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Re: [LUG] LaTeX training course

 

On Mon, 12 Jul 2010, Paul Sutton wrote:

Hi

If anyone would be interested in a training course on the LaTeX type
setting system please could they go to the lug site, log in and I have
started a new page on the topic, so people can put their name down,

Looks like courses have at least 25 places,  so if there is enough
interest between the lug, perhaps termisoc and other groups,  then it
would justify running a course.

I am trying toget something down here in the south west,  hopefully
Devon.  Course cost is not available,  the last one the UK-TeX user
group ran was subsidised and cost 10 pounds,  I think other courses are
going to cost more.

Would they come to Devon? I notice from their website that the next course is running in the University of East Anglia (UEA) (London) - which seems to be where the UK TeX Users' Group is based...

If they can't come to Devon, then perhaps we can do something ourselves? Although I don't consider myself to be a "power user", I use LaTeX myself, and I'm sure there are others here who do - perhaps we could arrange something locally - not a formal training course, but just enough to get people started and see what it's all about?

I think it's good, but has a pretty steep learning curve - and even then, although I've been using it for 15 years, there are things I'm not hot on at all - inputting mathematical formulae because I've never had to do it before - graphics are problematic, but I can get my logo into a document, and so on. I now use it for all my automatically generated invoices too - I have a template which is read by a PHP program which then fills in various fields (customer address and list of items, etc.) and feeds it through LaTeX, to produce a PDF which is then emailled to the customer. This happens on a server with no screen or keyboard, so no X windows running. That was easier for me than to work out how the PHP PDF library works!

And just for fun, I've put this email through LaTex (and then given it a few tweaks) so you can see what the output looks like. I prefer the Helvetica font to the default Computer modern though.

See the PDF on http://unicorn.drogon.net/lugtex.pdf

Gordon

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