[OS X TeX] Book Design Resources

[William Adams]

On Nov 27, 2006, at 8:35 AM, David Oliver wrote:

> I am laying the groundwork for a new book that is of more general  
> character than usual  LaTeX physics and math articles and  
> textbooks. Were there no math involved, I would create this project  
> in Adobe CS with the book layout and typesetting managed in  
> InDesign. But mathematics is a significant part of this book and it  
> cannot be done to the required level of quality without LaTeX. The  
> book will therefore be done in LaTeX.

Say rather that it can't be done reasonably, quickly and w/o  
introducing the need to proof all equations character for character.  
People do high-quality mathematics using things like York Graphics'  
Xmath in Quark, and there's a similar plug-in for Adobe InDesign.

> Since the archive of packages is so vast, I invite users to  
> recommend packages they have found helpful for more flexible book  
> design than the LaTeX defaults. I am aware of the geometry package  
> and intend to use it. Is the memoir class the most well-suited for  
> a project of this kind? Are their other packages of which I am  
> unaware that provide resources for a richer book design environment  
> than the defaults?

The memoir class has its own commands to replace those of the  
geometry class.

In terms of its having its own manual, and ``swallowing up'' other  
excellent classes (e.g., booktabs) it's in a class of its own for  
this sort of thing and I highly recommend it.

> Lastly, there have been a number of documents describing the  
> installation of new fonts in LaTeX, a process that is less simple  
> than one might hope, and some of these go pack some years. What is  
> the most up to date document describing installation of new fonts?

If possible, use XeTeX <http://scripts.sil.org/xetex> and Will  
Robertson's fontspec <http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/xetex/ 
latex/fontspec/>.

If not, Philipp Lehman's _The Font Installation Guide_ is as good as  
it gets: <http://www.tug.org/tex-archive/info/Type1fonts/ 
fontinstallationguide/fontinstallationguide.pdf>

William

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications



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