Latex for writing books

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absque fenestris
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Re: Latex for writing books

Post by absque fenestris »

AZgl1500 wrote: Sun Jul 18, 2021 4:34 pm I installed Scribus to look at it, and got lost before I even got started. :( :(
Hi AZgl1500

take it easy. Reserve a day to set up Scribus and read a few tutorials. Once you have the basic scheme down, it's not difficult at all.
And besides, the Mint forum is there...
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Re: Latex for writing books

Post by Petermint »

Scribus is good for magazine layouts where every page is different and not so good when you want a small range of layouts repeated. One of my books was created in Openoffice then exported as MS Office for input to the publishers editing cycle. After editing, the same files went to the print section. The printers requested all images as external files. At the time, before NVMe SSDs, it was easier to create each chapter as a separate file. The publishers, printers, indexer, and translators were all happy with that format. And there were only a few images. For lots of images, Openoffice would be painful.

I opened Scribus to refresh my memory. The new release confused me in the parts that are not like the old release and not like Libreoffice. There is a shortage of good how-to pages. There are annoying videos. I found one page oriented specifically to book publishing.
https://onebookshelfpublisherservice.ze ... th-Scribus
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Re: Latex for writing books

Post by Dark Owl »

Just to mention the OP has since said he's trying to create his own output for his own purposes, but is complaining what his printer outputs isn't what he sees on the screen. That's a whole different issue and jumping down LaTeX or Scribus rabbit holes isn't addressing the problem (and overkill for the purpose).

(Yes, I thought he was talking about sending artwork to a commercial printer too)
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Re: Latex for writing books

Post by rossdv8 »

I suspect the reason some of us have drifted into suggesting Scribus, is that the original post begins:
So I have been working for a long time now on a book with a TON of illustrations.
and mentioned experiences with various Word Processors before heading off into Latex world.

Latex is not really designed to produce 'a book with a TON of illustrations'. It is a Text Markup Language. or TML. It is designed to produce a layout similar to that created for a Web page, but to be used in a slightly different way.
TheseTMLs hark back to the days before we had the ability to show what a printed page would look like as we were typing it. Things like Ctrl+b to start and stop BOLD text and Ctrl_u to begin and end UNDERLINED text come from those beginnings. Stuff we used in the early 80s on our old Sanyo and cp/m operating systems. Text Markup found its way into WYSIWYG editing with the Apple, the with various Disk Operating Systems, and eventually even into MS Windows, although by the time Windows was released there were WYSIWYG Desktop Publishing programs for most of us under Digital Research Dos and MS-Dos.

When HTML was developed, it opened up the Internet and made the World Wide Web useful to ordinary people. HTML just took Text Markup Languages further, and sideways. I'm sure that inside PDF somewhere there are also roots in TML.

So using Latex to write a book with a TON of illustrations is feasible - just perhaps not sensible in some ways.

Using something that is 'designed' to create a book sized document with a TON of illustrations - then output it to a format (PDF) that is designed to maintain the TON of illustrations no matter what device it is printed on (home, or commercial) might make more sense than trying to do it using latex.

Maybe.

Just a thought . .
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Re: Latex for writing books

Post by Therim »

I think LaTeX is perfect for this. I also tried to write a book with her, but I didn't have enough ideas and inspiration. I didn't even manage to write my literature review myself, so I turned to the professionals from the service https://papersowl.com/write-my-literature-review, who helped me write my literature review and did everything very quickly and efficiently. I was very overwhelmed, but I hope that in the future I will be able to write successfully myself thanks to LaTeX
Last edited by Therim on Wed Sep 15, 2021 3:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Latex for writing books

Post by absque fenestris »

So attempts with an uninspired book devoid of any idea lead to the statement that LaTex is perfect for producing the same.
Huh! You really need to work on your marketing skills ...
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Re: Latex for writing books

Post by rene »

Hey, I also think that LaTeX is perfect for not writing a book...
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Re: Latex for writing books

Post by Petermint »

Latex for not writing? Interesting.
There I am not writing with Xed and Mousepad. I could probably not write with vi although that might be a challenge as it could take months to find a version of vi that matches the shortcut documentation. (A long story requiring at least LibreOffice to not write.) :lol:
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Re: Latex for writing books

Post by Dark Owl »

Methinks he jests. If not that, then as his first (and so far only) post on this forum, I suspect it's only spam or an idle remark.

LaTeX is for typesetting; only masochists would use it for authoring (the same as masochists write programs in machine code rather than use a compiler).
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Re: Latex for writing books

Post by Petermint »

Perhaps he is the wrong career. If he lacks ideas or inspiration or both, he could write political party speeches. :shock:
Or marketing releases for the 47th company to clone X and announce it as if it is a new invention. :o
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Re: Latex for writing books

Post by AZgl1800 »

LeviMetcalfe wrote: Fri Oct 15, 2021 8:52 am I have never used Latex and now nothing about it, why you do not want to use Scribus? I am sure you gonna love it!
I just looked at Scribus and find it difficult to use.

I do a LOT of image pasting, and the very first image I tried to paste was a colossal failure.

the image box, after I selected the image, was just a small portion of the pavement that the cars I wanted to show were on.

MS Word beats it all to hell, I select a picture, and then just click on a corner and move it where I want.

( I am running MS Word via Cross Over )
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absque fenestris
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Re: Latex for writing books

Post by absque fenestris »

Especially for AZgl1500 ...and no, not Word

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Re: Latex for writing books

Post by AZgl1800 »

absque fenestris wrote: Fri Oct 15, 2021 8:29 pm Especially for AZgl1500 ...and no, not Word

Image
you had to resize the images to fit inside the box, correct?

I am taking a full size image and inserting into Word, Word then allows you to shrink the size of the Image Box, without having to mess with the Image Size.
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Re: Latex for writing books

Post by absque fenestris »

No, only in the image box selected "Fit image to frame" with right click. After that the image frame is like a rubber band and you can change the frame size as you like - the image itself will be adjusted to all size changes of the frame. But only works with nice cars.
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Re: Latex for writing books

Post by AZgl1800 »

absque fenestris wrote: Fri Oct 15, 2021 10:33 pm No, only in the image box selected "Fit image to frame" with right click. After that the image frame is like a rubber band and you can change the frame size as you like - the image itself will be adjusted to all size changes of the frame. But only works with nice cars.
Okay,
as I said, have never used Scribus, Tried it once, didn't work, and I unloaded it.
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Re: Latex for writing books

Post by Dark Owl »

AZgl1500 wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 12:43 am have never used Scribus, Tried it once, didn't work, and I unloaded it.
Scribus is DTP, not a word processor. DTP works on a different level, and needs a different mind set.

Broadly speaking: word processing is just glorified typing, whereas DTP concentrates on positioning elements on the page (whether an element is a block of text, a photo, a graphic, or whatever) using "frames". If you want text to continue from one frame to another the frames have to be specifically linked, otherwise each individual frame is a self-contained document within the publication.

The modern incarnation of the likes of Word have some DTP-like features, such as support for frames, and for the vast majority a full DTP package will be overkill. There is a point where the complexity exceeds the task at hand. The only thing I have ever needed to do which called for DTP instead of just using WP was text flow between frames.

That's why I said Scribus (DTP) and LaTeX (typographical mark-up) are rabbit holes. I'm certain all you need is LibreOffice Writer (and actually I prefer OpenOffice) and a little experience learning to using it properly. Having just admitted you're using MSWord (that's an important detail - why have you not mentioned that earlier?), one has to wonder whether the problems you stated in your opening posts are down to trying to run complex Windows software in CrossOver/Wine. API translation layers are not perfect, mainly because only Microsoft has the full specification for the Windows API.
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Re: Latex for writing books

Post by AZgl1800 »

I have used both LO and Open Office, of the two, I prefer Open Office.

LO irritates me so badly, that I have uninstalled it completely.
The menus change with every revision and that is simply not acceptable.
The Macro handling mechanism is so friggin archaic, that I just simply will NOT put up with it.

MS Word runs 99% perfectly under Cross Over, I bought the license to get their support.
I wish it would handle ACCESS, but that is not likely to ever happen.... have emailed support back 'n forth on that issue.

I will continue to use Word for my writing chores, as it does what I want, when I want it to happen.

Press Alt-D and it prints out date / time in the exact format that I want, every time, never fails.
I use a few other macros, Strike-through and Highlighting.

I do Beta Proof Reading for book authors, and I really really need to be using Word for that.
when I use LO Writer, it screws up the text because the translation from LO to Word just does not work correctly every time....

and that is where I got so pissed, that I deleted LO completely off of my PCs...

I'm not going to install Open Office ever again, Cross Over has solved my problem....
If I need to do something weird in Microsoft Office products, I will just reboot this laptop and come up into Win10 with MS Office Pro which I own a licensed copy of.

thank you for explaining what Scribus is all about, no wonder I got so frustrated with it.

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Re: Latex for writing books

Post by Dark Owl »

AZgl1500 wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 3:22 am MS Word runs 99% perfectly under Cross Over
But 99% isn't 100% is it. I think I would be running Word in a Windows VM – that's my plan, anyway.
AZgl1500 wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 3:22 am I do Beta Proof Reading for book authors, and I really really need to be using Word for that.
when I use LO Writer, it screws up the text because the translation from LO to Word just does not work correctly every time....
Absolutely. Contrary (apparently) to many people's expectations, IT IS NOT POSSIBLE to collaboratively work with different users using different WPs. It's a recipe for disaster. Different WPs have a different internal data representation so cannot reproduce some aspects of other WPs' data representation... just the same as the French don't have a word for "weekend", and the English don't have a word for "schadenfreude".

For example: Word .doc has section formatting, whereas OpenOffice/LibreOffice .odt has page formatting and rules for how one page style follows another. These are totally incompatible. The only way you could reasonably make that work is by making each section in a Word document into separate .odt files.
AZgl1500 wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 3:22 am I will continue to use Word for my writing chores, as it does what I want, when I want it to happen.
Absolutely; no argument there. There is no point learning the quirks of multiple WPs. The skill of being a Word jockey is knowing precisely what you can and cannot do, and how not to bang your head against a brick wall trying to do something the wrong way. Ditto OO/LO. If you use Word and have a team using Word, stick with Word (but consider running it in a VM instead of Wine/CrossOver). For anyone else not committed to Word, I recommend getting to understand OpenOffice (my preference) or LibreOffice – they are free, and cross-platform (MS Word costs money and is Windows-only).

What is not generally understood is that a WP is a skill to learn, not something which can be just picked up in two minutes. DTP is a whole nuther level.
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Re: Latex for writing books

Post by AZgl1800 »

I have Win10 and MS Office Pro installed in Vbox, I just don't like the screen display, it is not full screen, and the definition is just not there. It strains my eyes too much.

I used to have Cataracts and both eyes now have new lenses....
that destroyed the natural UV filter, and I have to be able to control the screen Temperature very closely, and keep it as dim as possible......

that does NOT work in Vbox at all.

as I mentioned previously, if necessary, I will reboot into Win10 native mode on this same laptop, I kept the original SSD intact w/o any modifications at all...

So, for Proof Reading, that is my solution, come up in native Win10 and read the Beta Books in Word....

but, for my Daily dribble with forums, that is way too clumsy and impracticable... Win10 can't even see my Mint SSD period, so file transfers have to be Email, or via a flash drive.... not going there, I can just bring up Word in Cross Over in less than 1 second, paste the dribble, do the editing, and copy the results, and then paste that into the forums I am interacting with.
With Word, AutoCorrect-Replace for my dyslexic hands is a LIfe Saver. I touch type at 120 wpm in spurts and don't look at what I write, that causes errors horribly because of the delay from a keypress to the display on forums.... the servers just aren't fast enough.

for simple stuff of less than 2 or 3 paragraphs, I use XED, it is super fast, formats decently, honors the 'TAB' function and that is all I need for simple dribble. ( Think Facebook here - I am the tech guru in Electronics for a lot of Groups there )

I keep Facebook screwed down tight, I do not accept new friends, unless they are friends of least 5 people I know personally face to face.... no ego with the number of "friends" in my account, it is less than 100 easily.

I appreciate your help with this discussion, would like to share a cuppa hot tea or coffee someday.

just today, I drove 1.5 hours to meet a friend from Florida who rode his motorcycle and over-nighted near me some 75 miles away. we had a very enjoyable BBQ meal, and visited for 2 hours.... too bad you missed that...
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Re: Latex for writing books

Post by Dark Owl »

AZgl1500 wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 7:04 am too bad you missed that
Yeah, it's only a five hour flight
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