[Newsletter] My first attempt at LaTEX...

[Tyler Mitchell]

On 26-Mar-07, at 5:01 PM, Sunburned Surveyor wrote:

> I've completed my article in OpenOffice and I have now attempted to  
> move it to LaTEX format.
>
> Is there a way to generate the resulting PDF as it will appear in  
> the Journal so I can make sure everything looks right? I don't know  
> much about LaTEX, but I think I will need the styling information  
> to do this.

You don't have a latex-> pdf previewer?  Don't worry we'll be pulling  
together a draft of all the articles to peek at. If you don't have a  
previewer, tell us what operating system you are on and we can help.   
I'm on Mac, for the record.

> If this is the case, I need some input on how to submit my article.  
> The wiki says that I should just submit it to my editor. However, I  
> don't think anyone has volunteered to be the editor for the section  
> of the journal my article will be appearing in just yet. Should I  
> send the article to Tyler, our editor-in-chief, or to someone else?

Send to me for now and cc: Martin.  He's got the most experience in  
compiling the previous GRASS News publication.  We can have a  
subversion repository too for committing our drafts too - I'd prefer  
that we use it.  But again, if this is going to be too much for  
folks, then we'll funnel it through those of us who know how to use it.

Show of hands please - who wants to try subversion/SVN?  We have a  
place ready to use.

> I am wondering how useful LaTEX is for authors.

It's not really meant for the authors and if *any* author ever has a  
problem, us editors should help do the conversion.  That should be  
the hardest part of our jobs.  I agree OO is easy to use, but there  
are some sophisticated layout issues with larger volumes and  
bibiliographies and autogeneration of PDF's, etc. that warrants the  
use of LaTeX.  We can revisit this in the future, but let's get  
through this one.  But I want the bottom line to be that editors will  
help authors, and editors will help editors, get stuff into LaTeX.   
So if there are any problems, speak up.
>

>  Might we consider using ODT to transfer the text content of  
> articles instead of LaTEX?
> At some point on the production line we could move from ODT or even  
> plain text to LaTEX or another format that makes the styling and  
> graphics production easier. I'm not trying to complain, this is  
> just a suggestion we might consider in the future...

All reasonable ideas!

Tyler