Excellent Typesetting, Part 5
March 9, 2005 – 12:00 pmIn my last newsletter I wrote, “Next week, I hope to give you a macro that will let you process a ConTeXt file directly from Microsoft Word.” I’ve changed my mind. If you need such a macro, let me know and I’ll send it to you.
Instead of listing the macro, I want to finish up this series on excellent typesetting with an overview of what I’ve learned. Then next week, I’ll get back to tips and tricks for working with Microsoft Word, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief.
What I’ve learned is that all of the TeX-based programs–ConTeXt, LaTeX, or whatever–are capable of producing truly excellent typesetting. In fact, in many ways they surpass InDesign–most notably in the fact that they can handle automatic footnotes. And nearly all of them are free. They are not, however, easy to use. They require a commitment to learning and experimentation.
That being said, I’ve worked out a way to produce typeset documents from Word without too much pain. Surprisingly, the procedure is fairly close to the theoretical process I outlined in the first article I wrote on the subject. Here it is:
1. Install TeX, which is available in a variety of packages. For Windows, I like MikTeX and the TeXnicCenter editor, both of which are included in ProTeXt:
For Macintosh, I like XeTeX and the TeXShop editor (nice!):
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&cat_id=Home
http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/texshop.html
During the installation, if you can, choose the option to update packages automatically.
2. Install Java:
http://www.java.sun.com/getjava/download.html
3. Install the OpenOffice.org office suite, being sure to enable Java and install Mobile Device Filters (even if you’re not using a mobile device):
4. Install Writer2LaTeX as an export filter for OpenOffice.org Writer:
http://www.hj-gym.dk/~hj/writer2latex/
A nice alternative is the OfficeFMT LaTeX filter:
http://officefmt.iqchoice.com/latex.html
5. Install LyX and work through the documentation under Help:
LyX is an amazing program–much more powerful and useful than I originally thought.
6. Okay, once you’ve got all that taken care of (whew!), create a new document in LyX, which has dialog boxes to set margins, default font, default point size, and lots of other stuff that’s a pain to do in plain old LaTeX. Line spacing is calculated as a percentage; for example, 1.2 means “120% of point size.”
7. Put the following code in your document preamble (you’ll understand what that means after reading the LyX documentation):
%Set up hanging punctuation and margin kerning:
\usepackage{microtype}
%Set up page size:
\geometry{paperwidth=6in,paperheight=9in}
%Set up paper size and crop marks:
\usepackage[cam,letter,center]{crop}
%%Prevent displayed folios on title and part pages:
%\aliaspagestyle{title}{empty}
%\aliaspagestyle{part}{empty}
%Set up regular footnote numbering style.
%Note the period after “@thefnmark” and the space before “#1″:
\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\@makefntext}[1]{%
\setlength{\parindent}{1em}%
\makebox[1.0em][l]{\normalfont\@thefnmark.} #1}
\makeatother
\renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\arabic{footnote}}{\normalsize}
%Set break tolerances:
\widowpenalty=9999 % Don’t allow widows
%\clubpenalty=9999 %Don’t allow orphans
\hyphenpenalty=500 %Discourage too many word breaks
\tolerance=500
\flushbottom %Allow vertical justification
%\raggedbottom %This sets fixed justification
%Prevent double spaces between sentences:
\frenchspacing
At least those are the settings I like, and I’m trying to keep you from having to think about them too much. Note that “%” turns a command into a comment, so you can turn commands off and on if you like.
8. Type “My text goes here” in your LyX document.
9. Save your document and export it as LaTeX.
10. Open your edited Microsoft Word document in OpenOffice.org Writer. You used styles to format your headings and other text, right?
11. Export the document as LaTeX.
12. Okay, now what you have are two LaTeX documents. Open *both* of them in your LaTeX editor.
13. In the document you exported from OpenOffice.org Writer, scroll down to this line–
\begin{document}
–and copy everything *after* that line.
14. Switch to the document you exported from LyX. Find the place that says “My text goes here” and replace it (by pasting) with the text you copied from the first document. This will give you a final LaTeX document that you can build as a PDF.
15. Do so (as explained in the program documentation). Then open the PDF in Acrobat Reader–
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
–and be surprised by the quality of the typeset document. In a good way, I hope.
If you’re not interested in going through all of that, I do have a few suggestions for WYSIWYG typesetting programs (not free) that handle automatic footnotes:
Papyrus:
http://www.rom-logicware.com/e_start.htm
The new Apple iWork Pages:
http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/
The latest version of Serif PagePlus:
http://www.serif.com/pageplus/pageplus10/index.asp
There’s also, well, WordPerfect, which does decent H&J, handles footnotes, and allows the independent adjustment of word spacing and letter spacing:
While you’re there, check out Ventura, which gets mixed reviews from users but has wonderful typographical features and, of course, footnotes.
And then there’s FrameMaker. But since it won’t break footnotes over pages, I’m not recommending it:
http://www.adobe.com/products/framemaker/main.html
If you know of other programs that ought to be listed, *please* let me know and I’ll share the information in next week’s newsletter.
Finally, I’d like to ask a favor, one that would benefit editors, typesetters, and designers everywhere: Call Adobe and ask them to include automatic footnotes in the next release of InDesign:
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/contact.html
That would solve the problem once and for all.
And now, back to your regularly scheduled program–Microsoft Word.
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RESOURCES
I can’t resist suggesting a completely different way of typesetting with TeX. This is quite unusual, and is a Very Cool Thing.
1. Write your document in any word processor or text editor, using the reStructuredText markup system:
http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html
reStructuredText is very simple. For example, to indicate italics, you surround text with asterisks, *like this.* Bold is indicated **like this.** Heading structure can be indicated like this:
This Is a Primary Heading
=========================
This Is a Secondary Heading
—————————
And there’s much more. The system is intuitive, flexible, and very readable, and the documentation is easy to understand.
After using this markup system, save your document as a text file. Then convert your file into a LaTeX file (.tex) using DocUtils:
http://docutils.sourceforge.net/index.html
Finally, open the LaTeX file in a LaTeX editor and build the file as a PDF. Or use DocFactory, which was designed specifically for writing and compiling files with reStructuredText:
http://docutils.sourceforge.net/sandbox/gschwant/docfactory/doc/
You don’t have to know much about LaTeX to use this system, and the result is professional-quality typesetting from a simple text document. Amazing!
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