This weekend I managed to climb the steepest part of the learning curve with formatting a book using LaTeX.
Watch this space, as I should be able to complete and publish this proof of concept pretty quickly. If this book works out to be worth my time, you can expect quite a bit more publishing from me soon.
@JohnsNotHere Yes I already have a solid, formatted book with a single complete chapter in it as a proof of concept. It's now "just" a matter of adding the remaining chapters (already written) with formatting and indexing along the way, and picking some cover art.
Of course it's going a lot faster for me since I have already formatted numerous books using multiple publishers' own professional templates (ranging from XHTML, to web-based, to multiple Word templates) so I have that background.
@kyle I collected some best practices here: https://github.com/daixtrose/fh-aachen-thesis-template
@markuswerle Thanks! For the most part the formatting best practices for tech books have already been burned in my brain from the dozen books I've formatted over the years for different publishers. At this point it's mostly just mapping those style guides to this particular LaTeX book template I'm using.
It feels similar to the process of switching from one publisher's Word template to another's, only I can use vim and a keyboard, instead of a mouse!
@kyle
Hmm, while the majority of online forum posts and tutorials point one to LaTeX, and there are lots of stylesheets available, did you look at OpTeX (https://petr.olsak.net/optex/) which are a group of plain TeX macros you can run that give you the power of TeX and can do nearly everything LaTeX does, but with much easier to follow error messages when something isn't properly formatted.
@kyle Also, I suggest that as someone who's used LaTeX off and on for for years, but have always been a bit mystified by its error traces. OpTeX will also allow your source text to be much more human readable, as the markups are lighter than LaTeX's syntax.
@jkepler I am reluctant to move to something with less history, smaller userbase, and less documentation since I am just learning and need all of the online support I can get.
@kyle
Mâles sense. Hope your writing and typesetting goes well.
Kind of amazing that your working on writing and typesetting a book on a phone (your Librem 5, I assume)!
@jkepler Yes I am doing all of the layout of the book with my Librem 5 and Lapdock Kit. I am actually going to use the tablet mode feature when it is time to review the full book as a digital page proof before I order the printed version. Living in the convergence future!
@kyle I have a couple of books on LaTeX, so I've tried to learn it in the past; then I discovered LyX and got lazy. ;-)
Are you using an existing document class/layout or creating your own?
@lwriemen I found an existing class for technical books that does most of what I want, although I have had to do some modifications so it isn't perfect.
@kyle I forced myself to learn LaTeX when I wrote my first book. It was an absolute pain that worked out great until I tried to publish via Amazon's platform. They wanted Word... Still, the physical copies I did through Lightning Source were immaculate!
Good luck with the rest of the journey! I will say once you get it working, it's much smoother sailing. 🙂