What I did on my summer vacation.

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William Haynes

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Jul 31, 2019, 6:31:31 PM7/31/19
to Engineering Statics (OER) Group
This is what I've go so far for my chapter rendered into PreText.   https://ryefamily.org/textbook  I have a few more ideas to implement, but it's shaping up.


I've learned a lot about producing PreTeXt documents, SVG graphics, and geogebra interactives in the process, and I put my notes into Chapter 0.  I am happy to share what I've learned and to help you get your chapter into the book when you're ready.  


I've also attached a screenshot of my writing environment, which is Scrivener.   Scrivener is designed for long form writing and is an outliner based visual editor, but you can intermingle tags and customize how it exports. I have configured mine to export PreTeXt by wrapping folders with <chapter>, <section> or <subsection> tags, lightbulbs with <example>, and latex with <math> tags, etc.    It hits a sweet spot between a word processor and an xml editor.  If you're interested in this, let me know.


Will

scrivner.png


Baker,Dan

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Aug 1, 2019, 9:47:32 AM8/1/19
to Engineering Statics (OER) Group
Will,
This is super exciting! I don't have much time today to dig deeply, but will be back in touch next week.
Dan
____________________________________________________

Daniel W Baker PhD PE, Professor of Practice
  Office:  ENGR B206                      Phone: 970-491-0261
  Email:  dan....@colostate.edu   
Twitter: @drdanteaches
  YouTube: DrDanTeaches


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Henslee, Erin

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Aug 5, 2019, 8:42:10 AM8/5/19
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Hi Will,
Thanks for this. I am planning on using downtime this week while I am at a workshop to look more carefully. I have been working offline and will alos upload my stuff soon (mine is a plain ol' document for now)
Erin



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Erin A. Henslee, PhD
Founding Faculty and Assistant Professor
Wake Forest University
Department of Engineering
455 Vine Street
Bldg 60 South
hens...@wfu.edu
Twitter:@e_henslee

William Haynes

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Aug 9, 2019, 12:12:39 PM8/9/19
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Erin,

That’s great. Plain text is fine for now.

When your draft is ready, let me know and I will tag it as PreText and add it to the book, or help you do it yourself if you prefer.

Will



On Aug 5, 2019, at 8:41 AM, Henslee, Erin <hens...@wfu.edu> wrote:

Hi Will,
Thanks for this. I am planning on using downtime this week while I am at a workshop to look more carefully. I have been working offline and will alos upload my stuff soon (mine is a plain ol' document for now)
Erin

On Thu, Aug 1, 2019 at 9:47 AM Baker,Dan <Dan....@colostate.edu> wrote:
Will,
This is super exciting! I don't have much time today to dig deeply, but will be back in touch next week.
Dan
____________________________________________________

Daniel W Baker PhD PE, Professor of Practice
  Office:  ENGR B206                      Phone: 970-491-0261
  Email:  dan....@colostate.edu   
Twitter: @drdanteaches
  YouTube: DrDanTeaches


On Wed, Jul 31, 2019 at 4:31 PM William Haynes <wha...@maritime.edu> wrote:
This is what I've go so far for my chapter rendered into PreText.   https://ryefamily.org/textbook  I have a few more ideas to implement, but it's shaping up.


I've learned a lot about producing PreTeXt documents, SVG graphics, and geogebra interactives in the process, and I put my notes into Chapter 0.  I am happy to share what I've learned and to help you get your chapter into the book when you're ready.  


I've also attached a screenshot of my writing environment, which is Scrivener.   Scrivener is designed for long form writing and is an outliner based visual editor, but you can intermingle tags and customize how it exports. I have configured mine to export PreTeXt by wrapping folders with <chapter>, <section> or <subsection> tags, lightbulbs with <example>, and latex with <math> tags, etc.    It hits a sweet spot between a word processor and an xml editor.  If you're interested in this, let me know.



Will

<scrivner.png>



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Erin A. Henslee, PhD
Founding Faculty and Assistant Professor
Wake Forest University
Department of Engineering
455 Vine Street
Bldg 60 South
hens...@wfu.edu
Twitter:@e_henslee


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Baker,Dan

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Aug 9, 2019, 3:11:49 PM8/9/19
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Will (and other),
I remain excited and wanted to share my current thoughts:
  1. Figures - I'm excited the Inkscape + Latex can be directly used in PreText. Granted there is a 'save as' step, but otherwise looks seamless. 
    1. We should talk soon about standardizing fonts, colors, etc before too many SVG's are produced
    2. I gave this a try and found I did not have the Latex render extension in my Inkscape installation (0.92.4). I tried installing this extension) but am still getting an error when I try to render. Will, any suggestions?
  2. Navigation - My mind wants to see my progress through a topic in the left hand menu. Is there a way in PreText to show a more detailed (expanding) left-hand navigation menu?
  3. Overlapping content - We'll have to reconcile a bit of overlap currently existing between Ch 2 Forces and Other Vectors and Ch 3 Equilibrium of Particles - mainly on the topic of resultants (in Example 1.5 and 1.6). For other possible overlaps, to minimize the inevitable overlap with other chapters make sure to contact the coordinating author of the chapter you may overlap with
    1. Will - you have done lots more work including examples than I have in Ch 2. Lets chat sometime and plan a path forward.  See my draft of Ch 2 on the Google Drive)
That will do for now.
Best, Dan
____________________________________________________

Daniel W Baker PhD PE, Professor of Practice
  Office:  ENGR B206                      Phone: 970-491-0261
  Email:  dan....@colostate.edu   
Twitter: @drdanteaches
  YouTube: DrDanTeaches

William Haynes

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Aug 9, 2019, 6:59:18 PM8/9/19
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Hi Dan and all,


On Aug 9, 2019, at 3:11 PM, Baker,Dan <Dan....@colostate.edu> wrote:

Will (and other),
I remain excited and wanted to share my current thoughts:
  1. Figures - I'm excited the Inkscape + Latex can be directly used in PreText. Granted there is a 'save as' step, but otherwise looks seamless. 
    1. We should talk soon about standardizing fonts, colors, etc before too many SVG's are produced

Me too.  I was glad to learn how to include Latex in SVG diagrams and have it render properly.  The resulting diagrams look much better that they would otherwise, and will be more consistent.  It also means that we can defer selecting fonts for diagrams, because when the book is produced latex will use the same font for all the diagrams.    

I agree that we should standardize a graphic style: colors, line weights, and image sizes if possible.  

I’ve been mostly using Geogebra to create my SVG files because:  
    1. I familiar with it, so it’s fast and easy for me to create them. 
    2. I think the resulting diagrams look pretty good.  
    3. Static Geogebra diagrams will match the appearance of any dynamic dynamic Geogebra we include.

I want to recommend that if anyone creates diagrams, they should keep all the source files and components together in a folder (Mine are in src/resources/ch_03/, with a folder for each illustration) , so that someone else at a later date can revise or repurpose them if necessary.   Also, image files are going to need unique names, so avoid generic filenames like fbd.svg.

    1. I gave this a try and found I did not have the Latex render extension in my Inkscape installation (0.92.4). I tried installing this extension) but am still getting an error when I try to render. Will, any suggestions?

Dan, do you have a working Latex installation on your machine?  If so, try this…. 

    1. Make a new folder
    2. Copy the latex lines below to TEST.tex and save it in the folder
    3. Put the pdf and pdf_tex files generated by Inkscape next to TEST.tex
    4. Change  the \input command on line 10 to point to the correct name of the pdf_tex file
    5. From the command line, cd to the folder then type:  pdflatex TEST.tex
    6. The output should be TEST.pdf

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{geometry}             
\geometry{letterpaper}                   
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{color}
\usepackage{transparent}
\begin{document}
\def\svgwidth{6in}
\input{drawing.pdf_tex}
\end{document}  

If that doesn’t work let me know.
  1. Navigation - My mind wants to see my progress through a topic in the left hand menu. Is there a way in PreText to show a more detailed (expanding) left-hand navigation menu?

The pretext left hand navigation menu has two levels, chapter and section.  I looked through all the PreText generated books on the Pretext site, and they are all like that.  There may be a way to make the navigation menu go three levels deep, but it’s not documented.  Everything is possible however.



  1. Overlapping content - We'll have to reconcile a bit of overlap currently existing between Ch 2 Forces and Other Vectors and Ch 3 Equilibrium of Particles - mainly on the topic of resultants (in Example 1.5 and 1.6). For other possible overlaps, to minimize the inevitable overlap with other chapters make sure to contact the coordinating author of the chapter you may overlap with

Overlaps are probably inevitable with multiple authors working independently without seeing the other chapters.   We’ll eventually need an editor to go through the chapters looking for duplicated content, combining or reconciling it and putting it into the most logical location.  


    1. Will - you have done lots more work including examples than I have in Ch 2. Lets chat sometime and plan a path forward.  See my draft of Ch 2 on the Google Drive)  

Sure.  I’d love to get your draft Chapter 2 into pretext form before September, when my free time shrinks again. Let me know if you want me to do the initial tagging.  Once it’s in that form there’s no going back to google docs, however.  Do you have a working pretext installation on your computer?  You’ll want that to test out any further edits.

Will 


That will do for now.
Best, Dan
____________________________________________________

Daniel W Baker PhD PE, Professor of Practice
  Office:  ENGR B206                      Phone: 970-491-0261
  Email:  dan....@colostate.edu   
Twitter: @drdanteaches
  YouTube: DrDanTeaches


On Thu, Aug 1, 2019 at 7:47 AM Dan Baker <dan....@colostate.edu> wrote:
Will,
This is super exciting! I don't have much time today to dig deeply, but will be back in touch next week.
Dan
____________________________________________________

Daniel W Baker PhD PE, Professor of Practice
  Office:  ENGR B206                      Phone: 970-491-0261
  Email:  dan....@colostate.edu   
Twitter: @drdanteaches
  YouTube: DrDanTeaches


On Wed, Jul 31, 2019 at 4:31 PM William Haynes <wha...@maritime.edu> wrote:
This is what I've go so far for my chapter rendered into PreText.   https://ryefamily.org/textbook  I have a few more ideas to implement, but it's shaping up.


I've learned a lot about producing PreTeXt documents, SVG graphics, and geogebra interactives in the process, and I put my notes into Chapter 0.  I am happy to share what I've learned and to help you get your chapter into the book when you're ready.  


I've also attached a screenshot of my writing environment, which is Scrivener.   Scrivener is designed for long form writing and is an outliner based visual editor, but you can intermingle tags and customize how it exports. I have configured mine to export PreTeXt by wrapping folders with <chapter>, <section> or <subsection> tags, lightbulbs with <example>, and latex with <math> tags, etc.    It hits a sweet spot between a word processor and an xml editor.  If you're interested in this, let me know.



Will

<scrivner.png>



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