[TriLUG] latex & thesis prep - what am i getting into?

[Neil Roeth]

On Aug 27, Ed Hill (ed at eh3.com) wrote:
 > On Wed, 2003-08-27 at 11:12, Mike Mueller wrote:
 > > 
 > > I thought someone would mention DocBook in this thread.  Is db not used for 
 > > dissertations? IANAGS.
 > 
 > 
 > Hi Mike,
 > 
 > Generally, people choose commercial word processors because they're
 > familiar with them.  They choose LaTeX (or similar) because they want
 > their math to look good.
 > 
 > I've seen theses and dissertations produced using:
 > 
 >   - LaTeX and other TeX-based distributions
 >   - WordPerfect
 >   - MS Word
 >   - typewriter
 >   - nroff/troff (!)
 > 
 > but none using an SGML- or XML-based package like DocBook.  If anyone
 > has done it or knows of an example, please post it to the list.  I'd
 > like to see how well it handles math.

Depends on how complicated the math is; DocBook can do simple math.  The
attached PDF and DocBook SGML source for it have a few examples.  To give you
some idea of the limits, I included one case, a subscript within a
superscript, that it did incorrectly (the last line in the example document).
I haven't used MathML.  The sequence to generate the PDF was SGML -> TeX ->
DVI -> PS -> PDF, so if you have a TeX format file that makes your document
meet some requirements, you could probably use it in the TeX -> DVI step.

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-- 
Neil Roeth