar with LaTeX and have used it in the past to enter data and
>> equations into a mathematical textbook. I have now been asked to create a
>> design for a book. I know this involves using classes and packages, but I am
>> not familiar with these. I have searched online documentation and have found
>> vague references to designing your own class, usually with only some caution
>> that it "is not a straightforward task, and is often best left to the
>> professionals" or "typically involves a lot of work that is essentially
>> programming and thus does not live easily with the declarative kind of
>> design specification for a document (or range of documents) that would be
>> produced by a professional typographic designer" or "although some
>> parameters can be adjusted within a predefined document layout, the design
>> of a whole new layout is difficult and takes a lot of time" (there's a
>> footnote here suggesting that this is being addressed in the LaTeX3
>> system?). This does not sound promising. I am a typesetter (I work in
>> publishing and am very familiar with Quark and InDesign) but have no
>> experience with design in LaTeX. Nor do I have extensive programming
>> experience. How difficult would it be to learn how to use classes and
>> packages to come up with a design? And how would I go about learning how to
>> do this? Any feedback or suggested resources would be greatly appreciated.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Stacy Claxton
>>
>>
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/daleif


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