I am about writing a book and i would like to know the best software to use, something that would enable me include images, graphs and figures and finally generate a PDF. Pls Microsoft Word is excluded.
Academics from mathematical fields tend to use LaTeX. One way to compile a PDF is with pdflatex, which can import .png, .jpg, and .pdf images. This means you’d need to be able to get your vector images into .pdf format conveniently. This tends to be easy on traditional Unixy systems. I believe on osx too(?).
Many theses and textbooks are typeset with LaTeX. I used it for my PhD thesis. Advantages include: a plain text source file, which can be edited in your favorite editor; easy cross-referencing that automatically updates; high-quality typesetting. Some things that are very easy in Word are harder to do in LaTeX: for example, it can be tricky to select fonts or customize other aspects of a standard style file.
I was really referring to the ease of making figures in the right format, as the poster made a particular point about including figures.
When I used to use MikTeX on Windows (8 years ago now) saving figures to .eps or .pdf from most applications was possible but a bit tricky. It often involved printing to file with the right postscript driver [1], then fiddling with bounding boxes and running through epstopdf. Most Unix graphics applications produce postscript and/or pdf pretty easily. I think osx with its Qwartz stuff will too.
[1] e.g. Apple Color LW 12/660 PS with "optimized for portability" turned on.
I think LaTeX, http://www.latex-project.org/, would be a good choice, been using it for a bunch of papers for computer science. It is pretty easy to get started with a simple template.
Reading the other comments and responding, much of TeX (I don't know LaTeX - my Ph.D. was written in plain TeX) and HTML are interconvertable, depending on what you're doing. It depends a lot on the kind of book you're writing, whether you need equations, fancy layout, etc. If it were, say, a novel, I'd still go for the wiki. Then put tags for the linear arc through the narrative, and side pages for notes to yourself.
On the other hand, if it's a technical work then you might need something more high-powered. My book was quite technical, but I still used a wiki and embedded images from MimeTex for the equations. Exporting to HTML and using htmldoc worked a treat.
I'm technical, I did a lot of support work, I didn't use a tool "out of the box," but I could tweak it to do some unusual stuff.
YMWV. How much customisation are you willing to do?
LaTeX is the 'best' way to go. If you on Linux try the Kile , a excellent gui interface tool to LaTeX which does not impose any special structures onto
your project. You are still free to arrange you LaTeX files as you wish.
Get yourself a decent intro to LaTeX book, Lamport's is the 'standard' , but other titles are very good as well.
LaTeX user guide and reference ( 2nd edition) : Leslie Lamport
BTW: I've used Tex & LaTeX since 1989 across various platforms, and have shifted all my projects without any 'conversion' problems because all LaTeX
files are plain text. Most , if not all, other document handling tools use their
own file formats.
Remember TeX is a document language so you have to write your text as plain text and it is 'compiled' into you printed document, it is not like using
Word or OpenOffice. But once learnt Tex/LaTeX will prove useful forever !
I would second this recommendation. Learning enough LaTeX to typeset a whole book effectively will take some doing, but the effort is well worth it.
Apart from dragoncity's recommendations, these are also good places to start:
[edit: rather than clog this thread with a ton of links, I've decided to put them all in to a separate page which you can view here: http://paste.pocoo.org/show/159346/ ]
If you find Latex too daunting, take a look at Lyx. It works more like a WYSIWYG word proc without changing the Lyx/Latex concept of writing what you mean.
One huge win with Latex is that if your publication is formatted to, say ACM guidelines, and it gets rejected, it takes less than a day to convert to IEEE transactions guidelines. With a WYSIWYG word proc, even with extensive use of styles, it would take many days to achieve the same level of transformation.
Open Office. It gives you everything you may need while writing and also option for exporting file to Pdf format.
Main advantage its free(Open Source).
Like Word, it probably isn’t the best tool for something book length. It’s really designed for letters and short reports. It can be done; I know brave souls who have written theses with Open Office. I just wouldn’t personally give up the stability and neatness of working with plain-text source.
11 comments
[ 6.4 ms ] story [ 38.0 ms ] threadI look forward to seeing other people's answers.
Many theses and textbooks are typeset with LaTeX. I used it for my PhD thesis. Advantages include: a plain text source file, which can be edited in your favorite editor; easy cross-referencing that automatically updates; high-quality typesetting. Some things that are very easy in Word are harder to do in LaTeX: for example, it can be tricky to select fonts or customize other aspects of a standard style file.
When I used to use MikTeX on Windows (8 years ago now) saving figures to .eps or .pdf from most applications was possible but a bit tricky. It often involved printing to file with the right postscript driver [1], then fiddling with bounding boxes and running through epstopdf. Most Unix graphics applications produce postscript and/or pdf pretty easily. I think osx with its Qwartz stuff will too.
[1] e.g. Apple Color LW 12/660 PS with "optimized for portability" turned on.
I can recommend MiKTeX as an editor for windows
On the other hand, if it's a technical work then you might need something more high-powered. My book was quite technical, but I still used a wiki and embedded images from MimeTex for the equations. Exporting to HTML and using htmldoc worked a treat.
I'm technical, I did a lot of support work, I didn't use a tool "out of the box," but I could tweak it to do some unusual stuff.
YMWV. How much customisation are you willing to do?
Get yourself a decent intro to LaTeX book, Lamport's is the 'standard' , but other titles are very good as well.
LaTeX user guide and reference ( 2nd edition) : Leslie Lamport
LaTeX Notes, practical tips for preparing technical documents : J.Kenneth Shultis
LaTeX for everybody : Jane Hahn
are all useful reference to have handy.
BTW: I've used Tex & LaTeX since 1989 across various platforms, and have shifted all my projects without any 'conversion' problems because all LaTeX files are plain text. Most , if not all, other document handling tools use their own file formats.
Remember TeX is a document language so you have to write your text as plain text and it is 'compiled' into you printed document, it is not like using Word or OpenOffice. But once learnt Tex/LaTeX will prove useful forever !
Apart from dragoncity's recommendations, these are also good places to start:
[edit: rather than clog this thread with a ton of links, I've decided to put them all in to a separate page which you can view here: http://paste.pocoo.org/show/159346/ ]
One huge win with Latex is that if your publication is formatted to, say ACM guidelines, and it gets rejected, it takes less than a day to convert to IEEE transactions guidelines. With a WYSIWYG word proc, even with extensive use of styles, it would take many days to achieve the same level of transformation.