Technical Word processor with maths ? - Page 4

I had a very similar experience fighting LaTeX's system of floats when I first used it several years ago. In my case I was writing a "how to" guide that included a high ratio of images to text. LaTeX seemed to deal with this by just putting the images in a series every couple of pages or so. The overall effect was reminiscent of those very old books that print graphics on special "plates" inserted in amongst the standard pages.

Enough griping. Anyone who has a robust general purpose solution to this will have my gratitude as well as Kali's.

[h][h][h]

Really.

You can also play with the number of floats that appear on a single page, or the threshholds for sizes that bump to the next page, etc, etc.

I find that [htb] works best for me on average, with fine tuning done via minipages for custom placement on *final* format editing.

It takes some getting used to, but you really need to just go all zen about it until you are 100% done with the content. Just toss it all in there in an approximation, and you'll find that the standard defaults will give you pretty nice results out of the box.

Kickaha said it very well, listen at what he said. If you find yourself fighting against LaTeX, you have got something wrong. This is not a word processor. You have to forget the old practices.

You should tweak the code only (almost) if you have underful \\vbox of overful \\hbox, in the messages of the console (you will see of course in the output what's wrong). Leave the compiler alone to do its trick, do yours in the content. Oh well, I said it: this is indeed a compiler, that's why it is not user friendly, that's why there is much learning (is C++ user friendly? Is C++ archaic? Not a very fair comparison, but not completely out of range). Tweaking code here and there in LaTeX, like you do in a usual word processor, will drive you nuts, guaranteed! As I said in previous posts, there is a reason why LaTeX acts on the layout the way it does. Keep in mind that LaTeX will try to do its best to produce the best output without violating typography rules in main document and equation text. On the other hand, text processing systems, in the class of MS Word, will encourage you to violate everything if you have no the knowledge of how to typeset correctly.

For the figures now: again, leave LaTeX to place them where it thinks it is better. If the figure does not appear where do you want to, why don't use the cross-referencing system to make a reference to it?

Example:

\\begin{figure}
\\begin{center}
you figure here
\\end{center}
\\caption{your caption}
\\label{fig:this_is_one_figure}
\\end{figure}

If you do this, there is no need to say things like "...see previous figure" or "...see next figure" or "...see figure in next page" and fight with the system to ensure the correct placing. You say simply, "...see figure \
ef{fig:this_is_one_figure}" and LaTeX will automatically put and invoke the correct number, regardless the placing.




There is no a standard book template. You can perhaps find custom templates in the net, according to the needs. There is however a book class ( e.g. \\documentclass[11pt]{book} ), is not that what you are using? It will not do something magical, but it will number chapters, sections, equations, etc. according to book format.

Of course cross-references are beautiful things, but sometimes you really want an image to appear immediately before or after a particular paragraph, to save the reader flicking back and forth between pages. This was the bind I found myself in.

But next time I'm using LaTeX I'll play with Kickaha's suggestions, for sure.

It's on pages 107-110 of Kopka and Daly, or 70-72 of Goossens et al.

You're going to kick yourself.

You know how I said that if you don't know what something is, to just try something obvious?



\\footnote{put text here}



See?




I hope you do stick with it, you're getting over the learning curve quickly.



Edit: It may not seem like it, but LaTeX is a lot like a Mac... it does things a little differently than you're used to, but if you just sit back for a moment and think "How would it make *sense* to do this?" you're usually right.

For people starting with LaTeX (and also for experienced LateX-ers) there is an excellent introduction to LaTeX called: The Not So Short Introduction to LATEX 2ε (used to be The Not So very Short Introduction to LATEX 2ε ...)

It can be found here

Very useful. I have it always on my desk.

Ack! I'd totally forgotten about that little gem, thanks for reminding me.

Heh. I even have a copy of it.

The loria link I posted in page 2 of this thread had it already, along with a german and a french version too .