[plug] Star Office and 5.1 and the registration

[Greg Gamble]

Hi,

  Further to the comments by Bret Busby and Greg Mildenhall
... for typesetting a thesis LaTeX is really the *only* choice.
The best distribution of TeX/LaTeX is teTeX. Debian and RedHat
have it packaged up and split into several pieces:

 tetex-base, tetex-extra, tetex-doc etc.

Personally, I don't like the way they split it into bits and
disable or remove texdoc among other things ... but installing
it this way is quick and easy ... and the way things are split
might not bother you. However, if you want the most
up-to-date version (which *is* top quality) and space on your 
system is not tight, I recommend installing it yourself, go to:

ftp://ftp.rrzn.uni-hannover.de/pub/local/misc/teTeX-beta/

and get:

QuickInstall.src
teTeX-src-0.9.tar.gz
teTeX-texmf-0.9.tar.gz

I also recommend that you have egcs 1.1.2. (egcs 1.1.1 and
variants have problems) Don't bother with latest snapshots,
my experience was they don't work ... one site you can get it
is:

http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/disks/.26/pcg/egcs/releases/egcs-1.1.2/
egcs-1.1.2.tar.gz

... and then follow the instructions at:

http://egcs.cygnus.com/install/

Some other things you ought to have are:

* gs (ghostscript) ... Debian/RedHat have version 5.10 packaged
		       up, and this is fine.
		       The Menlo Park 3.3 (or is it 4.3)
		       version is also ok, but inferior.
		       There is also gs 5.50 ... but you have
		       to go to the source and install it
		       yourself.
* ghostview or gv  ... far, far, far superior is gv ... I think
		       it's version 3.5.8 ... but it's whatever
		       is packaged up by Debian/RedHat.

* ispell ............. an excellent spell-checker, with an
		       option -t for checking TeX/LaTeX
		       documents ... I'm sure there's a
		       Debian/RedHat package for it.

To get started you should procure a copy of the LaTeX2e manual:

 L. Lamport, `LaTeX2e - A Document Preparation System',
 (Addison-Wesley, second ed., 1994). Updated for LaTeX2e.

If you want to buy it, it'll set you back around $40-$50.

Once you're started you might find some other useful info. at:

http://maths.uwa.edu.au/computing/software/tex/

GLOSSARY/TRIVIA

TeX - Donald Knuth's original typesetting program
      ... spelt Tau epsilon Chi, Greek root for technology,
	  pronounced like tech in technology. The engine
	  that underlies LaTeX, though TeX can also be used
	  on it's own.

LaTeX - Leslie Lamport's `enhancement' of TeX 
	... I like to think of it as marrying TeX with SGML.
	    Pronounced lay-TeX or lah-TeX.

teTeX - Thomas Esser TeX. There are a lot of pieces to
	TeX/LaTeX and some companion programs like BibTeX,
	MakeIndex, Xdvi and Dvips that one needs. 
	Thomas Esser has bundled it up so that installation,
	which was once a nightmare, is now easy.

The information here is probably overload ... and might scare
you off. Don't let it ... if you use LaTeX to write your thesis
it will look beautiful. What's more the source document is
plain old ASCII and you can use your favourite editor to
generate and modify it.

I'm obviously raving ... but if the alternative to TeX/LaTeX is
something akin to M$Word I have good reason.

  Regards,
  Greg Gamble <gregg at maths.uwa.edu.au>