On 2 Oct 2010, at 19:12, Philipp Stephani wrote: > Am 30.09.2010 um 20:12 schrieb Elliott Roper: > >> What I'm lacking is a set of beginner documents that ties all the TeX zoo >> together. Do I have to read source to find the definitive answer to which >> package has what package as a pre-requisite? > > Yes, and that won't change until LaTeX becomes a second ConTeXt. Hello again. I think I better postpone that discussion until I have experimented a lot more. I would be wasting your time and that of others on this list. I have been trying ConTeXt and LuaTeX as well as LaTeX and XeTeX with various packages and classes. Until I can clearly state what my problems with each of those are, there is not much point in asking more fool questions. > >> Which package breaks what others? Which order of \usepackages works and >> which doesn't? When do I use XeTeX? Which bits of LaTeX survive the >> transplant? Which don't? How do I use unicode-math? Why should I? When >> should I start again with LuaTeX? > > Nobody can give a definitive answer to all these questions. For the moment, > if pdflatex works for you, stick with it. For me, I can't reliably switch to > anything else until OTF math and microtypography work as expected.
I suspect that is not an uncommon answer. I'll give up if I can't get OTF working well enough for what I want to do. I gave up on TeX twice before because of my arrogant view of its font shortcomings. > >> But I sure could use something that gives the beginner an overview. Maybe >> which topics in which documents for producing documents of type x. It is >> well covered for academic work already. Yet how do I do fine typesetting for >> books and magazine articles with lots of external illustrations, stored in >> paths and files with unicode and punctuation in their names? How do I impose >> signatures of small pages on large sheets, and which packages break when I >> try it? > > By not using LaTeX. Until there is a stable, modern foundation (LuaTeX plus > an appropriate kernel), I wouldn't recommend LaTeX for many things outside > the world of writing academic papers and theses. Mose people interested in > design and typography use InDesign or QuarkXPress, and ConTeXt might be an > option, too. I have already given up on InDesign. It is OK for less than 20 pages when you care more about the look than you do about the content. The idea of sending $1000 to Adobe every two years to get bug fixes and a bunch of features I don't want gets old pretty quickly. Elliott Roper -------------------------------------------------- Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.: http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex
