March 11, 2023

About LaTeX, standalone, PDF and PNG

LaTeX and the document format

As, of course, you all already know (:smiley:), LaTeX is a language dedicated to the typesetting of documents with state-of-the-art quality.

It is, therefore, unnecessary to note that the basics of LaTeX can be learned in about 30 minutes, as illustrated in this page.

For the purposes of this article, it is sufficient to recall that sources in LaTeX are composed of a preliminary part, also called the preamble, and the document with the contents.

February 25, 2023

A study on the export and import of musical scores between LilyPond and MuseScore via MusicXML

About LilyPond and MuseScore.

LilyPond and MuseScore are the two most interesting open source projects dedicated to music notation.

LilyPond is a markup language, compatible with LaTeX (I refer you to this my article on LaTeX and LilyPond for writing text and music), that allows you to write musical scores of high graphical quality using text characters.

This feature makes it, among other things, also usable by AI systems, such as ChatGPT, to write autogenerated scores.

February 11, 2023

Vim and the Markdown preview

Preamble

Vim is an excellent editor for Markdown, both for its own “native” features and for the possibility of adding specific functions via “plugins.”

Previewing documents requires, unless you use the “manual” solution mentioned at the end of this article, using a dedicated “plugin.”

Until a few years ago, my favorite was “iamcco/markdown-preview.vim” because it provided a true real-time live effect while typing text, even before periodic saving.

Unfortunately, that project has been abandoned since February 2020.

January 26, 2023

Place side-by-side or overlapping images in GIMP with automatic Container adjustment

What is GIMP?

GIMP is an excellent cross-platform image editor: Windows, macOS and any GNU/Linux distribution.

It is a full-featured software, strictly open-source and free.

Perfect for trying to create a “collage” of overlapping or side-by-side images, even with different sizes, and export the result as a single image in .jpg or .png format.

Side-by-side and overlapping images

I have repeatedly needed to “blend” several images side by side or overlapping.

January 2, 2023

Converting documents from the .tex format of LaTeX to the .docx format of MS Word

Preface on LaTeX and MS Word

I have been using LaTeX for about thirty years to write documents of all kinds: court documents, reports, research, projects and more.

After overcoming the challenging initial learning curve, therefore, it is very unlikely that one will go back to “traditional” word processing systems: the extraordinary typographic quality and considerable time savings have become indispensable.

Sometimes, however, it is necessary to exchange material written in LaTeX to friends and colleagues who have not yet had the opportunity to appreciate it.

December 20, 2022

Converting from Org Mode to Markdown GFM

Does it make sense to talk about Org Mode instead of Markdown?

Why should I use Org-Mode to write articles to be published network in Markdown format?

Wouldn’t it be more convenient to write the articles directly in Markdown?

The question is more than justified and the answer is not obvious.

First, let me remind you that Org-Mode is a mode of GNU/Emacs. While there are various plugins for other editors, including Vim, none of them can match the outstanding efficiency of the original system.