TeX qurestions, for anybody who cares to reply... .

[Polytropon]

On Tue, 8 Jun 2010 20:51:53 -0700, Gary Kline <kline at thought.org> wrote:
> in my ascii type i cannot type
> the e-aigu and i cannot find it in any of the docs. 

Isnt e-aigu part of the ASCII table? Depending on your editor,
can you manually enter it using the "two accents key" (on the
german keyboard directly left to the backspace key) to enter
the sequence accent-letter, generating é, É, è and È?

Finally, LaTeX allows you to add the diacritical mark using
the proper macro: \'{e} - while in this case the apostrophe
key is used to create the ' (as a stand-alone character, or
"single quote").



> the  most important part is that i want the demo blurb
> [[modified from usenet when i drafted this]] in "typewriter"
> typeface. the docs i googled said that {\tt text blah blah }
> would put the text between the braces in typewriter-font.

Use the safe LaTeX form: \texttt{text blah blah}, allthough
the for you used - switching to \tt face using scope, is
possible.



> i would like to make the text smaller that the surrounding text.

If you want to quote text (which indents it), use \begin{quote} ...
\end{quote}.



> so my last question is: how do i tell tex/latex to make the
> denoted text in tt font and with 9pt size? 

LaTeX doesn't give you direct control over pt sizes - and that's
GOOD. Just imagine your text is 10pt in general, and you want
several passages to be 6pt. Fine. Now you decide that your text
is better in 12pt in general - and you now need to set all
occurances of 6pt manually to a different value.

LaTeX uses relative font size modifiers.
\tiny - \scriptsize - \footnotesize - \small - \normalsize - 
\large - \Large - \LARGE - \huge - \Huge.

The base size it refers to is declared in your preable, e. g.

	\documentclass[12pt,a4paper,twoside]{article}

which sets 12pt as reference value for \normalsize.

You can use them either by "switch state" or by scopus, e. g.

	Now big text will follow. \Huge Zorch, uch huge text!!!
	\normalsize Ah, being back to normal.

which is equivalent to

	Now big text will follow. {\Huge Zorch, uch huge text!!!}
	Ah, being back to normal.

Personally, I prefer the second form.


> the "\\" should give
> the ragged edge as it appeared on the tube.  this works in
> {verse} anyway.   i'm not sure what to do at the bottom of the
> post; i figure trial/error will anser that.

The \\ macro creates a forced line-break within a paragraph and
should hardly be used. It's microformatting, and that's what
LaTeX should not be abused for. :-)



> here is the bit of the novel that i need help with.  any/all help
> is much appreciated.
> 
> +++++
> 
> ``Can you show me?'' she said.

Erm, why don't you use doublequotes instead of doubled singlequotes?
Yes, it sounds stupid, but it's like implementing quotes using commas
and apostrophes ,,like in this example'' for example. :-)

Use "` (doublequote backtick) for opening quotes and "' (doublequote
apostrophe) for closing quotes. When I say "doublequote", I refer to
the inch character (as in 21" CRT) in your alphanumerical keyboard
section.

You can also use macros for quoting, but I found them a bit too
much typing, I just wanto to mention them: there are \glqq and \grqq
(german left quote quote, german right quote quote) and \glq and \grq,
representing ,,text'' and ,text'. There are also \flqq (french left
quote quote) and the forms \frqq, \flq and \frq, to use <<text>>
and <text>; for russian quotes, >>text<< and >text<, use them in
the opposite order.



> ``Okay, this is one of the groups where you'll find endless arguments.
> This is the newsgroup called `talk.abortion.'  Now the first article here
> is this one--'' Erik typed another key and a brief paragraph displayed:
> 
> {\tt chris\_smith at holyrose.mass.edu Christopher L. Z. Smith

I would use

\begin{quote}
	{\tt chris\_smith at holyrose.mass.edu Christopher L. Z. Smith

	next paragraph here

	and maybe another one
	}
\end{quote}

in this example. Works perfectly for multilines and paragraphs.
Don't only focus on how things look like; make it clear to you
what certain passages and elements of your text ARE. For example,
the above short passage can be seen as a quote.

If you see that you need the "quote from newsgroup discussion"
text element more often, define an own environment for it, so
IF you want to change its look, change it ONCE, in a central
position, and stay away from microformatting.

For example, put this before \begin{document} (in fact, put
it anywhere before use):

	\newenvironment{ngquote}{\begin{quote}\tt}{\end{quote}}

You can now use it that way:

\begin{ngquote}
	chris\_smith at holyrose.mass.edu Christopher L. Z. Smith

	next paragraph here

	and maybe another one
\end{ngquote}

If you wish to also reduce text size, do it in the environment
declaration to make all occurances benefit from it.

Oh, and whenever you encounter special characters that do have a
meaning in LaTeX, and you don't know the correct substitution
(like \_ for _), use \verb and \begin{verbatim}...\end{verbatim}
to have text inserted 1:1.



> that's about it.  if anybody can clue me in here, the answers
> will help me with the the few other places that could,
> optionally, use different fonts than the default.  

You shouldn't spread all possible typographical properties across
one page. :-)



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...