[ILUG-BOM] [OT] Latex... should I use it?

[q u a s i]

Nikhil Joshi <nikhil_joshi at gmx.net> writes:

> preferred over groff. Now I've learnt Latex a little. However the
> pdf file I create (with the help of dvips and ps2pdf) looks very
> crappy in acrobat reader. Ghostview however displays the thing quite
> well. Is this normal?  Has anyone tried Latex and stuff ?

The problem is with the fonts.  The default fonts on Unix are not very
well supported by Adobe.  But you can use a font package like
helvetica (for serif fonts) by \usepackage{helvet} and your document
will look equally fantastic in both gv and Acrobat Reader.  There are
other fontpackages too.

> Most probably we would print the project on a Windows machine ( i
> guess very few DTP vendors have Linux as of yet :( ). One of my
> friends told me that pdf files do not print quite well as compared
> with Microsoft Word files. Is this correct?  I'm in a fix. I'm
> beginning to like Latex. But at the same time I would not like to
> face problems with the printing and stuff.

M$ Word is one totally unreliable package when it comes to
typesetting.  I have had the misfortune of using it extensively for
typing out a number of thesis & projects.  PostScript is a system
developed especially for printing and final output.  And it works
exceeding well.

> Has anyone made his/her synopsis/report/article in Latex ? Is there
> any other good doc formatting system?  Please guide

LaTeX is the best of the free world - Acrobat is eXcellent but
eXpensive.  But there are a number of "user friendly" frontends on
both Unix and win32 platforms which sit on top of LaTeX.  LaTeX has a
steeper learning curve but it is very fast when you are done with the
basics.

quasi