Use of LaTeX in Industry

Posted on by Malaysian LaTeX User Group

A question on TeX.SX about “How is LaTeX used in industry and what are some examples?” has garnered over 6k views since posted yesterday. I had mentioned during my MOSC talk that LaTeX would be very useful in scenarios where some printable content has to be batch-generated or on-the-fly, and now some actual real life examples are given in the answers.

For example, this website allows users to query transportation timetables and returns the results as a pdfTeX-generated PDF:

And here’s another schedule generated by another German transportation website (PDF):

If you read the other answers, you’ll see what and how LaTeX is used in other companies (besides academic publishers). For example, this answer by Peter Flynn:

As a LaTeX consultancy, we have produced classes and styles for many organisations, including companies, government departments, and non-profits. A London auction house uses LaTeX to generate invoices; an electronic systems training company uses LyX and LaTeX to create their course workbooks and white papers; a Dublin printer uses LaTeX for pharmaceutical labelling; a local government organisation uses TeX to generate the Register of Voters; a professional scientific association uses LaTeX for its regular series of technical reports; and of course we use it internally for client reports, newsletters, and invoicing.

Latex on Mobile Smart Devices

Posted on by Malaysian LaTeX User Group
I believe most of us got a smartphone which you may use for surfing, taking pictures, emails and playing games. But somehow you might as well use your tablet or perhaps phone (let say, as big as Samsung Galaxy Note) for your productivity tasks.
Since I am more into Android devices (the reason is, most Apple stuffs are pricey, and I could get several Android devices with the price), I managed to find some applications which allow the users to do their Latex activity. 
I found VerbTex[APK file], which uses Verbosus, (which, unfortunately means, you need an internet access to send your Tex file for compilation). 
Also, I found this for the iPad. I am not sure whether it compiles natively or work like VerbTex. But throughout my readings on the page, nothing being mentioned on sending the compilation over the network (perhaps it could be compiled natively?)
How about you, tell us about your “mobile latexing” experience!

Text-to-Path Conversion with Ghostscript

Posted on by Malaysian LaTeX User Group

So you’ve prepared some PDF material with LaTeX, which you’re going to send to the printing company.

If they’ using the PDF as it is, fine and dandy. But if they need to import the PDF into, say, Illustrator for some further processing, you might be in some kind of a fix if the fonts you used (in LaTeX) aren’t easily obtainable as TTF OTF forms.

One solution is to convert all texts into paths before submitting the PDF to the printers. I don’t have Illustrator, so I tried Inkscape instead. Now Inkscape does have a convert-text-to-path function, but for the texts to display properly in Inkscape in the first place, I’d still need the TTF OTF files. Inkscape cannot make use of fonts embedded in the PDF to import the text as paths directly. Not very helpful, then.

Fortunately, suv gave this workaround using Ghostscript:

As a workaround, you can use Ghostscript to convert text in a PDF (or EPS/PS) file to outlines. It requires to convert the PDF to an intermediary PS file, and then back to PDF (thus losing PDF features not supported by PostScript, like transparency).
E.g. use a shell script, containing a command similar to this one:

$ gs -sDEVICE=pswrite -dNOCACHE \
-sOutputFile=- -q -dbatch -dNOPAUSE \
-dQUIET "$1" -c quit | ps2pdf - \
"`echo $1 | cut -f1 -d'.'`"-nofont.pdf

So long as your file does not contain any transparency, the script works just fine, and you can submit the file*-nofont.pdf to your printer. And of course, expect some increase in file size.

Ampang Beamer Theme [best with Ubuntu LaTeX Fonts]

Posted on by Malaysian LaTeX User Group

Hi all,

I have created a beamer themes which depends on Ubuntu font.
Get it from here:
https://github.com/raden/beamer-ampang

On Linux or if you have Cygwin

git clone git://github.com/raden/beamer-ampang.git beamer-ampang-read-only

Result:

https://github.com/raden/beamer-ampang/blob/master/ampangcolor.png
https://github.com/raden/beamer-ampang/blob/master/ampang-color-inside.png

Also, committed to Google Code:
http://code.google.com/p/ampang-beamer-theme/

Git pull:
git clone https://code.google.com/p/ampang-beamer-theme/

Fixing the Biolinum Font in Beamer

Posted on by Malaysian LaTeX User Group

The libertine package provides LaTeX support to the Linux Libertine and Linux Biolinum fonts. The package release dated 2011-06-06 contains a bug, in which the ex unit value of the san serif font, Linux Biolinum, is not set correctly. This causes problems if the libertine package is used in a beamer presentation:

Notice how the heights of the headline and footline coloured boxes are almost zero. The same thing happens to the itemized and enumerated list markers, too.

A bug report has been filed with the LinuxLibertine project, but it’s still open at the time of writing.

In the meantime, Ulrike Fischer and Robin Fairbairns have provided an interim solution by resetting the ex value in the .fd files. Here’s what I did following their suggestions.

Locate the Biolinum .fd files, which should be in $TEXMF/tex/latex/libertine/ . I usually work with T1 encoding, so I homed in on the files t1fxb.fd, t1fxbf.fd, t1fxbj.fd, t1fxbjo.fd and t1fxbo.fd. (All these files, because sometimes I want the old-style numbers fonts.) I then added the code in red below for each m-n series-shapes:

\DeclareFontShape{T1}{fxb}{m}{n}{
\fxl@@scale fxbr-t1
}{\fontdimen5\font=\fontcharht\font`\x}

I didn’t bother with the \DeclareFontShape of other series-shapes, as the above seems to have fixed the problem for me:

So hopefully this’ll help anyone else who’s run into a similar predicament. Thanks again to Ulrike and Robin for the solution.

ChinaTeX Interview

Posted on by Malaysian LaTeX User Group

As you may guess from the name, ChinaTeX is a TeX resources website from China. They’ve done a good job rounding up TeX resources from around the Web, and translating them to Chinese for the benefit of Chinese users. Their latest endeavors over the weekend was to provide video tutorials.

Recently ChinaTeX approached me for an e-mail interview. We talked mainly about how I came to know, love and use LaTeX in book design and typesetting. Thanks for the interview, guys! 有空再来坐坐、交流，谢谢！

Cyberjaya, an MMU Beamer Theme

Posted on by Malaysian LaTeX User Group

And here’s Cyberjaya, a Beamer theme based on Multimedia University’s (MMU) colours. (Cyberjaya, Selangor, Malaysia is where MMU’s main campus is located.)

Screenshots and download link:

Brief example using the theme:

\documentclass[compress]{beamer}
\usetheme{Cyberjaya}

\author{This is Me}
\title{This is My Presentation}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}[plain,t]
\titlepage
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}
\frametitle{First Frame}
My content
\end{frame}

\end{document}

Gelugor, a USM Beamer Theme

Posted on by Malaysian LaTeX User Group

Just last week, I had another Beamer-related inquiry from a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Mathematical Sciences, Universiti Sain Malaysia (USM). Was it possible to have a Beamer theme modelled after USM’s Powerpoint template?

I came up with Gelugor over the weekend. (Gelugor, Penang, Malaysia is the town where USM’s main campus is located.)

Screenshots and download link:

Brief example using the theme:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usetheme{Gelugor}

\author{This is Me}
\title{This is My Presentation}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}[plain,t]
\titlepage
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}
\frametitle{First Frame}
My content
\end{frame}

\ThankYouFrame

\end{document}