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Open source language textbooks
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This page describes LaTeX standards set for NetLingua projects.

Why LaTeX?

Because no other typesetting system provides an easy way to create books in difficult to typeset languages like Manchu, Akkadian, Egyptian, Rongo-Rongo…

One project - one book

Every book should be created in a separate project.

LaTeX project layout

-rwxrwxr-x 1 david david 1694 May 18 03:26 book.tex
drwxrwxr-x 2 david david 4096 May 18 03:26 frontmatter
-rwxrwxr-x 1 david david  342 May 18 03:26 frontmatter/titlepg.tex
-rwxrwxr-x 1 david david  583 May 18 03:26 frontmatter/toc.tex
-rwxrwxr-x 1 david david    0 May 18 03:26 frontmatter/preface.tex
-rwxrwxr-x 1 david david    0 May 18 03:26 frontmatter/other.tex
drwxrwxr-x 2 david david 4096 May 18 03:26 mainmatter
-rw-rw-r-- 1 david david   25 May 18 03:26 mainmatter/part001.tex
-rw-rw-r-- 1 david david   13 May 18 03:26 mainmatter/part002.tex
-rw-rw-r-- 1 david david   10 May 18 03:26 mainmatter/part003.tex
-rwxrwxr-x 1 david david 1487 May 18 03:26 mainmatter/lesson001.tex
-rwxrwxr-x 1 david david    0 May 18 03:26 mainmatter/lesson002.tex
                               (...)
-rw-rw-r-- 1 david david    0 May 18 03:26 mainmatter/lesson030.tex
drwxrwxr-x 2 david david 4096 May 18 03:26 backmatter
-rwxrwxr-x 1 david david  383 May 18 03:26 backmatter/bibliography.tex
-rwxrwxr-x 1 david david    0 May 18 03:26 backmatter/index.tex
drwxrwxr-x 2 david david 4096 May 18 03:26 appendix
-rwxrwxr-x 1 david david    0 May 18 03:26 appendix/appendix.tex
-rwxrwxr-x 1 david david  318 May 18 03:26 appendix/figures.tex
-rwxrwxr-x 1 david david  300 May 18 03:26 appendix/tables.tex

Use utf-8 whenever possible

This is to allow easy automated extraction of data from LaTeX files for the time, when we want to move from LaTeX to something else.

LaTeX macros

Avoid verbose markup. Use macros. Keep book-specific macros to the minimum. Use NetLingua project or specific language macro library whenever possible. Defining macros on the book level is the last resort.