The Apacite package was what I used. I thought that as usual it would be relatively a simple task to use Latex, but this time Latex really took away a lot of my time.
I had forgotten how to install packages on a Linux machine and so first had to re-learn that from here. Once I had that working, it just seemed impossible to get the references working!
Firstly, I had to see that all the URLs were enclosed with the \url tag (before that I realised after many hours that I had forgotten the \usepackage{url} directive in the tex file and Latex had not specifically complained about that!), then I added the \bibnodot{.} command to the end of each URL.
After these steps of making my .bib file look as similar as possible to the .bib file provided at the CTAN's site for Apacite, I still was not able to get it working. The worst part was trying to debug the "Runaway argument"!
I got an error which was similar to:
Runaway argument?
\bibitem
! File ended while scanning use of \@tempa.
\par
After some googling and after finding some useful sites for debugging common Latex errors (this one), I still was not making any progress. I had this idea of replacing all the indents (hex09) in my .bib file by good old space (hex 20), thinking that it would help. I don't know if that helped or not, but by this time, I was able to get a few references.
Simply rewriting some of the bibtex entries (at places where Latex complained) helped ultimately and the invisible errors were at last gone!
At the end of hours and hours of working on the format of the document, at last I got a pdf file which followed the APA style guidelines.
A lot of errors such as this:
?were flagged both by the CUI and GUI (Kile). Just ignoring them produced the .pdf file nevertheless.
! Undefined control sequence.
l.1072 ...ves/sum2005/entries/turing-test/}\bibnodot
%
((UPDATE-END))
BUT, Latex's promise was the EXACT OPPOSITE!
Latex promises that the writer does not have to worry about the style and can concentrate on the content only. It promises the flexibility of different styles just by changing a few lines or so. Well, Latex did not deliver that promise to me in this case.
But if I had taken the other route of working on the style while using a Word document, surely I would have gone mad by now and would not even have got close to finishing the task.
Now I have a few more simple steps:
- convert pdf to text (pdftotext)
- copy the text to MS Word (or Open Office)
- do the final edits since pdftotext would not have done a neat job
- paste all the figures and create tables and
- that is it!
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3 comments:
I think for one-off document creation tasks, the burden of learning or relearning LaTeX far outweighs all its advantages.
I was also hoping that LaTeX would give me absolute control over the formatting of the document. For ex: placing pictures and tables where I wanted them to be. However, for whatever reason, it wasn't what I thought it would be.
Nagendra Singh
yes that is true, for one document or even for just a few documents, the learning curve is not worth it.
BUT, once one is hooked on to it, it is tough to not want to use it again. Latex undoubtedly produces better looking documents than Word does.
BTW, Nagendra thanks for reading and leaving a comment.
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