[tlug] Re: proposal for talk on LaTeX

["Gernot Hassenpflug" <aikishugyo@example.com>]

Hi, I'm replying to three people in this mail.

Nguyen Vu Hung <vu-hung@example.com> wrote:
>>Gernot Hassenpflug wrote:
>> I. review of tex/latex structure, where everything goes in the TDS.
>Can you make it in *ONE* slide for less than 30 seconds?
>I think basic definitions and explanations are just enough.

Yes. I agree it is not something I would want to dwell on, were it not
for the issue that everything else depends on knowing this. Making it
short as possible is a good goal, although I'd want to hand out more
information then, as there are going to be people with less experience
than you there.

>> II. multilingual and CJK with LaTeX
>Can you make it in *ONE* slide for less than 30 seconds?

Yes. Again, for people who don't know this, it would be necessary to
hand out more slides. And besides, I think the video would become
useless. I iterate that if enough people already know this, I will not
bother with the talk, it would be a waste of time.

>The author of pdftex - Han The Thanh is/was working on a C wrapper.
>I don't know the latest dev. status but it is cool!

AFAIK, pdftex is good, but it cannot be used for everything. Just as
some packages cannot work with the latex/dvips route for whatever
reasons.

>>     d) [maybe] discussion of OTF with LaTeX
>>
>Is it superior to TTF? I don't know much about OTF but I think it is old
>in comparison to TTF.

In short, it is newer and superior.

>>  4. enhancing the business card with new fonts (latex/dvips and
pdftex routes)
>Can you make a template?

I have one, yes. I am not going to make another one though. My idea is
to give a talk about how people can accomplish something, and what
they should set out to master if they want to achieve that, not about
what I personally have accomplished.

>>  5. making a presentation or poster with Japanese fonts
>Can you make templates and compare the output with MS Word, OpenOffice?

Again, yes, I have templates. It is doubtful whether I can compare
output with that of MS Word, OpenOffice is possible, if I have the
time.

After all that, I'm not sure what it is you'd like to see from such a
talk (or whether you consider it even worthwhile).
=================================
Simon Cozens <simon@example.com> wrote:
>See http://blog.simon-cozens.org/tag/view/tex for some of the things
>I've been doing with it. If you're doing Japanese typesetting with TeX,
>XeTeX is very much worth checking out.
XeTeX is very nice, but it is not fully compatible with all packages
in LaTeX AFAIK.
I have been meaning to try it out in comparison too, for the talk. It
is included in TeXLive also, for those that wish to try already.
=================================
"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com> wrote:
>Just install TeXlive and put
>
>\usepackage{CJK}
>
>in the preamble and
>
>\begin{CJK*}[dnp]{JIS}{min} ... \end{CJK*}
>
>around the Japanese.  If you want to do Chinese and/or Korean too,
>things get more complicated, mostly because there are enough free
>fonts for those languages to make understanding the NFSS
>worthwhile. :-)
Yes, that is the essence. When one wants to use UTF8 there is a slight
modification, and if one wants to use non-free fonts the big work
begins. As yoo point out, there are many more available fonts for
non-Japanese CJK, so there is much more help for people using those
too.

Regards, Gernot