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by dctoedt 4718 days ago
Look at refurbished Macbook Airs at the Apple Web site. I'm not a developer, but I'm writing a long book using Emacs and LaTex, so the cycle of write text, compile the file(s), review for errors, and edit the file(s) is somewhat similar. I'd always been a Wintel user, but in January I bought a refurbished 11-inch Macbook Air with a 256GB SSD and 8GB of RAM. I love it. I don't even use an external monitor, keyboard, or mouse anymore.
1 comments
tptacek 4717 days ago
You're writing a book in LaTex?!
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dctoedt 4716 days ago
> You're writing a book in LaTex?!

Yep. It's a long contracts-related book with lots of internal cross-references. MS Word seemed to keep corrupting things, so I went back to my Emacs and Scribe roots. It's all much easier with LaTex and Emacs org-mode, plus the resulting PDF files are very nice.

(I wrote my first book in 1980-81 using Emacs and Scribe on a TOPS-20 system. It was a "for Dummies"-type user guide for my fellow law-review editors on, wait for it, how to use Emacs and Scribe on a TOPS-20 system to produce and edit law-review articles. My second book, on software law, was done in 1986-87 with The Final Word, which was a clone of Emacs and Scribe.)

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dfc 4716 days ago
How do you handle case citations in latex? I never found a easy way to do legal citations in latex that came anywhere close to bluebook format.
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dctoedt 4716 days ago
> How do you handle case citations in latex?

Brute force. I don't even try to use BibTex. I just find the opinion on-line somewhere (Google Scholar if possible, failing that Justia.com or one of the opinion publishers). I make the case name a hyperlink to the on-line opinion. Then in plain, non-linked text I include whatever Blue Book style I can, preferably to the West reporter series if available, failing which the slip-opinion cite. I also include a shortened URL, so that anyone reading a hard copy can type it in.

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dfc 4717 days ago
Why is that so hard to understand? If it is a math text it seems like a nobrainer. If I was going to write a book (by definition not a math text) I would write it in pandoc and then use pandoc to create the latex. Using the memoir style it would be easy to create a print ready book with all the bells and whistles and then send the pdf to a self publishing/printing outfit.
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tptacek 4717 days ago
D.C. Toedt's book is probably not a math book, is why I asked.
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