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BD Tech Concepts LLC

Document Formats

Document-Typesetting System

See to HTML Converter — The Lwarp package for information about a new native -HTML5 generation package.

Advantages of :

  • • Publication-quality document-creation and typesetting system.

  • • Easy-to-use commands for common actions.

  • • Full support for cross-referencing, indexing, bibliography, book-sized documents, and technical information.

  • • Excellent typesetting of mathematics.

  • • Extensive documentation and community support.

  • • Heavily used in the fields of science and engineering.

  • • Often used “behind the scenes” to generated well-typeset output for other programs.

  • • Stable document format — The first widely-used version was  2.09, released in 1985. The next, and current, version is 2ε, released in 1994. Work continues on  3, designed to be backwards-compatible, much of which is available for use in 2ε right now.

  • • Updated with thousands of packages, covering every area of technical documentation.

  • • Programming language — is a token-based macro-expansion virtual machine, with an emphasis on document design and typesetting. Lua has been also been developed, allowing user-programmable Lua code, integrated into internals.

  • • Plain-text document source:

    • – Document contents and structuring commands may be manipulated via regular-expression search/replace. This is especially powerful when working on document format conversions.

    • – Easy version control and source management.

    • – Crash-proof safety. No document corruption or losses.

    • – Age-resistant accessibility. No frequently-changed proprietary format breaking your documents.

    • – Explicit and visible control tags. No hidden behaviors changing things behind the scene.

    • – code is easily produced by external programming, including simple shell scripts or awk code.

  • • Available on every major platform and operating system.

\[ \int z^{n} \arctan z\,dz = \frac {z^{n+1}}{n+1} \arctan z - \frac {1}{n+1} \int \frac {z^{n+1}}{1+z^2}\,dz \hspace {.25in} (n \neq -1) \]

\[ i^{n}\,\mathrm {erfc}\,z \sim \frac {2}{\sqrt {\pi }} \frac {e^{-z^{2}}}{(2z)^{n+1}} \sum _{m=0}^{\infty }\frac {(-1)^{m}\,(2m+n)!}{n!\,m!\,(2z)^{2m}} \hspace {.25in} \left (z \rightarrow \infty , |\arg z| < \frac {3\pi }{4}\right ) \]

  • • Website mathematics are typeset by , then converted to SVG format for website display, or are displayed via MathJax. HTML ALT tags carry the source for the math expression. (Copy/paste the above expressions into a text editor to see the source.)

  • • SVG format output scales and prints beautifully for everything from hand-held display to full-page PDF. (Change the font or window size in your browser to watch the formulas scale smoothly, and print this website to see full-resolution mathematics on the printout, subject to browser support.)

  • • Avoids the typesetting limitations of MathML format.

  • • SVG format has wider e-reader and browser support than MathML.

  • • MathJax display is optional, allowing widespread browser support so long as network access is available, or where MathJax is installed locally.

OpenOffice / LibreOffice Suite

  • • Open Document Format (ODF) has been adopted by numerous world-wide government agencies.

  • • May be converted to DOC format.

Output Formats

  • • PDF formatted for full-page documents — Extra margin for binding. Full table of contents, index, cross-references, diagrams, mathematics.

  • • PDF formatted for tablet or hand-held — Reduced page size, no paper margins, increased font size. Preserves table of contents, index, cross-references, diagrams, and mathematics.

  • • HTML5 with SVG diagrams and mathematics, or MathJax mathematics.

  • • ODT and related — Open Document word-processing text and related formats, for stability and portability.