[lpi-discuss] looking for courseware

[Bryan J. Smith]

From:  Jeremy C. Reed
> I've done that frequently, but
> mostly use LyX now because I can
> generate nice HTML and PDFs and slideshows.

TeX is the 26 year-old "royalty-free, universal document source" - especially LaTeX for technical documentation.
If you have LaTeX, you can convert its rich, but structured, context to any, other form.
This includes HTML, SGML, DocBook, ultra-rich (i.e., little to no post-conversion editing) PDF and, more recently, OpenOffice XML.

HTML is not a structured language, especially not for technical documentation, sectioning, etc...
Editing HTML is like editing Postscript, it is designed for rendering/end-viewing, not editing and documentation maintenance.

> Plain HTML to other formats does not
> look nice (without a lot of other work).

It's unmaintainable from a documentation editing format.
It enforces no typeset.

> Also, most of my clients require printed courseware.

Because we're teaching technology and trying to maximize knowledge transfer,
not waiting to see them struggling to take notes.

When I taught secondary school, one thing I grilled into the kids was that struggling to keep up with the instructor when taking notes is not ideal.
But that they'd run into it, and that was just life.
But once they reached the professional world, time is money, so they would only be taking notes that weren't already in an outline, or defined in a definition sheet.

It should be noted that my personal laser printer ran all day, and I made sure once I taught them some note-taking fundamentals for those "other" instructors,
I maximized their time in learning the material.

Well, I've commented enough here.