Post-reading feeling of word typographical art -- Comparison with latex

Post reading of word typographical Art

-- Comparison with latex

 

I have more than two years of latex experience and use it to sort lab reports, graduation papers, and books (half a book). Word has been used for a longer time, but it's only about a year or two. I am very familiar with these two software. I think I can talk about the feeling of reading "word typographical art" and compare the two typographical software "word and latex. (Considering that this article may spread in plain text, I have to write latex as L. In addition, the latex mentioned in the text refer to the macro package in latex + CJK)

 

Word and latex are both typographical software, but in my opinion, they are not professional typographical software-although they can be used to produce very professional results. In my opinion, professional typographical refers to specialized typographical for others. (For example, if a driver is used to drive a car, it is not counted as a self-driving scooter ). For example, a magazine artist uses PageMaker or quarkxpress to typeset a magazine or poster, or the cabling workers in a circuit board factory use powerpcb or Allegro to arrange printed circuit boards for customers, alternatively, the cabling staff at the half guide factory arrange the internal connections of the integrated circuit for the customer. This kind of professional work tends to focus only on the form (typographical effect), not on the content (the layout work of the half guide factory often does not know what the layout chip is for. J ). The Design of word and latex is intended for the author. The author (especially the technical author) must be concerned with both Content Selection and layout arrangement, in order to better express his own ideas, it is conducive to the reader's understanding and absorption. (Note: although some people use word or latex for typographical purposes, this is not the original design of the two software .) On different occasions, Mr. Hou Jie mentioned the idea that "the author should typeset himself", which I highly agree. Many well-known foreign technical writers such as knuth, Tanenbaum, and Steven s all write their own books.

Since word and latex are both capable of distributing professional printed materials (books and papers), I often call them "semi-professional" typographical software.

 

Latex is a set of macro packages (macro packages) based on tex, And Tex is a typographical system developed by Professor knuth. In the preface to the book The Tex Book, knuth summarizes the function of tex in one sentence: "(Tex is) A new typesetting system intended for the creation of beautiful books-and especially for books that contain a lot of mathematics. "latex greatly improves ease of use based on Tex. That is to say, what latex can be arranged, and only tex can be arranged, but latex is much more convenient to use.

For example, there are about 300 Tex typographical commands (primitives, primitives). These commands are like assembly languages, and it is very tedious to write programs directly in assembly languages. During the design, knuth fully considered scalability. He demonstrated that he wrote a set of expansion macro package for Tex, called plain Tex, which was released with Tex. The plain Tex macro package provides about 600 commands, all of which are macro definitions (macros ). The 600 commands in the plain Tex macro package plus the 300 primitives of Tex, there are about 900 control statements, which can be compared to the "macro assembly" J. We say that knuth's book uses Tex layout, which actually refers to plain Tex macro layout. Plain Tex is certainly easier to use than the bare Tex, but it is complicated to use. Latex provides a higher level of encapsulation for Tex commands, greatly enhancing the ease of use. It is comparable to C ++ language J. (In fact, latex is not based on the plain Tex macro package but directly based on the bare Tex .)

In terms of details (font size, line spacing, broken words, broken lines, and formulas), Tex and latex have no difference, from a global perspective (chapter, section, cross-reference, index, reference, directory), latex is much more automated. Latex provides document templates (article, book, and report). Based on these templates, it is easy to make templates that suit your own typographical style, and then discharge a series of books with similar styles. There are about 10 or 20 commonly used control statements for latex, which are easy to remember and easy to use.

Word is an office/text processing software that is very easy to use. But "Easy to use" does not mean "good". How many people are overwhelmed by the complicated layout arrangement? If you use dozens of articles and reports on word pages, you do not need to read any word books. Any problems can be solved by violence. However, if you want to give full play to the role of word and bring convenience to the writing process of articles (books), word typographical art is very good (only ?) .

 

Compared with typographical software, one is to see what it can do, and the other is to see if it is convenient to use.

From the perspective of basic typographical functions, word and latex have little difference: page settings, paper size, layout size, font size, line spacing, first indent, center alignment, header and footer, page number arrangement, footer end note, multi-level project number, automatic chapter number, automatic directory generation, cross-reference, and index generation are similar to each other. Latex is more important in terms of management references. In addition, latex can easily perform "NOTE )". Latex and word can be used for text and text mixing. Because word is WYSIWYG, it is easier to adjust the position and size of the image. These functions are sufficient for the author.

Using latex for formatting is like using a text editor to write HTML files (or using a text editor to write a GUI Program). On the one hand, you can precisely control every detail and overall structure, on the other hand, it is obviously not as convenient as a visualization tool when there are many documents in a graphic table. The opposite is true in word. You cannot directly see the underlying representation of data (you can use VBA to introduce this content in Word typographical art ), documents can only be controlled through upper-layer mouse and keyboard operations. In word, a paragraph is set to blue, red, and then black. As a result, I have observed that most words are not smart enough to remove these offset attributes, the redundancy similar to <font color = blue> <font color = Red> <font color = Black> text </font> mark.

Latex and word are not suitable for handling overly complex la s, such as newspapers, posters, and complicated column partitioning. After all, they are the survival space of professional typographical software. I personally feel that word and latex are suitable for authors to use typographical technical books and articles. The laex s of latex are generally simpler, but the nuances are better handled.

Adding a font to a word is not a waste of effort. just copy the font file to Windows/fonts. installing a new font for latex is a hassle, not just a few steps.

Word is more powerful in multi-person collaboration, such as tracking revisions. In addition, word table layout is easier than latex.

From the perspective of typographical effects, word and latex have their own advantages. (LA) the ability of Tex to rank the largest mathematical formula in the world, word is naturally incomparable. When dealing with English (Spanish) documents, latex knows that the word is broken between the syllables, and the layout is more balanced than the word. In terms of processing the Chinese version, word is more considerate than latex (especially for Chinese Punctuation and pinyin). After all, the Chinese Macro package in CJK is written by Germans. Mr Zhang LiNbO of the Chinese Emy of Sciences seems to have better support for Chinese characters than CJK, but I have never used CCT and cannot compare it.

No matter how good the typographical software is, it cannot prevent people from discharging ugly la S. Latex is not a dumb software. Don't expect it to be used to discharge nice la S, I have seen some mathematics students use latex to sort out their graduation thesis, which is called a rotten one: Fragmented layout, uneven sections, and weak texts.

The choice of typographical software is a matter of opinion and wisdom. I am not a latex expert or a word expert. I cannot compete with myself to say that I have to use any software, and I can use it easily. If it is not convenient, I will change to another one. Tools are used by people. For general technical documents (magazine articles, etc.), I usually use Word, long documents (graduation thesis), or documents with mathematical formulas (some lab reports) with latex. Keep an open mind and do not become a software enthusiast.

 

There are not many books about latex on the market. For those books I have read, they all have the feeling that the trees do not see the forest. These books mostly introduce latex functions and explain the use of latex commands. Some may refer to the fine-tuning of la S, but few may focus on the overall situation and explain how to systematically discharge nice la S, it reaches the "official publication" level. I have developed some experience, which will be mentioned later.

The same applies to most word books on the market. For example, almost every word book will tell you how to set the font size and line spacing (this is the most basic operation ), however, it often does not tell you how many words should be used in the text of a common book, the line spacing and the segment distance. (Maybe these word books are not prepared by the authors themselves, and they are not very clear about them ?)

Mr. Hou tells you that according to his many years of typographical experience, the text can contain 9.5 pound words (slightly smaller than the fifth character), and The font is Hua Kang jiansong (simplified version, the traditional Chinese version uses the huakang detail body. The line spacing is 16 lbs (or 18 lbs), the first 4 lbs, And the last 8 lbs. The text displayed in this way is very uniform and beautiful, and there is no common feeling of squeezing into a group, which can be printed directly. The purpose of reading such a book is to learn from the expert experience and quickly learn about your typographical skills. Reading "word typographical art" is a shortcut to become a word master.

 

P.s. what I call "Official Publications" refers to the kind of things that will be presented to many people, such as graduation thesis, printed magazine articles, books, and so on. In other words, from printing dozens or even tens of thousands of copies with printers and copiers to printing thousands of copies with printers and printers, it is regarded as a "official publication ". I don't know what I keep. I don't know what I printed to my teacher.

 

The book "word typographical art" focuses on "typographical". It first introduces basic typographical knowledge, then introduces the "regular army operating mode" of word and Mr. Hou's "aesthetic view of layout ". This is the content of the first two chapters (this part is exclusive to this book) and can be downloaded and read from www.jjhou.com for free. This can be seen as the first part of this book.

3rd ~ Chapter 8 is the second part of this book, which describes the formal methods of large-scale word typographical documents. Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 introduce the layout settings (paper, layout, header, footer, and page number). One sentence: layout also follows the principle of "distance brings beauty, setting various distances (margin, header distance, segment distance, line spacing, and title distance) is the first step to discharge beautiful la S.

Chapter 2 focuses on the use of "style/style. I think a person's use of word is good, mainly depends on whether he will use "style ". Global style + partial fine-tuning is a perfect choice for layout. This chapter also describes various automatic numbering functions of word, such as automatic numbering of the footer, automatic numbering of the question note, automatic numbering of the (Multi-Level) project list, and automatic numbering of the chapter. With these functions, you can enter the numbers of various entries and make them historical.

Chapter 1 describes the automatic arrangement of directories (General Directories, Chapter directories, and Icon Directories). These are based on the "style" described in Chapter 2. Chapter 4 describes automatic generation of indexes, which is an essential part of the book layout. What about Chapter 2? Chapter 4 shows how to mix text and text. This is the strength of the "WYSIWYG" typographical software such as Word. Latex text-to-text mixing is not as convenient as word, making adjustment more troublesome.

Chapter 2 and Chapter 10 are the "improvement" part of this book, which describes how to implement the automation functions not provided directly by word. I personally feel that these two chapters are suitable for those with a little programming experience. 11th without typographical descriptions, we will introduce the usage of word electronic documents and collaborative revisions. Chapter 2 describes how to generate a PDF file using Acrobat. After these four parts are converted, I believe that readers will have a comprehensive understanding of how to use word to typeset large files.

The whole book is beautifully printed, well-made, and rich in content. It is a rare masterpiece that can be used both as teaching materials and as manuals.

 

As typographical knowledge is the same, I believe that latex users can also learn from "word typographical art" (especially the knowledge of the first five chapters can be applied directly ), display beautiful la S (as I do ).

If I have time in the future, I will summarize my experience in using latex to help readers read "word typographical art, it is easier to apply knowledge to latex layout.