[texhax] Interaction with Scientific Word Documents and basic LaTeX questions

[Lars Madsen]

Thomas Jacobs wrote:
> Hi, I am a Windows MiKTeX user working in TeXnicCenter and have a
> coauthor that is a Scientific Word user.  I have struggled to decipher
> how to make this operate smoothly as I am the more technology friendly
> person in the relationship.  Along the way I downloaded a free
> Scientific Word Viewer whose most recent iteration is from 2005.
> While it permits me to see the LaTeX file output and print if I save
> it as read only, much of the material is less than easily accessible
> such as footnotes and citation references.  I then began trying to
> build the document directly in TeXnicCenter and after some web
> searches discovered I needed to comment out this line to enable
> successful completion:
> 
> \input{tcilatex}
> 
> The following topic post was particularly helpful in this regard:
> 
> http://www.latex-community.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6906&start=0
> 
> One of the most surprising things about this process is that the LaTeX
> file generated via Scientific Word uses many LaTeX commands and
> structures I am completely ignorant of.  The reason I write is to ask
> several questions.
> 
> 1.  On working with a Scientific Word user the aforementioned post
> indicated that they (the SW user) should save their document in
> Portable LaTeX format.  Can anyone comment on whether there are other
> things I should ask the coauthor to do in order to manage the editing
> process with the least difficulty?
> 

you should be prepared that it may be difficult for an SW user to 
reimport documents prepared by non-SW writers.

tcilatex is something that comes with SW, it defines several commands 
that SW makes use of.

Saving as portable LaTeX should remove most of those macros


> 2.  On simple LaTeX commands I was unable to find (no doubt my fault)
> in either Kopka and Daly (2004) or Mittelbach and Goossens (2004):
> 
> a.  What is the purpose of a backslash without an appended command?
> For example, I find them between all sentences as in this excerpt:
> 
> TIPS are coupon bonds that have been issued by the U.S. government since
> 1997. \ They are currently auctioned at 5-, 10-, and 30-year maturities. \
> Unlike standard Treasury notes and bonds whose coupon and principal are
> fixed dollar payments, TIPS make payments proportional to the Consumer Price
> Index (CPI).
> 
> I have never seen this before and wondered what purpose it serves.
> 

in english, after the dot that ends a sentence, the space after the dot 
is larger than the interword space.

but, say one writes 'i.e. there is...' then LaTeX thinks the dot after 
the 'e' ends a sentence. Thus one usually writes 'i.e.\ ' to get a 
normal space in this case.


> b.  Does the following structure
> 
> &=&
> 
> serve to keep the = signs aligned in a multiline equation?  If not,
> what do the & on each side of the equals sign do?
> 
> Thanks very much for any insight one of you could provide.
> 
> Tom
> 

this is native to the eqnarray environment, which sadly most SW 
configurations use.

See http://www.tug.org/pracjourn/2006-4/madsen, as to why one should not 
use eqnarray

For the makers of SW eqnarray is easy to implement because of a very 
precise syntax. But the output is not that good.


-- 

/daleif