[OS X TeX] Re: Preparing A Textbook Using Mac/TeX

[Robert Ullrey]

TeX on Mac OS X Mailing List wrote this pithy remark on 9/29/06

>Subject: Preparing A Textbook Using Mac/TeX

[snip]

>Outcome
>-----------
>The outcome I foresee is a self-contained textbook/CD with  
>interactive, hyper-referenced text, images, and problems.

[snip]

>The Questions
>--------------------
>1) What TeX implementation would be "best" for all this? Right now, I  
>use TeXShop with LaTeX. I am open to learning a different setup (ie,  
>ConTeX???) for the advantages of better integration with all the  
>document management tasks.

I just finished doing a similar text book effort for ethnography. I
started in LaTeX, but because we also wanted to make it more interactive
for college undergrads I switched away from LaTeX to writing in HTML.
What I did was write the book portion in MultiMarkdown[1] starting first
in OmniOutliner[2] and then in TextMate[3][4]. From MultiMarkdown I was
able to generate the HTML code very easily. Conversely, MultiMarkdown at
this point also offers a great way to generate LaTeX. I designed a CSS
stylesheet for the project and was then able to produce a PDF of the
text for print through Prince[5] and generate a “web” style interactive
book for CD. Quizes I wrote in php which printed easily (print edition)
and also offered the ability to create quizes for each module on the CD.
Using HTML, PHP and CSS made all coding for the project non-proprietary.
Using MultiMarkdown made it a pleasure to write -- much like LaTeX. For
an excellent example of what a published book using this system looks
like (mine has not been released yet), see:
<http://www.awprofessional.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=0321193121&rl=
1> and the article on writing it,
<http://www.alistapart.com/articles/boom>

Cheers
Robert



[1] MultiMarkdown <http://fletcher.freeshell.org/wiki/MultiMarkdown>
[2] MultiMarkdown plugin for Omnioutliner
<http://fletcher.freeshell.org/wiki/OmniOutlinerMarkdownPlugin>
[3] TextMate <http://macromates.com/>
[4] TextMate bundle for MultiMarkdown
<http://fletcher.freeshell.org/wiki/MultiMarkdownTextMateBundle>
[5] Prince <http://www.princexml.com/>




__________________________________________________________
Robert Ullrey                            
Phone: (916) 600-5619
E-mail: robert_ullrey at mac.com

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