Re: Re: TeX

[Radhakrishnan C V <cvr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 9 Feb 2001, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:

: Radhakrishnan C V [Fri, Feb 09, 2001 at 08:56:56AM +0530]: 
: 
: > Why not Linux-India think in terms of conducting a comprehensive Linux
: > online tutorial just as we TeXies do? That will be a great assistance
: 
: More details please - this sounds interesting.

TUGIndia conducts the tutorial in a fashion that is palatable to a
newbie, so that one can grab a web2c TeX system from any CTAN mirror,
or from TeXLive CDROM (the official TeX distribution of international
TeX Users Group of which TUGIndia is a production team member among
seven others) and start working from it.

The tutorial is divided into number of chapters that explains the
brief history, the software, availability, how to start working, and
each chapter is devoted to each aspect of TeX, its usage and are
profusely illustrated. A syllubus has already been provided. We plan
to finish the tutorial in 24 chapters, each chapter being delivered
every week.

A screen version with hyperlinked navigation buttons and reference
links within the document or to an external document or to a URL are
always provided wherever necessary.

A regular print version is also provided for those who want to have it
printed.

Of course, the TeX sources of all the tutorial doc, its class file,
supporting packages are also distributed along with the release of
each chapter, so that the user can play with it and raise questions
if he encounters any problems.

The problems encounted by users on each chapter is well discussed in
the TUGIndia mailing list, however trivial it might be (of course,
there will be lots of doubts, questions, etc.). These are promptly
answered, and in the end collected and systematically added to the end
of each chapter as FAQ. With this the chapter becomes self contained
and comprehensive wherein all the possible doubts are properly
taken care of.

The document format is PDF, since it is platform independent and does
away with font problems at the user level.

The current release of tutorial documents available at TUGIndia site
is those presented to the users. Before the final release, all the
doubts raised by the users will be added as FAQ to the end of each
chapter.

We will also have fully navigable hyperlinkd indexes, keyword
searches, listing of FAQ and links to answers and relevant portion in
the text, etc before the final release. TeX provides to do all these
painlessly and our imagination is the only limit.

Please have a look at any one of the documents just to know the
possibilities the free world can offer in documentation.

: > In the end, Linux-India can publish the training documents put
: > together in the form of a nice book with a price tag that is
: > affordable for our people.
: 
: In the spirit of the GPL, I suggest it just be placed online
: somewhere or the other so that it'll be accessible to a far larger
: audience and available for free.

All our documents are released under LPPL now, which can be freely
distributed, shared and modified. But we will change that to GNU Free
Documentation Licence owing to some of the restrictive elements in 
LPPL (LaTeX Project Public Licence). TUGIndia will always keep the
electronic versions for free download, even if it is released in book
format.

However, while keeping the documents always available to the users,
Linux-India can also release their tutorial in book format to serve
those persons without net connections, just as FSF distribute printed
versions of emacs manual or the book on make for a price.


-- 
Radhakrishnan
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