From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: References: Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:59:06 +0100 Message-ID: From: simon softnet To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: [9fans] troff book Topicbox-Message-UUID: 4df8924c-ead7-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 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 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,=A0your examiners, > and ... that's usually about it. (Your parents will look at it.)=A0If you= r > supervisor > supervisor can start fussing about the prettiness of (say) your equations > and tables rather than their content, you can reasonably suggest to him t= hat > you > would appear to be finished. Just do a=A0few test runs first of typical > equations > just to check that the output=A0is 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 conten= t. > > 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 o= wn > case, the night of the submission deadline, when I came to do > the final copy, I discovered that the troff=A0installation Had Somehow Ch= anged > and the output was completely messed up.=A0Unfortunately that predated Pl= an 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 wrote: >> >> soon I'll begin to write my thesis and I am planing to use ... > >