Idle ramblings of a wandering mind...

As the title indicates - my love/hate relationship with LaTeX continues. For the uninitiated - LaTeX is a document preparation system that relies on explicit commands rather than the WYSIWYG interface of word-processors like MS-Word. More about LaTeX is available here. I have written many times about LaTeX - Click Here for my previous LaTeX related posts.

After really trying very hard to use LaTeX for all my writing needs, I had to give up because using LaTeX for day to day activities was getting too tedious - and many software I need for my writing (like EndNotes for reference management) are not compatible with LaTeX. Well - so I thought! Recently, I had to make a few documents for my job search - and I was just not satisfied with the quality of the output I got with MS-Word. I converted the document into LaTeX - and voila! the documents came out just so much better. Here is the proof: click here for the LaTeX document - and ask yourself if you could get the same look and feel in MS-Word! I could not.

So here is my compromise status - when I need to create documents where quality is most important - I am using LaTeX; and when I need to make documents quickly and use specialized software like EndNotes - I am going to use MS-Word. Now - the template you use has a tremendous impact on the quality of LaTeX documents - and I have had to spend a lot of time tweaking my LaTeX templates to get them just right for the Letter page size most commonly used in US. If you are looking for a decent LaTeX template - look not further - here is the LaTeX file for the document linked above. This file will create one inch margins on all sides for a Latter size paper. Note that this template is made for using "pdflatex" command that directly makes .pdf files.

I had once made a small button/icon for supporting LaTeX on my website. Please feel free to copy it and use it on your site if you find it useful:



On the subject of buttons - here is one for the statistical system R - again - feel free to use it on your website:

Labels: LaTeX

   

I am writing this from the lobby of the good but not "fairmont good" - Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Canada - the venue for ICIS 2007. I presented my paper on Information Sharing and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) use in supply chains. The paper was received very well - I had more than 60 people in attendance - standing room only. Here is the paper's abstract. Full paper is available from the conference proceedings - if you want the full paper but can't find the proceedings - drop a comment/email and I will send you one. The paper was nominated for the best paper award at ICIS.

SOA and Information Sharing in Supply Chain: “How” Information is Shared Matters!

This also happens to be the year that I am in the job market - that means a lot of interviews. So this was a busy conference - busy but successful.

Labels: Conference Presentations, Information Sharing, Information Systems, Research, SOA, Supply Chain