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diff --git a/2019/transcripts/06.md b/2019/transcripts/06.md deleted file mode 100644 index f9977656..00000000 --- a/2019/transcripts/06.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,129 +0,0 @@ -[[!meta title="Org-mode and FoilTeX - an unlikely (but useful) combination for teaching - Tom Faulkenberry"]] - -- Hi my name is Tom Faulkenberry and I am a mathematical psychologist - and professor at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas. - My talk is about using something that's kind of old, a lot of people - don't think about it any more, with something new, like Emacs - Org-mode. Particularly I'm going to talk about using FoilTeX in - Emacs Org-mode. So first I want to give you a little bit of - background about what this is and why you would want to do it. As - you can see I have some things available for you on a GitHub repo. - The address you can see up here, is - <https://github.com/tomfaulkenberry/orgFoils> with the F - capitalized. So if you go there you'll see this README and it kind - of tells the story, I've been using Emacs for a long time and even - before that I was using LaTex in my graduate studies in mathematics. - -- Now with the advent of Org-mode many of us know that we are able to - combine the efficiency of using an Emacs workflow, and particularly - the markdown language that's provided by Org-mode, with the - mathematical type setting power of LaTeX, and so there are standard - ways to export Org-mode into LaTeX-type documents. Particularly - this works for presentations, and of course I'm a professor so I - make a lot of presentations, both at conferences as well as for - classes that I teach. Now I found that Org-mode did this very - nicely, as long as you were willing to use the ?Beamer? class, so if - I wanted to make things that were horizontally oriented and use the - standard color schemes in ?Beamer? then Org-mode export works fine - for that. But I have to admit I longed for simplicity of old days - of using LaTeX, where we made slides for - okay I'm going to date - myself here - but we made slides for overhead projectors that were - in a portrait orientation, and they just didn't have a lot of - decoration on them. - -- They kind of got to the point, they showed some mathematics, they - showed some things, and that was about it. - -- Well those were made back in those days using something called the - FoilTeX package, I've provided a link here on this README. You can - see if we go to the package for FoilTeX it hasn't been updated since - 2008, and even before that it went six years between updates. This - is not by any means an active development package. Rather it is - something that is old, it is archival but it is still distributed - with the full installation of LaTeX. So back to the point, why do - we care about this? Well, it's a pretty simple way of making - presentations, but Org-mode won't do it without a little bit of - hacking. So the point of this presentation is to show you that it - can be done, to show you that you can actually make very nice - presentations for both conferences as well as teaching notes, and - teaching slides, with just a little bit of work on your .emacs file. - So before I show you how that works, and it's all documented here on - the GitHub repo, I want to just demonstrate it in action, so I'm - going to flop over to Emacs real quick. Here is a document, there - is a copy of this document in the GitHub repository that I mentioned - about, so as you can see it does seem to follow the structure of a - standard Org-mode document. - -- At the top we have some header matter that I will explain in just a - second, and then we have these lists that begin with asterisks, and - if we tab them you can see that there's text underneath these. - These sections, if you will, will each turn into separate pages on - my lectures notes. So I've got several, this is for about a two - hour long course, so how does it turn into a pretty document that I - can then take to my course with me? - -- Well it works just like any standard Org-mode to LaTeX export. We - type C-c C-e which then provides us with this export menu, and as we - can see here to export to LaTeX and then a resulting PDF file I can - type l and then o and I do that and it will generate my LaTeX file - as well as open it for me and we'll see that pop up. Okay. And let - me go to the very beginning. This is what it looks like. Let me - scroll or zoomout a little bit so you can see the full page. So - these are in portrait orientation, I use my lecture like this - because usually I'm giving a lecture on an, not an overhead, but a - document camera where I'll take the paper with me and I'll have some - things written but I'll also have some space to write additional - things throughout the class. So sort of a hybrid between a chalk - talk if you will and a formal presentation. - -- And so as you can see this is nicely done with some readable fonts, - using LaTeX type type-setting, so it's really good for mathematical - content, and I found it's just a really clean way of doing things. - So that's what it looks like. So the question is how do you do - this, how do you generate this and get your Org-mode and Emacs set - up to work this way. Well I detail this in the GitHub repository. - There are two things you need to do to make this work. First is you - need to edit your .emacs file to include this codeblock. So this - codeblock is, I'll show you on my .emacs file, it doens't really - matter where it goes, I usually put it somewhere in the middle. Let - me open that just real quick for you. - -- My .emacs file's got some stuff in it and if we go down to about - right here you can see that code chunk is right here. So that code - chunk is what it takes to make that exporting that I demonstrated - work. You can see it here it basically does two things. First is - it defines a Foils class, that you can call in the Org document, and - then it maps your section header, that asterisk, to the FoilTeX - command which is Foil head. So if you type all of this in your - .emacs and then reload that you will be able to then turn the - example Org mode document into a nice set of lecture notes. The - other thing that you need to include, is you need to include a - document header. - -- Now this is kind of a barebones header, I will say that strictly - speaking, not everyone of these things is required, for example, you - do not need this `\usepackage{amsmath}`, unless you are using some - fonts or things that are in that package. - -- Another thing is this little bit of LaTeX command, this makes it to - where my paragraphs don't indent, which for presentations and - lecture slides I prefer. There are also some class options, I do - mine portrait, but if I'm giving a presentation at a conference - those are usually done via computer projector, so I would turn that - into landscape. And also this 17-point font you see, that's the - size that works nicely for me, but there are other font sizes - available in FoilTeX that you can use. All of those are detailed in - the FoilTeX manual which I've provided a link to for you here. - -- Finally, in this repository I do give you the Org-mode file itself, - it doesn't render nicely in the browser but you can clone this - repository and pull it up in your Emacs just fine, and then finally - the resulting PDF I showed you is also living in this GitHub repo. - So, it's a little bit slow right now, but it's there. I'm moving it - around too much as you can see. But anyway there is, so if you - think this is interesting and something you might like to do I - certainly welcome you to contact me by or by Twitter, there's my - email address and my Twitter handle. This I think is a really cool - thing and I hope that you do too. If you want old-school type LaTeX - ability with new-school Emacs Org-mode this is the way to do it. So - hope you enjoyed it and I look forward to talking with you further. |