My Latex Book Template

README

# Workflow and tool chain for writing a book for PDF publishing

## Toolchain

1. Pandoc, install using the cabal installer, don't apt-get. On OSX, there is dmg, I think the dmg is best option for OSX, it is just too problematic to get 1.9.2 cabal using brew or macports. There was one option I tried and succeeded, that is to install the Haskell environment using a package installer, that contained the cabal installer. Then install pandoc using cabal. Don't forget that the executables are in ~/.cabal/bin, so you have to set the path

2. TexLive, get the full distribution. It will take sometime to download, so get some coffee and be prepared to waste time

3. A good texteditor. ia Writer on OSX, vi (all around). Recently though, TextMate 2.0 Alpha  seems to be a pretty good editor of Markdown

## Workflow

1. Write the source files using Pandoc Markdown
2. Each chapter of the book is broken down into a markdown file
3. Write your own buildfile to consolidate each chapter into a single book
4. Chapter compilation can be done on the buildscript, but essentially it just contains

4.1 pandoc --chapters -o targetfile.tex sourcefile.md
4.2 cat and append content of preamble.doc to tempfile
4.3 cat and append content of targetfile.tex to tempfile
4.3 append the closing "\end{document} to tempfile
4.4 copy back tempfile to targetfile.tex

5. compile to pdf using "pdflatex targetfile.tex" 


## Workarounds

Not everything in Pandoc works as advertised (even in 1.9.2), so you need to sidestep some items a little bit. These are some of the things.

1. Inclusion of source codes


~~~~{#thecode .java .numberLines}

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This code block produces a \begin{Shades} environment, which becomes problematic if you output partially to latex. You will need to define the {Shades} environment, and I did not know how.  

-------

\lstinputlisting{sourcode.java}

This works in Pandoc, this is good to use for longer source codes

-----

\begin{lstlisting}

\end{lstlisting}

This does not work in Pandoc, for some reason it stops processing, so side step

-----

~~~ {#code}



~~~  

This works nicely in Pandoc, it produces an \begin{lstlisting} properly in latex, so use this for really short code snippets






## My Latex Preamble

1. Section headings

\usepackage{sectsty}
    \allsectionsfont{\sffamily}
        \subsectionfont{\mdseries}
            \sectionfont{\rmfamily\Large}


\usepackage[Sonny]{fncychap}
    \ChTitleVar{\raggedright\Huge\ttfamily\bfseries}


2. Paragraph skipping

\usepackage{parskip}

Don't mess with the \parskip variable anymore, the output is fine. 

3. Change the main body font to Palatino

\usepackage{palatino}

4. Inclusion of graphics 

\usepackage{graphicx}

5. Side notes in the margin 


\let\oldmarginpar\marginpar
    \renewcommand\marginpar[1]{\-\oldmarginpar[\raggedleft\footnotesize #1]%
        {\raggedright\footnotesize #1}}

6. Ditch the fancy headings, use \pagestyle{myheadings}

\pagestyle{myheadings}
\markright{Introduction to Java}

-----------

7. Embedding line drawings

\begin{figure} [htpb]
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=50mm]{source/18-database-programming/jdbc.pdf}
    \caption{JDBC and your app}
    \label{jdbc}
\end{figure}

PDF seems to work best. EPS doesn't work with my installation of pdflatex, pstricks also don't work. Anyway, PDF is fine.

preamble-part.tex

\documentclass[14pt]{report}
\usepackage{palatino}
\usepackage{verbatim}
\usepackage{parskip}
\usepackage{enumerate}
\usepackage{minitoc}
\usepackage{todo}
\usepackage{marginnote}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{listings}
\usepackage{courier}
\usepackage{caption}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\usepackage{sectsty}
    \allsectionsfont{\sffamily}
        \subsectionfont{\mdseries}
            \sectionfont{\rmfamily\Large}


\usepackage[Sonny]{fncychap}
    \ChTitleVar{\raggedright\Huge\ttfamily\bfseries}


\let\oldmarginpar\marginpar
    \renewcommand\marginpar[1]{\-\oldmarginpar[\raggedleft\footnotesize #1]%
        {\raggedright\footnotesize #1}}

\lstset{tabsize=2,numbers=left,language=java,basicstyle=\footnotesize\ttfamily,showstringspaces=false,xleftmargin=17pt,numberstyle=\tiny}

\usepackage[top=2cm, bottom=3.3cm, left=3.2cm, right=4cm]{geometry}
\linespread{1.1}


%\reversemarginpar

\begin{document}

\pagestyle{myheadings}
\markright{Introduction to Java}


\title{Java Core Programming}
\date{Nov 2011}
\author{Ted Hagos\\
	\texttt {tedhagos@gmail.com}
	}
\maketitle
\dominitoc
\tableofcontents