Looking for app to design a book

scar · 2014-12-08 08:34:27

Hello

I will try to design a book on arch, and I'm looking for the right software.
I've tried Libreoffice (a bit messy for the task) and Scribus (master page handling lacks some flexibility) for the moment.
I know this is a bit off-topic, but I would be very interested by your feedback.

jasonwryan · 2014-12-08 08:39:12

LaTeX.

Trilby · 2014-12-08 12:34:44

Definitely latex. You could also keep a local git repo which makes revisions so easy - and frees you up to try creative approaches while making it easy to revert if you realize it went the wrong way. You can even push the repo to a public site (e.g. github) for instant peer review - lots of little fixes would only take accepting a pull request.

I'd use vim + git (w/github) + latex. But you could use that other editor too.

Can I ask, what is this "book on arch"? ~~Is this stuff that you could be adding to the wiki?~~ edit: oops, sorry, I read the alternative interpretation: you are "(writing a book) on arch" not "writing a (book on arch)".

Last edited by Trilby (2014-12-08 12:49:08)

scar · 2014-12-08 12:38:37

No, nothing like that. It is a perfectly selfish and useless and pointless project - the translation of an old pen and paper roleplaying game.

drcouzelis · 2014-12-08 13:43:15

To further clarify LaTeX (if you don't have any experience with it):

Have you ever tried writing a large document (like, over twenty pages) in Microsoft Word and say to yourself something like "Why is that text now bold?" or "Why did those lines move to the next page?" or "How do I get that text out of the header area?" or "I made one change and now the 100+ chapter numbering is all messed up??" ...If you have, then you might appreciate LaTeX.

I say LaTeX is like "programming a book". You write the content (the most important part) of your book in a TXT file, then add some old-timey "BBCode" , then run it through a "compiler" which will automatically produce the most beautifully formatted PDF in book form. It's nice.

In my experience learning to use LaTeX is pretty quick and easy, but as soon as I wanted to do something "a little different" (add pictures, special layout...) it quickly became quite challenging to use. I also briefly used "lyx" during a time I needed to quickly create many small specialized LaTeX documents. "lyx" is like "Microsoft Word for LaTeX files".

...Speaking of BBCode, are there any recent LaTeX alternatives? I can't imagine there's anything that's more powerful than LaTeX, but if all I need is some basic formatting options then something simpler might be nice.

Trilby · 2014-12-08 15:08:24

Latex has a number of 'spinoffs' which I have no experience with (e.g., contex, xetex, etc). Some of these seem tailored to be a bit more straightforward for simple things.

Latex indeed has a learning curve. It is pretty darn easy to do the basics, but as soon as you want to customize anything you need to learn a bit. I think the documentation available is pretty good, and anything can be learned - but it often has to be. I've recently been learning a lot more about writing latex classes (essentialy style/template files), this is a bit of rough territory, but really anything can be done with it.

But if this is a book that doesn't need to meet anyone else's arbitrary requirements, then one of the readily available classes should work very well. The 'memoir' class is popular for books.

ANOKNUSA · 2014-12-08 15:11:32

LaTeX can't be beat when it comes to layout/typesetting. However, I do all my actual writing using Pandoc's extended Markdown syntax. I can think of three reasons to prefer Pandoc, at least for the writing process:

- LaTeX makes gorgeous final products but it's syntax is tedious to work with compared to Markdown, even the more complex Markdown used by Pandoc. Block quotes, lists, citations, headings, footnotes and bibliographies are all much easier to work with in Pandoc since you don't have to switch between writing prose and writing code---you just place simple punctuation marks in the appropriate place to get the desired effect.

- Pandoc can output to damn near every format imaginable (including different TeX derivatives), so you can use LaTeX just for formatting the final product rather than writing the whole document.

- In contrast, LaTeX can only output three formats on its own: PDF, Docbook and (unless I'm mistaken) ODF. You'd need an extra tool---like, say, Pandoc----to convert your LaTeX document to HTML or EPUB or MediaWiki or something if you wanted to publish in a medium other than print (or one that mimics print as PDF does).

- Another possibly less-compelling reason would be that Markdown is deliberately designed with the intent of making an unprocessed document human-readable. Most people should be able to open or print out a plain text document marked up with Markdown and generally understand what the markup signifies. This makes collaborative editing with people unfamiliar with Markdown possible.

Trilby · 2014-12-08 15:42:36

ANOKNUSA wrote:

- In contrast, LaTeX can only output three formats on its own...

This does not seem correct. Of course it depends on what you define separate tools, but latex is generally considered to refer to a collection of tools rather than one monolithic binary [1]. I believe pandoc has various modules for different formats too. Working with a reasonably inclusive definition of what comprises latex (e.g., archlinux's package for it) latex can output to *many* other formats including html, and troff man pages.

[1] If we don't allow for these packaged tools, then latex can't even create pdfs.

The other points, however, are right on. Markdown + pandoc is a great option.

Last edited by Trilby (2014-12-08 15:49:56)

ewaller · 2014-12-08 17:33:23

if you plan to typeset any formulae I cannot imagine using anything but LaTeX. That, and if your book needs a biography, references, endnotes, in-line graphics, etc..., LaTex is unsurpassed.

DonVla · 2014-12-08 18:56:47

For the lazy: http://www.lyx.org/Screenshots
A comfortable interface for LaTeX.

Steef435 · 2014-12-08 23:30:49

Though I think that the editor above would be very handy for inserting lots of images and stuff like that it will lessen the ability to actually compose the text, as in easily writing (and reading!) when a new chapter starts etc. I also wonder how well the software works with comments and stuff like that, but I can't really comment on that because I've never used it. But for the goal of the OP (composing the document, no formulae or lots of figures), I think that writing "raw" LaTeX would yield better results.

philotomy · 2014-12-09 00:50:58

LaTeX is probably the best choice. That said, using PrinceXML might be a viable option.

ids1024 · 2014-12-09 01:23:47

I would definitely recommend LaTeX. I also suggest looking at pandoc, since markdown is much nicer to work with then LaTeX syntax. I do not have much experience with converting LaTeX to other formats. However, it is simply not designed to be converted to things like html. TeX (upon which LaTeX is based) is a Turing complete language. If you use some more advanced features, it is impossible to automatically convert.

For those reasons, I recommend using pandoc, unless you want to heavily use more advanced features like mathematical typesetting. You can write the text in markdown, use a template for the LaTeX formatting, build with a Makefile, and store it all in a git repo.

Of course, such things are much harder than Libreoffice/Word at first, but the benefits vastly outweigh the costs. LaTeX is good for basic word-processing up to professional publishing.

Trilby · 2014-12-09 01:47:26

ids1024 wrote:

it is simply not designed to be converted to things like html

Where does this idea come from? Html is one of the easiest output formats of latex. I'm all for critiques - and there are certainly benefits of markdown/pandoc, but some advantage in being able to make html is simply not one of them as latex does that just fine too.

progandy · 2014-12-09 01:51:48

ids1024 wrote:

For those reasons, I recommend using pandoc, unless you want to heavily use more advanced features like mathematical typesetting. You can write the text in markdown, use a template for the LaTeX formatting, build with a Makefile, and store it all in a git repo.

Pandoc has a latex math extension, so in many cases pandoc markdown should work for mathematical typesetting, too.
http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#math

Edit: markdown is easier to learn since it strives to create a readable representation in ASCII text. Our brain seeks out patterns, so it is easier to detect mistakes and write the document with a specific pattern e.g. "table" or "underline". latex is more declarative, so it could be harder to review a document source even if it might be faster to write. I feel markdown is a good compromise between pure declarative text input and a full-blown word processor or desktop publishing software.

Last edited by progandy (2014-12-09 02:03:28)

ids1024 · 2014-12-09 04:00:02

Trilby wrote:

ids1024 wrote:
it is simply not designed to be converted to things like html
Where does this idea come from? Html is one of the easiest output formats of latex. I'm all for critiques - and there are certainly benefits of markdown/pandoc, but some advantage in being able to make html is simply not one of them as latex does that just fine too.

I do not know how well the conversion tools work; perhaps they work quite well. However, they require parsing LaTeX code with external tools rather than the proper compiler, and do not support everything. It just seems better to use pandoc markdown, since that can easily be converted to many formats.

Source: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Exp … er_Formats

Other formats can be produced, such as RTF (which can be used in Microsoft Word) and HTML. However, these documents are produced from software that parses and interprets the LaTeX files, and do not implement all the features available for the primary DVI and PDF outputs.

kazimir · 2014-12-09 09:40:38

A useful read for designing a book is Butterick's Practical Typography which was made using a publishing system called pollen (made with racked, descendant of scheme, descendant of lisp) as explained here.

Last edited by kazimir (2014-12-09 09:41:20)

orschiro · 2014-12-10 06:57:26

One more voice for Markdown & Pandoc. The former is already feature-rich but lacks some features such as referencing, BibTeX support and figure captions. However, there are several extensions to it that provide it, such as Academic Markdown.

whitie · 2014-12-10 14:25:43

What about using Sphinx. ReStructuredText is also simple to write and nice to read as plaintext.

Whitie

ANOKNUSA · 2014-12-10 16:35:16

ewaller wrote:

That, and if your book needs a biography, references, endnotes, in-line graphics, etc...

orschiro wrote:

One more voice for Markdown & Pandoc. The former is already feature-rich but lacks some features such as referencing, BibTeX support and figure captions.

Funny that the Pandoc Markdown User's Guide lists all of these features contiguously, like the author anticipated these responses at once. LaTeX is probably still better at neatly formatting them, though.

EDIT: They're also available in the pandoc_markdown(5) man page.

Last edited by ANOKNUSA (2014-12-10 16:36:51)

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#1 2014-12-08 08:34:27

Looking for app to design a book

#2 2014-12-08 08:39:12

Re: Looking for app to design a book

#3 2014-12-08 12:34:44

Re: Looking for app to design a book

#4 2014-12-08 12:38:37

Re: Looking for app to design a book

#5 2014-12-08 13:43:15

Re: Looking for app to design a book

#6 2014-12-08 15:08:24

Re: Looking for app to design a book

#7 2014-12-08 15:11:32

Re: Looking for app to design a book

#8 2014-12-08 15:42:36

Re: Looking for app to design a book

#9 2014-12-08 17:33:23

Re: Looking for app to design a book

#10 2014-12-08 18:56:47

Re: Looking for app to design a book

#11 2014-12-08 23:30:49

Re: Looking for app to design a book

#12 2014-12-09 00:50:58

Re: Looking for app to design a book

#13 2014-12-09 01:23:47

Re: Looking for app to design a book

#14 2014-12-09 01:47:26

Re: Looking for app to design a book

#15 2014-12-09 01:51:48

Re: Looking for app to design a book

#16 2014-12-09 04:00:02

Re: Looking for app to design a book

#17 2014-12-09 09:40:38

Re: Looking for app to design a book

#18 2014-12-10 06:57:26

Re: Looking for app to design a book

#19 2014-12-10 14:25:43

Re: Looking for app to design a book

#20 2014-12-10 16:35:16

Re: Looking for app to design a book

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