Francis Bond (bond@kssalt.cipl.cae.ntt.co.jp)
Mon, 10 Feb 97 14:57:26 JST
G'day, I saw the following on the hpsg mailing list: >->"Ivan" == Ivan A Sag <sag@csli.stanford.edu> writes: Ivan> All, Ivan> I don't know how many of you have had the problem of preparing Ivan> beautiful latex manuscripts that are, once accepted for Ivan> publication, retyped by hand in some non-latex format Ivan> (introducing the possibility of new errors), with the figures Ivan> redone in some form of MacArt (or whatever). Ivan> I would like to encourage all of you who have such problems to Ivan> make sure you bring up the possibility of latex submission with Ivan> the journal editor or publisher you are dealing with. Some Ivan> publishers are apparently resistant to the idea primarily Ivan> because they believe there is little demand for direct latex Ivan> submission. [snip: tales of woe moved to end of letter] Ivan> This situation can change only if the journals get the Ivan> message. So if you have this kind of problem, I urge you to let Ivan> the editors of the journals you deal with know when their Ivan> production methods are not up to your own desktop standards... I am not sure if you know of it, but there is a mailing list about (La)TeX and linguistics run by Christina Thiele <cthiele@CCS.CARLETON.CA>. She is now in the process of writing up an overview of various TeX applications, including linguistics (no surprise there) for a piece in TUGboat. She has asked for information on books that have been published in, say, the last 2 years, with the following info: I. author, Title. Place: Publisher, year, no. of pages. II. TeX or LaTeX (2.09 or 2e); in-house or other macros. III. Font(s) used. IV. Who did the actual TeX work: the author, the publisher (in-house), or a third party contracted to the publisher. Christina> The intent of all this? To start assembling a list of Christina> publications, topic by topic, to make it easier for someone Christina> to answer the question ``So, other than math, what's TeX Christina> good for?!'' I know this was a topic of discussion on Christina> c.t.t. towards the end of last year. And it's a question Christina> that often arises when talking to people: either it's Christina> assumed only maths/sciences types use it, or that it has no Christina> relevance for anything outside maths/sciences. If you want to encourage people to use (La)TeX for linguistics, please add to Christina's list, and then quote it when talking to publishers! Francis ``LaTeX fan'' Bond <bond@cslab.kecl.ntt.co.jp> NTT Communication Science Laboratories | Machine Translation Research Group Ivan's tales of woe: Ivan> To give you just one example, my favorite theoretical Ivan> linguistics journal -- Journal of Linguistics (which I strongly Ivan> recommend to you!) is published by Cambridge University Ivan> Press. Although the Math(s) and Computer Science people at CUP Ivan> are some of the best latex experts in the world, the linguistics Ivan> journals are unable to deal with latex submissions at all. It Ivan> sounds like the people from one department at CUP don't even Ivan> talk to the people from the others. Ivan> I also know of a book published a couple of years ago (which Ivan> will remain nameless, unless you ask me in person sometime, in Ivan> which case I'll tell you the whole pathetic story in all its Ivan> gory detail) whose last-minute MacArt keying in of just the Ivan> diagrams introduced over 2,000 errors that had to be corrected Ivan> by hand by the authors over the course of 3 stages of galley Ivan> proofs. Caveat auctor!
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