Stefano Franchi wrote:
Hi all,
I am asked by a publisher to submit a book length manuscript in camera-ready form and unfortunately they don't provide LaTeX classes. In fact, they have given me Microsoft Word instructions :-(
Well, at least they let you use whatever you want, and don't re-type it all in word or
something equally stupid before printing. (Wasted work, and latex provides much better output too!)
Anything you want can be tweaked to exactly the right size, you may have to
learn _some_ latex in the process though. I wrote a book, with detail specs
on the text block size, paper size, and fonts to be used from the publisher.
I used the koma-script book class and adapted that. The latex documentation
for koma-script details how the page layout is specified with latex commands
in the preamble. Use that to get exactly the text block you want. There wasn't
a specifier for the total text block size, so I specified one height for the "text part"
of the text block which was the total height minus the height of the running head.
Fortunately, latex lets you enter such arithmetic expressions so no need to calculate
it to some number of decimals. (mixing points, inches and centimeters is easy with latex. :-)
Examples from my preamble. I don't claim it is the best way, but it worked fine:
\setlength{\paperwidth}{170mm}
\setlength{\paperheight}{240mm}
%text block
\areaset{121.5mm}{203mm}
%Margins. Compensate for tex silly 1in origo
\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{16mm-1in}
\setlength{\evensidemargin}{32.5mm-1in}
%Position the top of text
\setlength{\topmargin}{8.5mm-1in}
%publisher says: headsep+headheight+topmargin=22mm
%(I didn't set headheight anywhere, the default worked well)
\setlength{\headsep}{22mm-8.5mm-\headheight}I think I can use the Book class in LyX to do everything they want, but I can't find out how to change the height and width of the text block. The text on the page must be exactly 4.5" x 7.5" from the top of the running head to the bottom of the last text line (there are no footers). Can anyone help? I could not find how to do it in the LyX documentation and I am no LaTeX expert (that much should be clear).Read the latex documentation about page layout, and set it up accordingly. If you
go for some special class or add-on package, check if it provides its own
ways of specifying these sizes. Koma-script certainly does.
Helge Hafting
