Imagine for a minute that you’re writing a book or technical manual.  Let’s say it’s a book on technology, maybe the open source tools used for scientific writing (to randomly pick an example).  As you write this book, you realize that you need some way to cue the reader into different parts of the text.

For instance, you might want all definitions to appear in bolded text so that a reader pick out key terms quickly.  Or you might want code examples to appear in a different font than the regular text, again, so they’re easy to find.  What’s the best way to do this?

Sure, you could just bold the definitions, or manually change the font for the code examples.  But that’s painful!  Changing typeface and size every time that you have a section of code will eventually result in a lot of lost time.  Moreover, you might make a mistake, which destroys your consistency and makes your writing look unprofessional.  There must be a better way!

Thankfully, there is.  It’s through the consistent use of styles.

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Tags: Customization,LaTeX,LyX
Categories: Computer, Writing and Literature, rapidBOOKS
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