Suggestions for a presentation (paper) type document that can handle complexity

[Brian Dunn]

On Fri, 12 Jul 2019 19:36:19 -0700
Gordon Haverland <ghaverla at materialisations.com> wrote:

> I need to start making for lack of a better description,
> advertising/marketing documents.  Being able to convert to some kind of
> HTML might be useful.

Current methods for HTML conversion include tex4ht, lwarp, LaTeXML, and the
more general pandoc conversion program.  Each of these is improving as time
goes on, and you will want a TeXLive "vanilla" installation to keep
up-to-date, or for Windows use MiKTeX.  Not sure about Mac.

If you will be using numerous figures then investigate the keyfloat package,
which is one of several packages which uses a key/value system to place
floats, and also automatically adjusts the layout of groups of figures or
subfigures.  It is also supported by the lwarp HTML conversion package.



> Whenever I go to write something "important", it quickly turns into an
> encyclopaedia.  I can't help it; brain dumping is something which comes
> naturally to people affected by autism.
> 
> In the past, I have typically used the article style and used hyperref
> to handle complexity.  Well, at least as a PDF.  To print it out, paper
> is a linear medium and complexity just seems to need lots of levels of
> headings.  Maybe you have better ideas?

In the world of technical writing there is a movement towards converting
information into a collection of large numbers of very small free-standing
"articles", all linked together by keywords and sophisticated search
functions.  You will see this online at many technical support pages for
various products.  Advantages can include reuse, standalone editing,
incremental growth, and user-ranking.  "Was this answer helpful to you?"

I happen to prefer the traditional style of a book with sections and
subsections, along rich internal cross-references and a custom human-edited
index.  It is easier to maintain context, present extended discussions and
sidebars and examples, and keep related things together in an organized
whole.  On the other hand, I've also seen a multi-volume reference manual
which went on for ten pages between section headings, so it can be important
to use things like paragraph headings or side notes to help the reader keep
track of where the discussion is going.

Hyperlinks are important, and can be done with either method.


> It seems that TeX on Debian is now based on TeX Live.  And so tlmgr
> might be what one has to use.
> 
> How does a person install something like Tufte on Debian using tlmgr?

Try installing the Debian package texlive-pictures, which seems to be where
tufte-latex was placed.

You may want to install TeXLive "vanilla", instead of using the Debian
version.  If you do so, you get the latest release of each package instead
of waiting for them to filter down to Debian Stable.  http://tug.org/texlive/

In a console, if using TeXLive:
tlmgr install tufte-latex

To read the documentation:
texdoc tufte-latex



Brian

-- 
Brian Dunn
BD Tech Concepts LLC
http://www.BDTechConcepts.com