Authoring Software for Mathematicians

This page is focused on tools for writing about mathematical research---the kind of material found in American Mathematical Society publications---and a few other kinds of material that AMS members typically work with.

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August 22, 2001 : If you want to get LaTeX up and running on a new computer, one of the best ways is with the TeX Live CD that you will get as a benefit of membership in the TeX Users Group. Sign up to become a member and you will get a new one every year containing all the latest and greatest free TeX-related software. You can install software from the CD or even (in many cases) run it directly off the CD. This CD is not sold separately.

August 8, 2001 : Scott Pakin posted an upgrade of his bundledoc package to CTAN. [More Info]
This might well come in handy when you need to send a LaTeX document to a colleague or a publisher.

bundledoc is a post-processor for the snapshot package that bundles together all the classes, packages, and files needed to build a given LaTeX document. It reads the .dep file that snapshot produces, finds each of the files mentioned therein, and archives them into a single .tar.gz (or .zip, or whatever) file, suitable for moving across systems, transmitting to a colleague, etc.

July 6, 2001 : BibTeX users might like to take a look at the free Windows program BibEdit : "a simple small program for creating and editing BibTeX files" written by Jonas Björnerstedt, whose features include:

• View records as a list or edit a record at a time.
• Simply type the name of a record to move to it.
• Sort records by key.
• Copy or paste multiple records to clipboard in standard BibTeX format.
• Copy citation to clipboard for pasting in LaTeX editor (generates \cite or \nocite command).
• New fields can be added to records.
• Search for text in all fields. In list view, all records found are selected.
• The ordering of fields, record types, and size of the fields on screen can be customized by the user.

July 2, 2001 : Looking for a specific math symbol? Try Scott Pakin's Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List (http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/symbols/comprehensive/ )

February 21, 2001 : For questions about importing graphics into a LaTeX document, users should be aware of two primary sources of information:

• To see the graphics guide that comes with LaTeX, search for grfguide.* on your system. (If your system provides the texdoc command, try texdoc grfguide .)
• Keith Reckdahl's Using Imported Graphics in LaTeX2e (PDF, 1.5 Mb) is an often-recommended and more comprehensive guide.

February 2, 2001 : LaTeX users who haven't seen our Short Math Guide for LaTeX yet are invited to take a look [http://www.ams.org/tex/short-math-guide.html ]. This covers in 15 pages all the commonly used math symbols and math commands that are available in LaTeX when you use the amsmath and amssymb packages. Try the PDF version if you have a PDF viewer.

January 10, 2001 : Authors are invited to fill out the AMS survey on authoring software. A paper version of the survey form went out in the information packets for the AMS January meeting in New Orleans; there is also a version online at http://www.ams.org/survey/authoring-software/.

January 5, 2001 : Robert Miner and Paul Topping of Design Science, Inc., announced the online publication of their paper Math on the Web: A Status Report, which discusses current HTML, PDF, Techexplorer, and MathML technology.

The Purpose of this Page

For various reasons---most notably, but not solely, its industrial-strength capabilities for typesetting math formulas---TeX became in the last two decades of the 20th century the primary document language for mathematical research. What we see now, in 2001, is a relatively stable nexus of software and practice that puts far more writing power into authors' hands than they had a generation ago.

Nevertheless,

• Software evolves rapidly.
• There remains plenty of room for natural and significant improvements in the software that mathematical authors use.
• Authors are naturally interested in learning how to make better use of existing software.

Is TeX past its prime? What about MathML? What about graphics? Is there something better for doing slides than what I have now? How about commutative diagrams? What's the best way to produce exams for my students, or set up exercises and answers in the book I'm writing? For an author who does any substantial amount of writing, such questions are natural and important.

Through this web page, the American Mathematical Society seeks to sponsor an open interchange of ideas and information about mathematical authoring software so that AMS authors, in the first place, and any other interested parties, in the second place, can report and/or learn:

• what is currently available in the way of authoring software
• what interesting developments are on the horizon
• what software other authors have found most useful
• how to get particular software or fonts
• how to get particular effects with current software

Help Build This Page

Software piece of software.

Comparisons and Recommendation s

Suggest a Sample Document

We are developing a collection of sample documents with the idea of posting versions of each document in different formats so that people can see how they compare. Readers are invited to suggest items to be added to this collection.

Desiderata The ideal sample document would be relatively short, contain interesting mathematics and contain as many as possible of the following elements:

• illustrations
• commutative diagrams
• tables
• multiline equations
• matrices
• sum and/or integral notation
• elements demonstrating how to take advantage of new technology for viewing documents on screen (color, hyper-linking, interactive pictures, etc)
• a representive set of theorem, proposition, proof, etc, elements
• unusual equation numbers or other elements that are tricky to achieve with most software
• a bibliography with several different types of entries

Suggestions for selected pages of historical interest from eminent mathematicians are especially welcome.

We are also looking for representative examples of the various document types that mathematicians typically deal with, not just journal articles but also:

• research monograph (master file and selected pages)
• web page
• presentation/slides
• exam
• annotated bibliography
• list of publications
• c.v.
• Mathematica notebooks and the like
• letter