Picking the right Mode and File Format for a Book?
Jorgen Lundman
Say I wanted to write a book, tried for a while to use Word, but it just
pisses me off, I need my emacs key bindings :)
What is the best Mode/file format etc to do that in? I envision I will
use a fair bit of "italics" and quotes "" but not much else. LaTeX I
used to do things in, but I sure as hell don't want to go around going
\being and \italic (or whatever it is again) but would rather *see* the
italics as I enter it.
.rtf mode (stumbled across) seems to do Italics on screen but I am
unable to get back into it and the info pages are well too hard to
navigate (just want to search them). Is that .rtf mode compatible with
Word's .rtf ?
Anyway and comments would be appreciated. Kill the "x." to reply.
Lund
--
Jorgen "Lord" Lundman <lun...@x.lundman.net>
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Phone: +44 (020)8659-1860 Mobile: (07958)642-918
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Eli Zaretskii
>
> Say I wanted to write a book, tried for a while to use Word, but it just
> pisses me off, I need my emacs key bindings :)
>
> What is the best Mode/file format etc to do that in?
What is the content of that book about? In particular, does it have many
formulae and/or pictures/drawings/graphs?
If the answer to the latter question is YES, you'd probably want the full
power of TeX/LaTeX. But if you don't need too many of these, I suggest
Texinfo, which is a layer on top of TeX which hides many of TeX complexities
from you. Emacs has a very nice support for Texinfo, the language is well
documented (get the GNU Texinfo package), and you can use the same source to
generate on-line docs, in both Info and HTML formats, printed copy, pure
ASCII text file, and even convert to PDF should you need that. Texinfo is
used to write all the docs for the GNU project, which includes very large
books such as the Emacs Manual, "Efficient Gawk Programming", etc.
Kai Großjohann
enriched-mode RET. Then, M-g and C-down-mouse-2 and marking regions
are your friends.
kai
--
Be indiscrete. Do it continuously.
Jorgen Lundman
Well a book as in a novel. No maths at all, no diagrams no pictures etc.
Just text. A table of contents for sure, chapters, page numbers. In
terms of the text, only "" quotes for speech, and italics for thoughts
are required, as well as, perhaps the occasional foreign character in
names.
So the only reason one couldn't use emacs right now would be the
italics. Being in TeX mode seems like a huge overkill, although I have
no problem with having a tex section in the start of the book, but to do
\italic{} or whatever it is everytime seems tiresom, and it doesn't show
it. :)
I don't feel I need a full on word processor either, Word certainly
pisses me off.
I managed to get into some mode where I could set italics on with
facemenu-set-italic but damned if I can find it now.
Oh well.
Lundy
--
Jorgen "Lord" Lundman <lun...@lundman.net>
Sergei Pokrovsky
Jorgen> Well a book as in a novel. No maths at all, no diagrams no
Jorgen> pictures etc. Just text. A table of contents for sure,
Jorgen> chapters, page numbers. In terms of the text, only "" quotes
Jorgen> for speech, and italics for thoughts are required, as well
Jorgen> as, perhaps the occasional foreign character in names.
Jorgen> So the only reason one couldn't use emacs right now would be
Jorgen> the italics. Being in TeX mode seems like a huge overkill,
Jorgen> although I have no problem with having a tex section in the
Jorgen> start of the book, but to do \italic{} or whatever it is
Jorgen> everytime seems tiresom, and it doesn't show it. :)
You could put in the preamble of your TeX file
\catcode`\_=13
\def_#1_{{\it #1\/}}
and then mark _italics_ with a couple of surrounding underscores, like
in email; and in the same way you could define emboldening with
*stars* etc.
--
Sergei
Jorgen Lundman
>
> You could put in the preamble of your TeX file
>
> \catcode`\_=13
> \def_#1_{{\it #1\/}}
>
> and then mark _italics_ with a couple of surrounding underscores, like
> in email; and in the same way you could define emboldening with
> *stars* etc.
>
> --
> Sergei
Actually you know, that could be acceptable... hmmm.. it'd be nicer if
it could display it in italics (rendered) but that wouldn't work over
tty/ssh anyway.
Cheers for that,
Lund
Marco Fioretti
>
> Say I wanted to write a book,
Jorgen,
Have you consiedered Jari Aalto's tinytf package?
It also has automatic paragraph numbering.
It is at tiny-tools.sourceforge.net
Ciao,
Marco
Kai Großjohann
> So the only reason one couldn't use emacs right now would be the
> italics. Being in TeX mode seems like a huge overkill, although I
> have no problem with having a tex section in the start of the book,
> but to do \italic{} or whatever it is everytime seems tiresom, and
> it doesn't show it. :)
AUC-TeX and font-latex.el allow you to type C-c C-f C-e to insert
\emph{.} (`.' indicates cursor position) into the buffer, and the text
is shown in italic (if your font has italic).
> I managed to get into some mode where I could set italics on with
> facemenu-set-italic but damned if I can find it now.
M-x enriched-mode RET
Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com>
> no problem with having a tex section in the start of the book, but to do
> \italic{} or whatever it is everytime seems tiresom,
You'll need to do *something* anyway. And inserting the \it of \emph
can be done either by typing or by some special command (try M-g i in
a latex-mode buffer).
> and it doesn't show it. :)
Huh? Try to turn on font-lock-mode and the italic text should be
shown in italics (more or less. It doesn't always get it right).
So maybe you should try the latex-mode again.
Stefan
Colin Marquardt
> On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Jorgen Lundman wrote:
>
> > So the only reason one couldn't use emacs right now would be the
> > italics. Being in TeX mode seems like a huge overkill, although I
> > have no problem with having a tex section in the start of the book,
> > but to do \italic{} or whatever it is everytime seems tiresom, and
> > it doesn't show it. :)
>
> AUC-TeX and font-latex.el allow you to type C-c C-f C-e to insert
> \emph{.} (`.' indicates cursor position) into the buffer, and the text
> is shown in italic (if your font has italic).
And if you decide to go with LaTeX, you might want to check out
http://www.fmi.uni-passau.de/~wedler/x-symbol/
Colin