Re: [9fans] troff book

[simon softnet <ph.softnet@gmail.com>]

It's funny how this reply came at the right time for me.
I'm writing a thesis proposal and was wasting all this time trying out
different latex templates.

Simon.

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 10:15 AM, Charles Forsyth
<charles.forsyth@gmail.com> wrote:
> Having read the replies, I thought I'd offer slightly different advice.
> You are writing a dissertation. The formatting just needs to be what
> satisfies your university's format requirements, which usually are
> broad. I'd be surprised if they required an index for instance. Don't
> waste time and effort on the formatting. For one thing, few people
> will actually read your dissertation, unless what you're doing is
> stupendous (and then they won't care about the format): your proof-reader
> (you have got one, haven't you?), your supervisor, your examiners,
> and ... that's usually about it. (Your parents will look at it.) If your
> supervisor
> supervisor can start fussing about the prettiness of (say) your equations
> and tables rather than their content, you can reasonably suggest to him that
> you
> would appear to be finished. Just do a few test runs first of typical
> equations
> just to check that the output is at least reasonable.
>
> Much later, when your topic turns out to be important again, someone like
> me will remember seeing your dissertation mentioned, or find it through
> Google^,
> but I can assure you that by we'll still be more interested in the content.
>
> I'd use the system with which you're most familiar. You don't want the
> added distractions of trying to debug the typesetting software, and when
> something goes wrong, it's much easier if you've used it before. (In my own
> case, the night of the submission deadline, when I came to do
> the final copy, I discovered that the troff installation Had Somehow Changed
> and the output was completely messed up. Unfortunately that predated Plan 9
> and yesterday(1),
> but fortunately it's easy to check each stage of the pipeline, and
> I could work out where to look for the change to undo.
>
> If you're using troff, pick up a copy of refer from contrib.
>
> On 2 December 2011 13:02, hugo rivera <uair00@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> soon I'll begin to write my thesis and I am planing to use ...
>
>