[texhax] Address Book
Perry Smith
pedz at easesoftware.com
Sat Feb 7 03:53:29 CET 2009
Hello,
I need to produce what is essentially an address book. At least one
section of the book, (the section I'm worried about) is a sequence of
what I'll call "stanzas". The first line is the person's name. Then
company. Then address. Then other items like web address, email,
etc. The end customer wants two column output and wants a stanza to
not ever be split. Then, whatever stanzas fit in a particular column
will be equally spaced out.
I know TeX can do this fairly easily. I've used TeX in the distant
past. Both Plain TeX and LaTeX. The page also has some decorations
like a line down the middle to divide the two columns and a header and
page number in the footer. Two sided output where the header flips on
even and odd pages.
Questions:
1) Is there a pre-written set of macros that would give me a leg up on
this?
2) I've used LaTeX and Plan TeX. The default output of LaTeX never
pleased me. And, for that matter, Computer Modern Roman font never
lite my fire either. At the time (and environment) I used TeX, I
could not switch fonts, etc. (This was back in 1984-88 on a Unix
machine.) I'm using a Mac now with the latest Tug distribution. Is
changing fonts going to be a problem?
3) The classic question: would you recommend LaTeX or Plain TeX for
this? I'm leaning towards Plain TeX but its been a long time and I'm
sure things have changed. The other sections of the book are very
trivial to format.
Thank you for your help and advice,
Perry
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