On 2015-11-02, at 16:37, Ian Barton <li...@wilkesley.net> wrote: > Next year our mountaineering club has its 50th anniversary. On the > 21st anniversary we published a book of articles written by members of > the club. Luckily the text was written in WordPerfect and I have > converted it to a series of org-mode files, one per chapter. For the > upcoming 50th anniversary we want to make the book available in both > pdf and ePub or mobi format. > > Creating ePub doesn't look too hard by exporting to html and using > something like Calibre to make the ePub/mobi file. However, as a Latex > neophyte I was wondering which of the several Latex packages would be > suitable. The structure of the book is very simple. No tables or > formulae but has some photos and cartoons, which I have scanned from > the originals. > > All I need is something that will let me format chapter headings, > author attributions and produce a TOC. Templates like Memoir seem to > be vast overkill for my needs and have documentation several times > longer than our book!
I agree that memoir might not be the best idea. (I had bad experience with it, probably mainly due to its monolithic design.) One way would be the koma-script packages. (I never used them, but many people are satisfied with them.) Also, the TeX showcase (https://www.tug.org/texshowcase/) might give you some inspiration. And if you are brave enough, you might want to look at ConTeXt: http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Main_Page . It is an alternative (i.e., not LaTeX-related), TeX-based typesetting engine. IMHO it is more advanced (at least typographically) and /much/ better designed than LaTeX. It seems there is no ConTeXt exporter for Org-mode (however, this should not be difficult to fix). One of he advantages of ConTeXt is that it supposedly can produce an Epub ebook (though this never worked for me - OTOH, I tried it some three years ago, and I would guess the progress might be substantial). Another is an active and helpful (albeit small compared to LaTeX's) community. Also, if/when you have /specific/ questions on how to achieve something in LaTeX, http://tex.stackexchange.com/ is a good place to ask questions. (It is much friendlier and relaxed than SO, btw.) Hth -- Marcin Borkowski http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science Adam Mickiewicz University
