[Fhsst-authors] Re: [Fhsst-admin-priv] Re: Free High School Science Texts

[Sam Halliday]

hi peter!

this sounds like a very good arrangement for the lot of us!

Peter Hutnick wrote:
> My two big questions are
> 1. Specifically what content do you need?

at the moment physics is in a near-completion state; proof reading and
touching up is the most important. maths is in early stages... mark or
spence will know what needs done exactly, so one or the other will
reply.

> 2. What format do you want it in?  (I'm working with LaTeX with 
> Encapsulated Post Script figures right now.)  Someday I want to 
> automagically create HTML with MathML and PNG graphics from LaTeX and 
> EPS.  Currently I can do PDFs easily.

we use purely LaTeX with any Figures being done in EPS (or a LaTeX adon,
like pstricks). we have a lot of BMP/other type contributions which we
have to convert, but we would rather keep everythign consistent by using
the same tools for figures across the book.

i read that you use LyX to make your LaTeX... be warned that LyX,
although it produces LaTeX output, it uses an awful lot of "internal"
stuff in its processing... and for example, if you were to import one of
our files, change a single line, and export to LaTeX again... the actual
.tex file may be changed quite considerably! for that reason, i'd
reccomend that you use a LaTeX editor (the best is Emacs) to make the
changes. of ocurse... we will not refuse any material just becuase of
the format it is in... hell, we started the thing off with a .doc file
run through `strings`!

we intend on making hard prints to hand out to schools... but if it's
all in LaTeX, you should have no problem converting to any other format.
MathML is maybe a bit too optimistic, but in a few years when browsers
support it and the fonts are free... it'll be revolutionary for maths! i
know latex2html exists, which renders all
equations/figures/non-standard-text as PNG files.

when we reach a "stable" state... we will most likely have a versioning
system and release PS/PDFs on the webpage, and maybe an online HTML
document.

cheers,
Sam
-- 
Free High School Science Texts
  http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/fhsst
Sam's Homepages
  http://fommil.homeunix.org/~samuel
  http://www.ma.hw.ac.uk/~samuel

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