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25 lines
2.6 KiB
25 lines
2.6 KiB
<[Stephen]> Forget LaTeX. It's popular in the scientific/mathematic fields because it was designed for scientific/mathematic output, many of its presets and functions assume that you are writing a scientific paper.
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TeX itself is the best way to get general text formatting done on a computer. I am a proud owner of Knuth's entire TeX bookshelf. I say: define your own presets and macros and write the document in TeX. It will probably help for you to think of TeX as CSS/HTML. With TeX you define a set of commands (that will later be referenced like /header /poem /etc) in a file and then use those commands to compile your document. If you want to change how all the poems display, just one place to change.
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To get a good handle on TeX you really need The TeXBook (1st in the series) which I would be happy to lend cross-country. The other books deal with how TeX was programmed and Metafont so aren't necessary to just use the program.
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As far as publishing goes, you could do worse than Lulu Press: http://www.lulu.com/
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<[Brennen]> Huh. I think I don't know enough about TeX. On the TeXBook loaner offer, I'd be glad to cover postage, but let me scope out the BoulderPublicLibrary first.
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You're no less than the fourth person to directly suggest Lulu.com, and indeed they do look pretty decent. This is the route I will probably go. There are slightly cheaper places, but so far I'm not impressed with their features or their generally skeezier marketing. Teresa Nielsen-Hayden wrote a piece a while back advocating using a traditional press/bookmaker's for self publishing, but I think that was before the advent of decent print-on-demand options like Lulu, and most of the places I've looked at do larger runs & expect me to know more about bookmaking in general. (See SelfPublishing for a few notes.)
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<[Brennen]> ...well, the public library is a no-go.
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<[Stephen]> Damn public library and their incomplete catalog. Not that I'm very surprised. TeX is much too esoteric for most to have heard of, and those that would have heard of it aren't generally writing poetry or prose and so use LaTeX.
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No worries about postage, I'll just include it in ye olde package I was planning to send anyway.
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<[Anonymous]> The UCB library has this book. Do they let you check things out if you're not a student?
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<[Brennen]> I actually just checked that. Since it's a public university my guess is probably yeah, but I don't know what hoops they want you to jump through first. I'll look into it.
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<[Brennen]> It turns out that CU charges a $100/year fee for public borrowers, so I've got a copy on the way via interlibrary loan.
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<[Stephen]> Neato. ILL's are where it's at.
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