## LaTeX, treasure cave

Have discovered the joys of typesetting. Specifically, the XeLaTeX incarnation of LaTeX: it can understand Unicode, and can access any fonts installed on the system. Plus its code is expandable, and user-written packages extend its functionality and abilities.

Latex et al. (the tex part is from Greek τέχνη, techne, “art, skill, craft”, meaning both skill of mind and skill of hand) has maths typesetting at its core.

Using suitable packages if required (and there are thousands), you can do papers on more maths:

isotopes:

(and even, on the Arts Faculty side, )

Mazes:

Chess games (of course), step-by-step

.

There are a whole bunch of linguistics-related packages.

For syntax trees and glosses:

Glosses in other scripts:

Playful stuff:

and

And so on.

(As an aside, learning cuneiform must have taken ages at school, not to mention if you were Babylonian and had to go to Ancient Sumerian classes!)

There’s a package called manuscript, designed for emulating the old-style typewriter-written theses, which must have been written for LaTeX in the old days, I think. Now, with XeLaTeX, with its access to any and all installed fonts, one line of code (selecting a typewriter font) is all that is needed for emulating an old-style thesis.

Well, almost. Using the underline command, produces a nice, typeset line, which contrasts with the font (Urania Czech, in this case):

But with the old typewriters, you could backspace, and use the _ key (or the X key for typing errors, before liquid paper was invented):

And of course, some typewriter ribbons were red-and-black (never found out what the red ink was used for).

Lots of fun.

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Addendum 27-Aug-2017: corrected spelling to: XeLaTeX.