Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!icdoc!sot-ecs!spqr From: spqr@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Sebastian Rahtz) Newsgroups: comp.text Subject: Re: Producing Conference Proceedings Message-ID: Date: 10 Mar 91 17:13:53 GMT References: <1991Mar6.210709.28109@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu> <4406@undis.cs.chalmers.se> Sender: news@ecs.soton.ac.uk Organization: Southampton University Computer Science Lines: 32 In-reply-to: jeffrey@cs.chalmers.se's message of 9 Mar 91 13:21:42 GMT I have to agree with most of Alan Jeffrey's points. I have edited a conference proceedings each year for the last five years, and it has ruined months of my life. I think it depends on the interaction between two things: the subject matter, and the authors. If, for instance, all the authors use mathematics, BUT a large proportion use something like Macwrite, the effort putting into producing a book with LaTeX might be worthwhile. Unless you can guarentee that over 50% of the authors will produce *logical markup*, be prepared for hours of madness. Get used to writing zillions of one-off programmettes to sort out author A's idiosyncracies. The golden rule is Authors Ignore Instructions My topical tips: - go for PostScript pictures, even if it means scanning originals and using the image. the usefulness of arbitrary scaling to fit the right space is invaluable. dont even consider cut and paste unless you have an assistant to do it - if you do it, go the whole hog. I use LaTeX, and convert all the references to BibTeX format. its time-consuming, but when its done, I get guarenteed consistency of layout, and guarenteed correspondence between references in the text and the bibliography. saves a lot of checking. similarly, symbolic cross-referencing is slow, but is wonderful when a last minute paper arrives and all the chapter numbers change Sebastian -- Sebastian Rahtz S.Rahtz@uk.ac.soton.ecs (JANET) Computer Science S.Rahtz@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Bitnet) Southampton S09 5NH, UK S.Rahtz@sot-ecs.uucp (uucp)