On Oct 3, 2008, at 8:46 AM, jiho wrote:

On 2008-October-03 , at 04:36 , Hans-Jörg Bibiko wrote:

...

...

Is there an easy workflow to produce a halfway decent looking book from this? I suspect it would involve Latex, which I know nothing about.

Do you know Fletcher Penney's MultMarkdown. It generates LaTeX out of Markdown.

http://fletcherpenney.net/mt/mt-search.cgi? tag=MultiMarkdown&blog_id=1

Multimarkdown is actually included in TextMate's Markdown bundle. I advise you to use the LaTeX memoir class. If you do not know anything about latex and wwant to customize your output a bit, read some introductory texts before diving into your file. "The not so short introduction to latex" is a good one, maybe you'll find some tutorials on the web regarding books in particular, and, if you use the memoir class, the manual of this class (provided with your latex installation and easily found on the web) is extensive and very interesting, with as much technical details as typesetting theory. It requires some getting used to and some learning but the results are far better than anything else you could use, in my opinion.

To read the documentation for the memoir class, assuming you have installed LaTeX using the MacTeX package, just open a Terminal window and type "texdoc memoir". This should open a local web page for you with links to the pdf documentation. I haven't used the memoir class personally myself, but I would definitely recommend it for someone coming fresh to LaTeX.

Good luck.

JiHO

http://jo.irisson.free.fr/

Haris Skiadas Department of Mathematics and Computer Science Hanover College

On 2008-October-04 , at 02:16 , Gerd Knops wrote:

Thanks everybody for the help, it is much appreciated!

Using markdown to Latex (memoir) conversion gets me most of the way.

One problem I have that I can't seem to figure out is that when I set \geometry{a5paper} the book is formatted for A5, but the physical paper size still seems to be Letter. How can I fix that?

This is actually a feature of the memoir class. The thinking behind it is that, whatever your page size is, you will probably print it on a stock paper, which has a standard size (A4, letter etc.) and them cut (trim) it (if you add the options showtrims to the document class, you should see those trim marks). This is why the stock size and the page size are separated in memoir. You can set them easily without resorting to the geometry package, with commands that are specific to the memoir class. Check the chapter "Laying out the page" (section II, p 49) of the memoir manual (meman.pdf) for the commands. It also gives more details on the dimensions of the page and how to make them harmonious (A5 is probably not the best idea because the height to width ratio might make the text look awkward). My advice: take a book with a similar purpose that you find enjoyable to read and well laid out and copy the dimensions.

This is for example what I used in a recent document, based on several published books with margin notes:

\usepackage{calc} % easy calculations

% Page size \settrimmedsize{246mm}{172mm}{*} % size of final page : h w ratio

% Stock paper size = A4 \setstocksize{297mm}{210mm} % size of paper sheet : h w

% Trims (i.e. cuts) = set interior edge of the page to be the actual edge of the stock and center vertically \settrims{0.5\stockheight-0.5\paperheight}{\stockwidth- \paperwidth} % portions to trim from : top edge

% Set margins and compute size of text block % NB: \textheight is set to an integer number of lines by \checkandfixthelayout below \settypeblocksize{197mm}{100mm}{*} % block: height width ratio \setlrmargins{32mm}{*}{*} % horiz margins : spine edge ratio \setulmargins{69pt}{*}{*} % vertical margins : upper lower ratio

% Margin notes \setmarginnotes{3.8mm}{31mm}{5mm} % margin notes: separation width push % separation: horiz space between text and note % width: max width of note % push: min space between notes

\checkandfixthelayout[nearest] % nearest = chose the integral number of lines nearest to the specified textheight and use this as the textheight

I hope that helps.

JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/