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

[Sam Halliday]

Peter Hutnick wrote:
> Football being the game with goalies and a round ball?

yup... our target audience is SA, not USA; so, yeah. but they don't play
it very well in SA ;-) [better than in USA anyway]

the theme will have to be changed sometime anyway since i can't get good
examples... but it has to be something your average South African High
School student will be able to relate to. football was perfect.

> Do you think that group theory is appropriate for High School?

its not on any syllabus if thats what you mean. but as a maths student;
i would really love to have been given the opportunity to have been able
to study (abstract) algebra before going to university. i know a lot of
people who express the same opinion... since this is our soapbox; its a
chance to give that opportunity to people.

its really not hard at all at that level... its just "different". it
gets hard quick though, and the earlier you have been subjected to
something, the easier it is to pick it up.

for now, its being left out though. the syllabus is much more important.

> I am not trained in Abstract Algebra . . . I'll be sticking to 
> Elementary Algebra.

thats ok... we called the section you speak of to "hsalgebra" (high
school algebra); just ignore algebra.tex.. i'll claim full responsible
for the atrocity :-)

> >>I'm looking at "TeX for the Impatient" right now.  For my project 
> >>(La)TeX with a text editor just is not an option.  We'll see how
> >>things work out.

i'd reccomend

"LaTeX: A Document Preparation System: User's Guide and Reference
Manual" by Leslie Lamport
and
"The LATEX Companion" by Michel Goossens, et al

as good tabletop references. i also have a few symbol lists at my side,
but i doubt you'd need them for this level.

> >[Use Emacs and RTFM]
> I hate Emacs.

i used to be the greatest Emacs hater in the world. give it a try...
honestly :-)

don't read the manual... its crap. print off a reference sheet for some
common commands (i have one with CVS and LaTeX stuff) and learn a new
one every session. then curse emacs for a few days, then start to love
it. find something you think is great about it... learn how to customise
it. get addicted to customising it. don't have tiem to do any work. its
the way it goes!

if you're feeling flush you might want to type "C-h t" (thats, "Ctrl+h"
then "t") for a working tutorial.

> I will RTFM.  Thanks for being so gentle about it.

:-) don't feel pressured to use it though.. im only giving that as a
reccomendation for your own health. the author of hsalgebra.tex wrote it
in wordpad!!! and a lot of contributions are in word doc format,
unfortunately.

the advantage of using a text editor would be that you could commit
straight to CVS, instead of having to email one of us to put it in.
using a GUi to edit the LaTeX is dodgy as it will mess up our format.

> How are dialectical issues being addressed?  I think I saw the word 
> revision used where an American would say "review."  (This difference
> is non-trivial, as when we say "revision" we mean something like
> vetting.)

since our target audience is purely South African High School Students;
that means British English. we have a few pedantic, great proof readers
who will be sure to change any "ize"'s to "ise" ;-) [right heath?]

i don't even know what "vetting" is

> Is there a reasonable way to manage this sort of
> internationali[s|z]ation in TeX?

as far as i know, not without using \functions for common words... but
that will only work for different variants of english. seperate
"translation" trees are probably the only way to do this.

> Does this group think it would be a good idea to try to identify
> problematic words and phrases?

i'm sure there is a list out there of english->american translations. we
are not concerned with translations at the moment... we need the content
to get up to standard in our own language first.

>  Is everyone just writing in his native dialect and hoping that it all
>  works out in the editing?

like i said... British English is the only way to go to start with. when
we get a first printing... then maybe we can get people in to maintain
"translations" (whether they be american, german, zulu or french). we
have no idea of any other languages other than British English (some
folk here speak Afrikaans)

i really stress the fact that our target audience is South African at
this stage... we are hoping to get funding to do something big, and
thinking internationally at this stage would probably be
counterproductive. but, for the future... we would definitely be keen on
translations!

ok... im off home to my parents house in northern ireland for the
weekend, i won't be back online till tuesday. but im sure others on the
list can answer your questions...

basically... check the syllabus lists in "other" and add anything which
you feel you can contribute to. be warned though, the hsalgebra.tex file
is being worked on by others at the moment and all the syllabus stuff is
there already.

welcome onboard!

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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