Re: Language Creation: The International Language Construction Bulletin (working title :)) )

En réponse à Philip Newton <Philip.Newton@...>:

>
> What about POD (Perl's "Plain Old Documentation" format)? ;) (If you
> have Perl, you almost certainly have pod2latex, but I don't know how
> general that is -- I can imagine that it might be geared to manpage-
> type documents.)
>
I don't have Perl, and it's one of the rare things I'm not so keen on
installing on my Windows ME computer. How big is a Perl installation on
Windows? If it's a tiny thing that doesn't create programs running on the
background, I may consider take it...

> And as someone else suggested, plain text? If I got around to
> submitting anything, I would probably use plain text.
>
As I said, the problem with Plain Text is that I would have to convert it by
hand, which makes the process quite tedious :(( . But then as last resort I
don't forbid it.

> *However*, I can also imagine that learning a minimal subset of LaTeX
> wouldn't be that hard for me, and if it makes life easier for you,
> then
> I can send you a small LaTeX snipped that you can plunk into a
> document
> template.
>
That would be nice!

> I don't know whether it's possible to write LaTeX if you only know,
> say, a half-a-dozen commands (new paragraph, bold, italic, accents,
> that kind of thing) or whether you have to know a lot of intricate
> typesetting details.
The whole point of LaTeX is that you don't have to worry about the typesetting
details :)) . You don't even need to worry about the file heading, since it
will be included in bigger files :)) .

 But I can imagine that it's a simple matter of
> "use '\par' when you want to begin a new paragraph, '\bold ...
> \endbold' for bold text, and \'a for a-acute". And if that is
> possible,
> and you wouldn't mind summarising a basic set of commands, then I
> could
> try to submit bits of LaTeX.
>
No problem! It's actually very easy.

> I can imagine needing:
>
> * paragraph breaks
Just an empty line is enough to force a paragraph break. You see, it's that
easy :)) .

> * line breaks, for when you want to specify them explicitly
The command is \\ (double backslash).

> * accented letters: umlaut, acute, grave, circumflex, caron (inverted
> circumflex)
Always the backslash followed by a symbol and then by the letter (the letter
can be enclosed in {} or not. If it isn't it is sometimes needed to have a
space between it and the previous symbol). Note that to add an accent to i and
j you have to use their dotless equivalent \i and \j (unless you use the Babel
package). Here a list of different accents put on the letter a (note that
accents can be put on any letter, even consonants, and I think even any
character :)) ):
- grave: \`a
- acute: \'a
- circumflex: \^a
- tilde: \~a
- macron: \=a
- dot: \.a
- umlaut: \"a
- cedilla: \c a
- breve: \u a
- caron: \v a
- Hungarian umlaut: \H a
- underdot: \d a
- undermacron: \b a

There are more of those things :)) .

> * bold, italic, underline
Underlining is easily done with \underline{} (underlined text in the brackets).
The command \emph{} is quite practical as it switches between italics and
normal text. In normal text it produces italics, and in italicized text it
produces normal text :)) . To produce bold, just use \textbf{}.

> * image (either a real LaTeX image insertion string or a dummy that
> you
> will replace with the real thing -- for when you want to put an image
> in the middle of your text)
To include images is a bit more complicated. I you don't want to worry about
it, just send the image separately and write in the position of the text where
you want it: Here I want an image :)) (add % in front to make it a comment).

If you really want to worry about that, then you have first to convert your
image into Encapsulated Postcript, use the graphicx package by the command:
\usepackage[dvips]{graphicx} in the heading, which allows you to use the
command: \includegraphics[]{file} (file without the .eps extension). What is in
the brackets allows you to specify the witdh, height, scale and/or angle (how
the image is rotated) of the image (just use those names as variables and use
the sign = to give them a value. The value can be in inches: witdh=2in, in
millimeters: height=60mm, in centimeters: height=6cm, in height of the 'x'
character of the current font: height=12ex, in width of the 'm' character of
the current font: witdh=10em, or even in fraction of something like the width
of the printed text: witdh=0.5\textwitdh (whatever the font size, the image
will always be scaled at half the length of a text line). Scale just asks for a
scale fraction, and angle for an angle in degrees. Note that the aspect ratio
will always be preserved unless you specify both the height and the width of
the image.

As you see, it's already a not trivial problem. But it's something I can handle
myself :)) .

> * indenting a whole paragraph (for quotes or samples)
>
Well, it depends for what reason you want to indent (LaTeX prefers logical
markup to hard changes). You have to use an environment, a piece of text
enclosed by two commands:
\begin{environment}

... text...

\end{environment}

For quotes, just use the environment "quote" (\begin{quote} \end{quote}) :)) .
It works for single paragraphs. If you quote multiple paragraphs, use the
environment "quotation". And if you quote a poem, use the environment "verse"
(in this environment, \\ is mandatory at the end of each verse).

You have other commands, but those are accessible only through packages, so we
get a little out of basic LaTeX. But those environments can be pretty practical
(some for instance allow to give an example, and generates automatically an
example number to refer to).

> Tables, I can imagine, may be too difficult in LaTeX to describe
> easily
> to someone who hasn't done it before. But maybe they're not?
>
Well, the environment "tabular" which is used to make tables is not easy, but
very powerful. If you're interested, I'll give you an explanation in private.
It would be too long and boring for the whole list.

> Can anyone think of something I might have forgotten? Maybe bulleted
> lists (with round discs, or dashes, or something), if that's easy?
>
Easy :)) . You use again environments :)) . "itemize" makes bulleted lists
(each item begins with the command \item followed by a space). You can
optionally add in brackets the shape of bullet. "enumerate" makes numbered
lists (you can control a lot on the numbering, if you care :)) ),
and "description" basically replaces the bullet by a phrase in boldface (put in
brackets in the \item[] command) which you can describe by the rest of the
line. It's practical in introductions to make things like:
Chapter 1 [in boldface] deals with...
Chapter 2 [again in boldface] deals with...
Chapter 3 [again... :)) ] deals with...
etc... at nauseam.

Of course, if you want to see what the thing looks like, you have to get a
distribution of LaTeX, and learn about the heading (the first lines of a TeX
file, which state which kind of document you're writing and what packages you
use). If you're interested (it's easy to understand, if a bit boring :)) ),
I'll mail you off-list about it.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

Replies