[lug] How reasonable to reverse latex stylesheets?

[Ed Hill]

On Wed, 2002-02-20 at 16:31, D. Stimits wrote:
> > In all likelihood, what you want to write can be done in LaTeX without
> > ever having to edit a classfile or "style file".  The tetex package that
> > ships with many linux distros contains a bunch of "standard" classfiles
> > that are probably sufficient.  And more can be downloaded from CTAN:
> > 
> >   http://www.ctan.org/
> > 
> > including ones for letters, books, slides, dissertations, resumes,
> > business cards, etc.  I recommend purchasing a copy of Kopka and Daly's
> > "A Guide to LaTeX2e":
> > 
> >   http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.asp?theisbn=020142777X
> > 
> > which is an excellent and mostly up-to-date reference.
> 
> I'm interested in using standard classes, not editing or creating new
> ones. And although the book is probably nice, I'm unemployed and can no
> longer purchase books or magazines. Thus the interest in figuring out
> basic use of given classes via dissection. Or of course online examples,
> but examples only go so far.
> 
> My current interest is in viewing what the common variations of the
> article.cls class can do, e.g., options for single or double column...if
> it were C or C++ I could look at the declaration and figure out how to
> use it. I'm kind of thinking about figuring out classes in LaTeX to try
> out variations that I don't see in samples.


No manuals is a nasty handicap.  How about inter-library loan?

The classfiles tend to use TeX so get Knuth's book, too:

  http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/abcde.html

If you want, I have *lots* of LaTeX examples (which were unfortunately
removed from the "wetlab2" server linked from my home-page when that
machine was re-tasked).  And I have some modified classfiles, too.  I
could bring them on CDR to the next LUG meeting.

Ed


-- 
Edward H. Hill III, PhD
Post-Doctoral Researcher   |  Email:       ed at eh3.com, ehill at mines.edu
Division of ESE            |  URL:         http://www.eh3.com
Colorado School of Mines   |  Phone:       303-273-3483
Golden, CO  80401          |  Fax:         303-273-3311
Key fingerprint = 5BDE 4DA1 66BE 4F7B BC17  3A0C 932B 7266 1E76 F123