This report has two objectives:
- To give layout and style guidelines for EAGLES
- To indicate how LaTeX can be used in observing layout guidelines.
By adopting certain LaTeX commands, immediate observance of certain
guidelines becomes possible without further effort on the writer's part.
For each stylistic point we make where LaTeX helps in this way, we will
also explain how to use LaTeX to get the desired effect. Those familiar
with LaTeX thus may skip over `how-to' sections.
All you need to compose a LaTeX text is a basic ASCII text editor. One that
carries out matching of parentheses, brackets etc. is a bonus.
It is essential, when writing documents for EAGLES, that you realise that
your documents will be used as a basis for producing both PostScript
versions for printing and HTML versions (at present, until DSSSL/XML
become stable and widely known) for mounting on the World Wide Web. Given
the current lack of expressivity of HTML, not everything that one can
accomplish in LaTeX is easily converted to HTML. Thus, writers must be
aware that certain compromises have to be reached to allow a dual-path
publication strategy. This applies particularly to linguistic structures
(trees, features structures, etc.) that one may wish to include. In
several cases, in order to achieve a suitable work-around, it is necessary
to duplicate material in a slightly differnt format for both LaTeX and
HTML environments. As neither the WG Editors nor the Editorial Board have
the manpower or time available to carry out wholesale duplication
and subsequent modification of affected material, it is up to
individual authors to help by following the guidelines in this document,
thus ensuring that their documents can be more easily processed and
especially more straightforwardly converted to HTML.
A special case concerns (large) appendices
(e.g. annotated text fragments, exemplary lists of feature structures for
various phenomena, i.e. with little or no intervening text). Here, we
propose not to convert such material to HTML, but simply to provide a
ftp-able PostScript file, thus there is no need to take care of rendering
such usually voluminous material more suitable for HTML conversion. Our
reasoning is that such material is likely to be consulted off-line in any
case.