LINGUIST List 6.54

Mon 16 Jan 1995

Sum: LateX

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1. alexander l francis, T

Thanks to everyone who responded to my questions about LaTeX fonts
and using Linux in general.

Respondents were:

Jen Hay (Jennifer.hayvuw.ac.nz)
Mark Hale (hale1husc.harvard.edu)
Greg Iverson (iversoncsd.uwm.edu)
"James A. McGilvray" (jimdep.philo.mcgill.ca)
Michael Covington (mcovingtai.uga.edu)
James Magnuson (magnusonhip.atr.co.jp)
Uli Sauerland (sauerlanMIT.EDU)
Tom Green (tmgreenmit.edu)
"Larry Trask" (larrytcogs.susx.ac.uk)
Ted.Hardingnessie.mcc.ac.uk (Ted Harding)
"c.a. creider" (creiderjulian.uwo.ca)
Mark Liberman (mylsansom.ling.upenn.edu)

First of all, the responses clearly indicate that there exists at
least two IPA fonts for Latex (see below).

Responses to my more general questions ranged from enthusiastic
encouragement about using latex and linux, to fervernt wishes
that I rethink my abandonment of the Macintosh OS, to recommendations
of other operating systems and/or text-processing or DSP systems.
I should perhaps have mentioned that I am already relatively familiar
with BSD Unix, so switching to Linux will not be much of a shock
in and of itself - though obviously using Latex will be quite a
change from a Mac-based word processor...

The score is currently:

Pro Latex w/IPA: 7
Pro Linux: 4
Pro Mac: 1
Pro NeXTSTEP: 1
Anti Latex: 1

And a number of somewhat mixed responses, suggesting for the most
part that I remain with a Mac for text processing, but work with
some kind of Unix environment for DSP and data processing, or that
I stick with a mac for the actual sound manipulation but switch
to Linux for everything else.

Re: DSP there were at least two recommendations for Signalyze for the
Macintosh, and two for OGI-TOOLS for Unix systems.

Some select quotes (anonymously to discourage OS partisanship from seeping
into real life):

"I thoroughly recommend switching to Latex."

"I'm running a Linux box and use Latex for all professional word-
 processing these days...I haven't found anything I can't do yet."

"I'll say this for Linux, compared to DOS, Windows, OS/2, Desqview,
 and Windows NT (latest versions of all), I've been running Linux
 for a year and a half and it has NEVER ONCE crashed. Never. Every
 one of those others has."

"Gee, I hope switching from a Macintosh to a Linux workstation isn't too
 painful...do you really have to do this (Power Macintosh machines are
 indeed powerful, and the word processing situation is well developed with
 WordPerfect 3.1, Nisus Writer 4.06, others)."

"While on the topic of UNIX instantiations of TeX, you might look at
 NeXTSTEP instead of Linux... NeXT's GUI is, honestly, elegant."

"There are several good IPA font sets for LaTeX, as well as a whole bunch
 of accents available even if you don't use special fonts."

"I use LaTeX (both on Linux and on other unixes) for all my papers and
 there are a couple good packages of phonetic symbol fonts that work
 great with latex."

"First of all, I dislike LaTeX intensely, as do most of my colleagues
 in linguistics. We find it uniquely user-hostile: basically, you
 can't change ANY defaults unless you have a degree in hacking ...
 On the whole, then, my advice is to stay away from LaTeX."

"I am a Linux user, and can assure you that LaTeX and all sorts
 of extensions work very well with Linux. So if you can find the
 linguistic tools for LaTeX you should be able to use them with Linux."

I have also had a few requests that I share the information regarding
where to find Latex IPA fonts:

There are apparently at least two, maybe more. One is called tsipa
and is from Japan. Another is called wsuipa, and is from Washington
State University. One other person mentioned a font set from Waterloo,
but did not give more details.

tsipa is available at ftp.shsu.edu in tex-archive/fonts/tsipa

A couple people mentioned the TeX-for-linguists newsgroup, at
LISTSERVSHSU.edu, but this may no longer be running.

There is also a TeX newsgroup, comp.text.tex for more info.

Thanks again to all the people who responded so quickly. I am going
to give the Linux/LaTeX system a shot, and see what I can make of it.

-alex

 afrancismidway.uchicago.edu alex francis (312)-667-5432

Department of Linguistics afrancismidway.uchicago.edu
University of Chicago (312) 667-5432 (home)
1010 E. 59th St. (312) 702-9861 (Ling. Dept. FAX)
Chicago, IL 60637 (312) 702-7045 (Lang. Lab)