A Note on File Formats

Most documents are available in LaTeX format (), and I'll try to make them all available in HTML (), as GIF images (), Micro$oft Word Documents (), Raw Text (), and rarely, PostScript ().

Most people know how to deal with HTML documents ok, and raw text and GIF images are pretty straightforward also. On the other hand, lots of people haven't even heard of LaTeX or PostScript, let alone used them.

LaTeX - LaTeX is a typesetting language originally developed by Leslie Lamport. It's big in the mathematical and scientific communities for writing document, mostly because of its sophisticated equation typesetting capabilities. It's been around a long time, and it's quite powerful, and can be easily converted to lots of different formats. Most of these documents were originally written in LaTeX, and then filters and converters were used to generate other things, like PostScript. If you want a hard copy of any of these documents, you can get a copy of the LaTeX package , generate PostScript files, and print. This approach produces extremely attractive documents.

Micro$oft Word - I'll try to stay away from this, but it's fun to play around with the Devil every once in a while. I'll convert any Word documents to HTML also (although this doesn't help tremendously, since the HTML Word spews is grotesque, to say the least). Anyway, I apologize for these files' existence. It's all my fault.

PostScript - To view these in any M$-Windows environment, you need a utility called GhostView. It's free on the Net, and I'm not sure where I got it, but whatever. Search engines exist. PostScript files are interesting, 'cause you can dump them directly to most laser printers, and high-quality typeset output will erupt from your printer. They tend to be big, though, so I don't use them much.

Comments, Criticisms, Complaints? Mail me at svincent@kami.com!