#also the only reason i stopped taking aops classes was that i took ap calculus bc when i was 12 and that was the highest level they offered

[gender-trash]

how did you get into typesetting? are there particular resources/guides you'd recommend?

i am so incredibly sorry, because the answer to your first question is almost certainly useless to you: when i was 9-12 years old i took a bunch of online math classes from the Art of Problem Solving. AoPS classes (at the time; i haven’t followed what they’re doing in years) were formatted as a chat room where the entire lecture was given in text format (vv accessible to me for both adhd and auditory processing reasons), occasionally the teacher would ask questions for you to type in a response to, and a few of the fastest correct answers would be shown to the rest of the class. especially if you used latex math typesetting to make it Look Nice (the chatroom had limited latex support).

i, a small child extremely interested in math and in Proving my Skills to the other faceless usernames in the chatroom, was super into this. with practice i eventually got really good at speed-typesetting math in latex; i also habitually wrote up all my homework in latex because my handwriting was fucking unreadable (probably because of the dyspraxia) and it was honestly simpler *and* faster than writing it on paper and scanning it.

so at that point i was just kind of in the habit of using latex whenever i wanted to make a vaguely technical document Look Nice. math camp qualifying tests. final papers for technical classes in college. personal notes and reference sheets (i’m much more likely to study things if my study materials are visually appealing, i’ve found). i discovered that with practice it *is* possible to take class notes, live, in latex, and that if you send your ~fancy~ latex notes to your friends in the class they will love you forever. plus the extra Challenge made it easier for me to pay attention in class (fuck you, adhd).

thus, when i got into ficbinding my basic approach was “download a random latex book template -> modify to my own tastes -> consult stackoverflow if anything goes wrong” and it works pretty well for me, because i’m an extremely bullheaded programmer with a decade of latex experience. would i necessarily “recommend” it to a beginner? …not really.

anyway i hear you can use ms word or another word processor to typeset fic/danmei? lots of people in the ficbinding discord seem to be pretty successful with it, and @armoredsuperheavy’s introductory ficbinding tutorial goes into some detail (all of which i fully skipped) about typesetting in word. i can’t really provide any help here, though, sorry :(

otoh if you DO want to take the plunge and go latex or go home, i’ve found that overleaf provides some pretty good basic guides to latex syntax; if you want, i can also send you some of my latex source files and talk you through what’s going on with them. you’ll almost certainly want to use the “memoir” documentclass (not “book”), so hit up ctan and download the memoir documentation while you’re at it. personally i don’t use overleaf because i am physically incapable of using any text editor without vim keybindings; you might want to start there because the live preview is super helpful for a beginner, but i have NO idea what font support is like. if you’re not using overleaf, i recommend installing xelatex on your local machine, and if you don’t already have a text editor of choice, sublime text is free* and has some nice latex extensions.

*it will occasionally nag you to buy a license but you can keep clicking “maybe later” indefinitely

(someone recommended ConTeXt to me a while back, but i can’t remember who it was. that might be a friendlier option?)

actually, would anyone be interested in me writing up a more detailed Guide to Typesetting Books in LaTeX for complete beginners/cleaning up and posting my book template? (i am bad at modeling what “a complete beginner” to latex typesetting knows, but i will beta test it on a long-suffering @combat-epistemologist.)

#the trashcan speaks #devil venerable also wants to exploit the memoir class for evil purposes #OH YEAH also if you have a html file or epub (e.g. from ao3) you can use pandoc to convert it to .tex #you can use pandoc on nearly ANYTHING actually. highly recommend pandoc #also the only reason i stopped taking aops classes was that i took ap calculus bc when i was 12 and that was the highest level they offered #so when i was 13 i had to start taking fuckin’ honors multivariable calculus or w/e cross-registered at a local college #and let me tell you. i missed the faceless online chatroom classes SO. MUCH.