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Re: Using Mathematica to typeset books

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg125383] Re: Using Mathematica to typeset books
• From: Armand Tamzarian <mike.honeychurch at gmail.com>
• Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2012 04:06:03 -0500 (EST)
• Delivered-to: l-mathgroup@mail-archive0.wolfram.com
• References: <jj9ut7$duf$1@smc.vnet.net>

On Mar 8, 8:41 pm, m... at necomp.us wrote:
> I'm a newbie to Mathematica. I work with a publisher that is looking
> to use Mathematica to typeset its books. Is it possible to do this and
> what are some books that may be of interest. A lot of the books are
> now set using LaTex but the publisher is looking to set up some with
> Mathematica and then using CDF for some website tutorials.


Mike it is certainly possible. I have typeset a book and 12 issues of
Mathematica in Education and Research. The problem for users at the
moment is that Wolfram have failed to continue to update AuthorTools.
This was a handy suite of tools for creating tables of contents,
indexes and so on. These tools are still bundled with Mathematica but haven't
been updated for a few versions and do not all work as seemlessly as
they once did. So this has resulted in the process of typesetting a
book being more difficult now that it used to be. There are work
arounds but the Wolfram have iincreased the degree of difficulty by
not updating AuthorTools -- thus creating a disincentive for many
users to use Mathematica for typesetting. Hopefully Wolfram will get serious
about supporting (physical) publishing of books and re-introduce an
updated version of these tools in the next release.

To typeset a book in Mathematica for your publisher you need to talk to your
publisher about their styling requirements and then create a
stylesheet based on those requirements. You can also create other
stylesheets to support electronic version of the text. Without more
information it is a bit difficult to add much more.

Mike