[Phys-L] Re: LaTeX in physics

[James Frysinger <frysingerj@COFC.EDU>]

On Wednesday 13 April 2005 12:14, John Denker wrote:
....
> Something to keep in mind:  Science majors go into
> science.  English majors go into publishing.  As a
> consequence, it is very common for a scientific
> author to use wizard-friendly tools like LaTeX
> while the publisher is more familiar with Muggle-
> friendly tools like MSword.

        Indeed! We have our Physics majors learn LaTeX (and XFig and GIMP) early on.

> If you're publishing a book it doesn't matter at
> all, because the printing presses all accept PDF,
> and the output of pdftex works just fine.

        By comparison to AJP, IEEE used to require LaTeX (with AMS extensions) then
reverted to Adobe Framemaker (prefered) or MS Word (accepted). They claim
that too many people loaded too many obscure "macros" and style documents.
However, they have a converter for transforming documents from MS Word to
Framemaker, they say. Still, there's a lot of manual typesetting that needs
doing. They will use PDF files for a "specimen" of how the document should
look but claim they cannot convert PDF to Framemaker. It drives me nuts ---
and I surely cannot afford Framemaker nor do I care to undergo the long and
steep learning curve needed to use it.

Jim

--
James R. Frysinger
Lifetime Certified Advanced Metrication Specialist
Senior Member, IEEE

http://www.cofc.edu/~frysingj
frysingerj@cofc.edu
j.frysinger@ieee.org

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