LaTeX PDFs and LuLu

[alistermitchell]

Thanks you William, your comments are most helpful.  There has also been some discussion on the TexHax list and the conclusion seems to be exactly what you said - it just works. 

I need to go and change the page size and reset (was A4, now going to 6x4) and then we shall see.

I am loath to give up on LuLu because a friend with  a number of published books has recommended the service.

All the best,

Alister

[WilliamAdams]

I know that a number of books have been published on Lulu using TeX and LaTeX (and ConTeXt and pdflatex and xelatex) because it has come up in the past on various TeX mailing lists and I've provided information on how to submit press-ready .pdfs based on my experience in the industry.

Ken will not be able to help w/ a TeX project using the Adobe tools which you advocate since there's only one tool from Adobe which includes an equation editor (FrameMaker) and it doesn't have a facility for importing TeX equations. Ironically, Adobe uses TeX to provide the alt text for all the equations on their opensource site opensource.adobe.com the last time I looked at it.

[Ken Anderson]

Ken didn't say he could. Ken did send a Private Message that appears not to have been read! Simon say's ...................

[kevinlomas]

It's the insistance on using a prog you seem to be having trouble with, William, that the suggestion to use other sotware came up, and Ken can create a PDF for you, seeing as the end result you are after is a PDF. It is falling on deaf ears though.

[WilliamAdams]

I'm not having trouble here, I came in to help.

The OP isn't having trouble either, save that you jump into pretty much every thread on using LaTeX and claim that it isn't suitable to use, thereby confusing the issue, and yet you seem to have no understanding of what LaTeX is --- at a guess you do this to boost your post count and promote the personal web site which you have in your signature.

If someone isn't listening, it isn't at this end --- I hear you loud and clear.

[kevinlomas]

Sorry, William, you are not the original poster, true, but my reply in regard to Ken is very valid regardless of what you say.
As to me "jump into pretty much every thread on using Latex ... " you missed this >>> "I have no idea what pdflatex is" and do not recall seeing it mentioned before. But apparently you are a new member so how can you comment on what I have posted in the past?
Please note how many people view the postings, and you say I only post so people view my site?!
And postcount? do you think we get something for replying or what?

Sigh.

[WilliamAdams]

Kevin, you should have looked up and known what LaTeX was based on your having responded in these threads:

http://connect.lulu.com/t5/Interior-Formatting/Does-Lulu-support-LaTeX/td-p/121991

http://connect.lulu.com/t5/Interior-Formatting/Formatting-requirements-LaTex/td-p/93907

http://connect.lulu.com/t5/Interior-Formatting/Confused-about-buyers-options/td-p/15312

http://connect.lulu.com/t5/General-Discussions/PDF-and-cut-option/td-p/143405

all of which mention LaTeX and in which you have posted, apparently w/o knowing what LaTeX is.

[kevinlomas]

It's very diligent of you to look for 4 of my postings out of 7,500, going back 3 years, that plainly state I do not know what it is, well done.

I did look LaTex up during replying to this thread, and my answer remains the same. Why not use Word or some other common prog to create the files, as most people do? Progs that Lulu even recommend and provide templates for.

Or Ken.

[WilliamAdams]

Reasons not to use Word or Adobe InDesign are legion:

- no equation support in InDesign, minimal support in Word
- no programmatic interaction w/ diagrams
- cross reference support is minimalistic
- indexing lacks the ability to place character styles w/in an index entry
- &c.

Moreover, the job is already done in LaTeX, and doing it in any other tool would require re-proofing and additional, unnecessary work, since contrary to your claims, LaTeX is perfectly capable of creating a .pdf which Lulu will accept.

[keithdevlin]

Most of this exchange is pretty unhelpful, as it seems to suggest Lulu is not familiar with a powerful digital typesetting system (LaTeX) that has been in use since the mid 1980s, and which I have been obliged to use by the publishers of at least half my 31 print books and all my published scholarly articles, since pretty well all publishers of technical books (mine involve a lot of typeset mathematical formulas) require LaTeX submission, and when presented by anything else (such as Word with MathType equation inserts) do a part-automated, part-manual clean-up conversion. Most publishers I have worked with (all major publishers) provide LaTeX stylesheets (digital formatting files) to set the book in the desired format. Setting into PDF with embedded fonts is not a problem.  If Lulu can print from such a PDF, as WilliamAdams suggests, then all I need to worry about is the page layout. Do I take it that Lulu does not supply a LaTeX stylesheet? If so, does anyone recommend one to produce the best looking output?