Re: How to write a "proper" math document
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg120050] Re: How to write a "proper" math document
- From: Daniel Lichtblau <danl at wolfram.com>
- Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 07:29:40 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <ius5j1$2e6$1@smc.vnet.net> <iuuktr$ers$1@smc.vnet.net>
On Jul 5, 4:18 am, AES <sieg... at stanford.edu> wrote:
> In article <ius5j1$2e... at smc.vnet.net>, dr DanW <dmaxwar... at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Pulling back from the meta-issue of literate engineering, this is the second
> > time in as many months the topic of hiding cells for publishing documentation
> > has come up in this forum. I think I will experiment a little with using
> > cell tags to mark cells for hiding (closing) so switching between the
> > development and publishing layout is just a button click. If I come up with
> > something I am happy with, I'll post it under a new thread.
>
> > Daniel
>
> I would be delighted to see this, and think it would be a very useful
> contribution.
>
> Let me add what I think would be an even more useful -- but I suppose
> considerably more difficult -- Mathematica add-on.
>
> This add-on would comprise:
>
> 1) A way to capture an executed notebook, including all its output
> cells (that is, everything you see on the screen as you scroll through a
> notebook, once that notebook has been executed) -- in other words a
> simple Save;
>
> 2) Then a way to run this captured notebook through a totally separate
> post-processor program, written in whatever, that would convert this
> notebook file into a "touch-up-able" TeX (or LaTex) source file;
>
> 3) And then, a few steps of hand touch up of this TeX source file, as
> needed, followed by running it through TeX or LaTeX to create a polished
> PDF document.
>
> A first, relatively trivially step toward this goal would be to simply
> capture the ASCII text content of each cell in the executed document and
> insert it as the content of a correspondingly named macro in the TeX
> source file.
>
> That is, each Text cell would be embedded in a \text{---} macro, each
> level of Header cell in a \headerlevelnn{---} macro, and so on. We
> TeXperts (or even TeXNovices) could then define our own \text{} and
> \header{} macros to get the fonts, styles, spacings, and so on that we
> would want for our document. Just doing this could vastly improve page
> breaks, text formatting, and so on.
>
> A second step would be to capture the content of each Output graphics
> cell in the notebook as a graphics file in PDF, JPG, PNG, or whatever
> format; stick this file in the same folder as the primary TeX source
> file with a name like "graphictwo.pdf"; and insert a line in the primary
> TeX source file saying something like
>
> \graphic{graphictwo.pdf}
>
> We TeXNovices could then define our own \graphic{} macro to \input this
> graphic, float the graphic to the top of the page, or whatever we wanted
> to do with it. (We could also hand-edit the graphic file itself in
> Illustrator, should be want to.)
>
> A third step would be a series of tweaks in which the post-processor
> program, in addition to doing steps one and two, would make more
> sophisticated conversions of the "innards" of text and header cells,
> converting Greek letters and the like from Mathematica notation to TeX
> notation, and in general doing anything that could be automated to
> convert Mathematica syntax to TeX syntax.
>
> This approach of course violates the basic Wolfram concept of do
> everything -- and they really do mean *everything* -- with one tool.
> I've never believed in this myself; use the right tool for the job is
> more like my motto. And, the more experience I have with Mathematica
> (and TeX) (and other software tools), the more I come to believe in
> this. Some others agree; others don't.
File > Save As > Files of type > LaTeX Document (*.tex)
will do much of this. It saves graphics as extended PostScript (.eps),
I think. One can certainly save them in other formats by hand,
process further with other tools, etc. As for translation of various
cell types to TeX, it can be a bit fiddly and require hand editing
afterwards, but generally one gets a reasonable starting point by
saving to TeX. This is of course a "Your mileage may vary" scenario.
What I can say with certainty is it has worked tolerably well for my
purposes.
Daniel Lichtblau
Wolfram Research
(not same Daniel as above in this thread)