writing a textbook
By cej38 at Fri, Jun 12 2009 8:06am |
I have recently come across an area of interest that happens to have no textbooks, not just no good textbooks, but no books. I have decided that I would write a book on it (maybe only classnotes). I had originally planned on using LaTeX, but I started wondering, if there wasn't something better out there. What would you suggest?




RE: Writing a textbook
I think LaTeX is quite a good choice. Another format that can be used is DocBook, which is an XML format designed specifically for text books and manuals.
Drew
---------------------------
Drew McCormack
http://www.maccoremac.com
http://www.macanics.net
http://www.macresearch.org
I think for any scientific
I think for any scientific textbook LaTeX is the way to go, that said, I haven't looked at DocBook much. LaTeX is certainly great at cross-referencing, equations and indexes.
Another Vote for Latex
I wrote my thesis in Latex, and found it to be quite accommodating. I found it nice to organize each chapter as its own tex file, and import each file into one driver tex file. This allowed me to save time by only compiling the chapters I was working on. Furthermore, giving each chapter a sub directory also made dealing with the hundreds of images a bit more manageable. The referencing, citing, equation editing, and automatic formatting led me to select Latex when I was debating what package to use.
Lyx, I think it's compatible
Lyx, I think it's compatible with LaTeX.