[Scribus] OT - Guidance needed for Book Publishing

[John R. Culleton]

On Monday 30 October 2006 16:27, Asif Lodhi wrote:
> Hi Andreas,
>
> On 10/31/06, avox <avox at arcor.de> wrote:
> > Now you've made us very curious as to what the book will be about... :-)
> > Any hint?
> >
> :) There are many subjects to choose from and many strategies as well.
>
>  Certainly, it should provide some genuine value that none of the
> existing books of the same category provide and at a reasonable cost -
> if I want it to be sold, that is.  Initially, I aimed to write one on
> Maths or Chemistry but then I have seen so many good ones on these
> subjects that I have dropped the idea altogether.  It's going to be on
> an IT subject area and will be aimed at complete beginners - well,
> there are many books on the subject but I have my own niche.  I'll
> write it in my free-time so it's going to take some time to write the
> whole book.
>
> I was really scared of TeX but I have only read the first 16 pages of
> "The TeX Book" and it has become one of my favorites.  Dr. Knuth has
> explained everything in a very easy style and every layman can read
> this book.  I recommend it to everybody.  I have used LyX/Latex but
> would rather go for TeX - it's really easy - at least, that's what I
> feel after reading Dr. Knuth's book a bit.
>
> --
> Thanks & regards,
>
> Asif
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The family tree ot TeX is a bit complcated. There is a base of primitive 
commands that are not intended to be used by themselves. When you use the 
command "tex" what you get is these primitive plus a "format" or set of 
cmmands built on primitives that is called plain tex. LaTeX is another such 
format and by far the most popular one. Other formats include Context, which 
is what I use for anything very complicated. It is an alternative to Latex. 

Lyx is a graphic front end to LaTeX. It generates LaTeX source code. 

Knuth's book describes the primitives and the plain tex commands. For an old 
but good quick inroduction see "A Gentle Introduction to TeX" which also 
describes plain tex. I have it stored here:
http://wexfordpress.com/tex/gentle.pdf
-- 
John Culleton
Able Indexing and Typesetting
Precision typesetting (tm) at reasonable cost.
Satisfaction guaranteed. 
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