Re: (Newbie) How to turn AutoFill-mode on/off

[Elaine Sims]

Michael Slass  wrote:

>
>Elaine Sims <esims@mac.com> writes:
>
>>
>>I'm a writer.  And I have just started learning Xemacs and have found
>>that it's editing capabilities are superior to any wordprocessor I've
>>ever used. (like C-x-t, C-x-e, C-t, etc,etc).
>>
>>But the problem is: typing in text-mode and seeing the little arrow
>>at the end of the line and the breaks mid-word is a distraction.  I'm
>>much more comfortable looking at the screen in auto-fill mode.
>>
>>But then if I open the text in a word processor (AbiWord, Word) it
>>retains the line breaks, which I have to manually delete to reform
>>the paragraphs.  If I have to do that to a 100,000 word manuscript
>>I'll go crazy.
>>
>>Actually the only reason I'm opening the file at all in a word
>>processor is because I haven't learned how to format and print out my
>>manuscripts from Xemacs (with double spacing and headers and page
>>numbers) yet.
>>
>>If I could do it all from within Xemacs that would be preferrable.
>>
>>And I'm not adverse to learning a little LISP to do it.
>>
>>Any help I can get would be appreciated.
>>
>>Thanks.
>>
>>Elaine
>>
>
>OK.  You should learn LaTeX.  It has a fairly steep learning curve,
>but it is the standard UNIX way of producing typeset documents, and
>there's a very good reason.  The standard LaTeX styles produce all the
>things you mention above, and many more, and there are additional
>style files to do anything else you can think of.
>
>Your document will consist of your words and strings of commands to
>LaTeX.  The length of your lines will be irrelevant, because LaTeX
>will typeset each paragraph appropriately, so you can turn on
>auto-fill at a width that's comfortable for you during editing, and
>not think about it any more.
>
>You will *definitely* need a copy of Leslie Lamport's book:
>
>_LaTeX: A Document Preparation System_
>
>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201529831/qid=1038080753/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_2/104-7996619-8519144
>
>
>Also, you will be very happy with auctex-mode, an elisp package
>designed to facilitate preparation of LaTeX documents.  It may or may
>not have been included with your distrubution of emacs, but you can
>find it and instructions for installing it by google-ing for
>auctex.el.  AucTex lets you control all of your document preparation
>from within emacs.
>
>LaTeX is not WYSIWYG -- there is a cycle of edit, compile, view to see
>how your document will look, but with a reasonably fast computer (the
>thesis I'm not writing at this moment while I'm chatting with you is
>25K words, and renders in about 20sec on my P3 450) the cycle is not
>unduly long.
>
>The web is full of LaTeX tutorials, and comp.text.tex has a large and
>knowledgeable reader base.
>
>Good luck.
>-- 
>Mike Slass

Exactly the information I was hoping for.  Thanks so much for the help.
And good luck on your thesis.

Elaine