Moving out Mac

[Patrick McSwiggen]

On Oct 15, 2004, at 8:48 PM, Roy W. Erickson wrote:
> What I want to do when I get home....
> -------------------
> I want to publish my math notes to the web and eventually through a
> publisher. So I need math formula capable s/w to help me do that. I'm
> still not satisfied with the basic stuff I see in OOffice.

If you want to publish math (that doesn't look like cr** the way 
anything produced by M$ products does) you need to use TeX. If you are 
not familiar with it, TeX is a markup language like HTML. E.g., the 
fraction n/2 would be \frac{n}{2}. Unfortunately, I don't know of any 
friendly interfaces on the Mac or linux. Scientific Word for windows 
is, but I don't know of anything analogous for Mac or Windows. (TeX 
diehards sneer at S.W.--I guess they feel it's good for the sole to 
memorize lots of esoteric tags.) Nevertheless, if you want good output, 
you've got to bite the bullet and use TeX. Just get Gratzer's book, 
"Math into LaTeX" and you will be very happy. On linux, teTeX is part 
of FC2. I don't use TeX in linux, so I am only marginally familiar with 
teTeX. I believe it follows the standard procedure--produce your TeX 
file in your favorite editor (TeX files are plain text) and then "tex" 
it to produce a properly typeset document. On the Mac, use TeXShop. 
This is actually just the front-end, but it tells you what else to 
install. (I think the back-end may be teTeX again, but I can't swear to 
that.) It's nice in that it produces PDF files directly.

-- 
Patrick D. McSwiggen                            pat.mcswiggen at uc.edu
Mathematical Sciences                            513-556-4080
University of Cincinnati                         513-556-3417 FAX