LaTeX, a way to PDF

[pietvo]

Make that:

\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\@pnumwidth}{3em}
\renewcommand{\@tocrmarg}{4em}
\makeatother

unless it is within a .sty or .cls file.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by pietvo

Make that:

\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\@pnumwidth}{3em}
\renewcommand{\@tocrmarg}{4em}
\makeatother

unless it is within a .sty or .cls file.

I found another way to do it... It was hidden deep somewhere in the Memoir documentation (found it on accident as I finally found out how to format my toc...)

\setpnumwidth{10mm}
\setrmarg{10mm}

Does the trick...

I now need one more fix and I'm done. There's a table in there that doesn't wrap the second column... I know I saw something somewhere to fix that...

But here's some screen captures.

The first is the original document in Mobipocket. The other three are the three generated formats after I converted the original in HTML (and added my own styles and such... I hate those white lines between paragraphs if there is no section break...) I generated the LaTeX source from my HTML.

[frabjous]

Could you post the code for the table, at least the first part of it?

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by frabjous

Could you post the code for the table, at least the first part of it?

If I give the last column a width, it will wrap the paragraph.

This is what I had:

      
\begin{tabular}{ *{2}{l} }
\end{tabular}

And this is what I have now:

      
\begin{tabular}{  l  p{75mm}  }
\end{tabular}

[frabjous]

That's what I was going to suggest -- so all is well, now?

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by frabjous

That's what I was going to suggest -- so all is well, now?

Yep, I now get a nice representation of my book in PDF, Mobi and Epub, all based on the same HTML.

It's still fairly simple, but I expect my tranformation application will grow with time. Things as footnotes and such I still have to figure out (this book had none ). Also, I probably will make more base styles, so I can put some variety in my books (I try to keep the original layout, as long as I like it...)

And naturally, a lot of tweaks are always going on (I managed to tweak my ToC for example).

I still can't imagine I once (ages ago!) made a report in LaTeX, complete with mathematical figures!

[Sweetpea]

I've been playing with my HTML and LaTeX templates a bit. My application to transform the HTML to LaTeX was getting way too complicated (to reflect all classes I had defined in my CSS...). I decided to see if I could simplify things.

First, if I add a new class, I don't want to update my transformer. Second, I wanted to clean up my transformer a bit.

So, I checked out the \newenvironment command. That thing is powerful!

For example:

A lot of books have a dedication, so I created a standard class (default implemented in my CSS) "dedication"

<p class="dedication">Thanks to you all!</p>

I first replaced that in my transformer with:

\ \\[1cm] \noindent Thanks to you all!

But I wasn't really happy with how it looked, wich meant I had to change my code. While I do have a template which is the basis for my final book.

So, I changed the code of my transformer to:

\begin{dedication}
Thanks to you all!
\end{dedication}

and added in my template:

\newenvironment{dedication}
  {\ \\[1cm] \noindent
    \begin{adjustwidth}{1.5em}{1.5em}
  }
  {\end{adjustwidth}}

Now I can change it whenever I want, without having to open Visual Studio...



Well, I made it even a bit more flexible... I made a list of classes, put that in a different (text) file, and all those classes map to either an internal environment (such as center) or a custom made one. Now, if I make a new class, I only have to add it to that text file and add a definition to my template.

[Goshzilla]

This was an incredibly useful topic, I hope to adapt my thesis in this format, and it's less of a headache than using the LaTeX2html peril program.

[arma_virumque]

Hi,

I have a NOOK, and also trying to figure out the optimal size to set in LATEX: from wikipedia "Display 600 x 800 pixel, 6 inch E Ink display".

Also trying to get PDF and EPUB to show up properly. Right now with my own experimentation and some examples from here I got mixed results.

This is what I am using ATM and the pdf comes out very neat but I am not very sure about the screen dimensions. How do I tell it to do "600 x 800 pixel" in \usepackage[papersize={4in,6in},margin=3mm]{geometry} ??

Below is a snippet of my beginning (pre-amble?)

\documentclass[10pt,oneside]{book}
\usepackage[papersize={4in,6in},margin=3mm]{geometry}
\title{Aeneidos}
\author{Vergilius Maron}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{xunicode}
\usepackage{xltxtra}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{0}
\usepackage[absolute]{textpos}

\begin{document}

\thispagestyle{empty}
\begin{textblock*}{\paperwidth}(0mm,0mm)
\noindent\includegraphics[width=\paperwidth,height=\paperheight]{Vergilius.jpg}
\end{textblock*}
\null
\clearpage
\maketitle
\tableofcontents

The pdf has a very neat table of contents that properly linked, cover with picture, the text is centered and its structure preserved. The epub, converted with CALIBRE from pdf is horrible, the table of contents is navigable but won't go to each chapter when I pres enter, EACH page came with the word 'CONTENTS' on top of the page, the poem came in prose, its structure totally mangled, etc.

The other problem is that the PDF although very neat the fonts in NOOK are way to little and the anti-aliasing is messed up. This might be due to the geometry of the page.

Is there hope or should I just wait for Notion Adam Ink to read pdfs instead of fighting epubs?

thanks

[Sweetpea]

Problem is, you can't give up pixels. Pixels doesn't give a size. It's a relative size.

I simply took a ruler and started measuring. And then, via trial and error, add 1mm, remove 1mm, until I had it right. I used a black image to make it a bit easier.

And I gave up on epub...

[Jellby]

papersize={4in,6in}

That's wrong. The screen is 6 inches, but that's diagonal, and you're specifying a 6 inch high page, so the page is zoomed out to display on your Nook.

You want to use:

papersize={9cm,12cm}

or the equivalent in inches (3.5in,4.7in).

[Sweetpea]

Well, I found out that's not exactly accurate.

I have a 5" screen. So, theoretically, I should have a size of 3 x 4" (simple 3-4-5 triangle...) But, after some tries, I found out the actual screensize is different...

[frabjous]

Of course, you have a 5" diagonal without having 3" by 4" sides. 25 is the sum of 9 and 16, but there are other numbers that add up to 25 (so long as there are fractions)!

Not sure what device you're talking about, however; neither the Pocket Loox 720 nor the JoinTech JE100 has a 5" screen, as far as I know.

[arma_virumque]

9x12 looks somewhat too smallish on the computer, don't know if I transferred that to the nook.

Interestingly chapter linking works on pdf and the nook. Probably the goal here would be to just concentrate on a single format and make it to work on the nook, because pdf and epub conversion isn't exactly perfect.

Is there a command line and using vim to edit epubs? I got some epubs from gutenberg project, they look nice.

Sweepea, how do you use a black page with LaTeX? Could you give me an example? I want to try that and narrow down the size of nook's screen.

[frabjous]

Originally Posted by arma_virumque

Is there a command line and using vim to edit epubs? I got some epubs from gutenberg project, they look nice.

Not sure if there are special vim plugins for epubs, but an epub is basically just a .zip file (and yes you can unzip it in the normal way) containing xhtml files, any associated images, fonts and CSS, and some xml files containing metadata. Should be easy enough to edit those individual files with vim. Not too hard to reverse engineer, but see this thread for links to tutorials and the technical specs, etc.

Sweepea, how do you use a black page with LaTeX?

Put this in the preamble:

\usepackage{xcolor}
\pagecolor{black} % sets background color of whole document
\color{white} % sets color of the text

Could you give me an example? I want to try that and narrow down the size of nook's screen.

I'm pretty sure the Nook's screen is indeed 9cm x 12cm. Yes, it looks small on the computer.