I'm impressed... I have no idea what half this stuff is ;-)
On the LaTex, etc. I can say this. Many if not most math and phisics
departments at major universities have LaTeX styles that conform to
their universities specific thesis/disertation guidelines... If you are
here at ASU, you can download it from the math department. I downloaded
a copy over a year ago and have been using it (either directly or in
modified form) for a variety of papers for my coursework. You can also
find similar style templates for MS Word, etc.
If you're up for it I would like to get together and discuss all this.
I'm starting to write my thesis in plant bio (ecological modeling) and
soon to start a second in computer science... Depending on what you
want to do I may have a couple of different options for you.
EBo --
Trent Shipley wrote:
>
> Flow chart for Dissertation preparation.
> (Dissertation is in Cultural Anthropology)
> ---------------------------------------------------
>
> 10 SGML + emacs + normalize
> |
> V
> 20 XML + DTD + nsgmls verification
> |
> V
> 30 (XSLT + (SAXON|Xalan))|(DSSSL + JADE)
> |
> V
> 40 (XSL:FO + WordPerfect|Word|?)|(LaTeX + latex)
> | |
> V |
> 50 (LaTeX|TeX)? |
> | |
> V V
> 60 (dvi)? <------------------------
> |
> V
> 70 PostScript
> |
> V
> 80 Fomatted hard copy
>
> ----------------------------------------------------
>
> As you know I am working on my Dissertation. I am currently in step '20'
> and ready to start working on a DTD. This should be pretty straight
> forward. I am anticipating few problems.
>
> Likewise steps 60 to 80 should pose few problems. However commercial
> documents are scarce for steps 30 and 40 so I am soliciting advice.
>
> 30: SAXON vs Xalan vs JADE
>
> 31: Has anyone worked with these freeware products? How do they compare?
>
> 32: I have done some research on XSLT and am pretty sure I can get the hang
> of it. The _structure_ of DSSSL looks pretty similar to XSLT (historically
> the other way around, of course). How much harder is it to use DSSSL than
> XSLT?
>
> 33: How much will working with DSSSL help learn LISP/Scheme style
> programming?
>
> 34: What will look better on a resume, DSSSL or XSLT?
>
> 40: XSL:FO vs LaTeX (Yes, I know they aren't interchangeable.)
>
> 41: There are no math formulas in the dissertation also no color and no
> graphics. There is lots of manipulation of block formatting, fonts, line
> spacing changes and footnoting.
>
> 41: FO looks like it is more intuitive and more expressive. Is this true?
>
> 42: Is LaTeX likely to require a lot of tinkering to get *exactly* the
> result I want? Will I wind up coding my own modules and working in TeX?
>
> 43: The text is on young people in Jordan. I will be using the standard
> Latin-1 characters plus the Arabic Unicode code page plus a couple of other
> Latin code pages plus a Greek and a Cyrillic code page to transliterate the
> Arabic. It looks like FO has much better support for internationalization
> than LaTeX. It looks like LaTeX is limited largely to European languages.
>
> 44: I suspect that WordPerfect and Word can read FO documents, but I'm not
> 100% sure. I can't find an FO to TeX or dvi or PostScript converter on
> SourceForge. bummer.
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