52 lines
5.1 KiB
TeX
52 lines
5.1 KiB
TeX
\chapter{Coda}
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\section{What I Learned About \LaTeX{} While Creating This Issue}
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\subsection{Easy Ways with \textsf{tikz}}
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I included some illustrations of card layouts back on page \pageref{cards}. Since these are just rectangles, I knew I could create them pretty easily using the \textsf{tikz} package. All I needed were the coordinates where the three rectangles would begin and end, and the coordinates of the nodes where I would put the letters.
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As it turns out, this was difficult to figure out using my mind alone—I have a lot going on, I am easily distracted, there was too much guesswork. I'm a big fan of having the right tools to do a job and then using those tools. I see no point in being a martyr. So I pulled out the best tool I had for this: graph paper and a pencil. No guess work, just straight lines and a bit of counting. I felt like I was in my eighth grade geometry class again, and I actually enjoyed it.
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\textbf{Protip:} draw it on paper first.
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\setlength{\fboxsep}{0pt}
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\setlength{\fboxrule}{0.5pt}
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\begin{center}
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\fbox{\includegraphics[scale=0.28]{tikz-on-paper}}
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\end{center}
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\section{What I Learned About Other Things While Creating This Issue}
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\subsection{The Memoir Class}
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Since starting my journey with \LaTeX{}, I have consistently used the article, report, or book classes. Which one I use depends on how complex the document I am creating is, as only the report and book classes provide for chapters. (This zine is made in the book class.)
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Some time ago, I wanted to stretch my zine-making muscles and made a hand-written zine called \textit{Do it in the Terminal} all about using the command line. I intended it to be a quick and mostly painless introduction to using the command line for people interested in Linux or just getting started with it.\footnote{You can find out more about it at \kref{https://just13.click/diitt/}{https://just13.click/diitt/}.}
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For some time, I've wanted to do a follow-up to that zine, because it was fun. It was also a lot more work than I thought it would be, and entirely too small to contain all the information I had on hand. So I decided to take the plunge and make it in \LaTeX{} and also try out the memoir class.
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Just like \LaTeX{}, there is a learning curve to this class. But just as with \LaTeX{} you are richly rewarded for climbing that curve. It does a lot of things that the other classes require packages for. Most importantly in terms of this current project\footnote{Which you can get a sneak peak of at \kref{https://mastodon.social/@kjodle/117156928790033156}{https://mastodon.social/@kjodle/11715692879\\0033156}.} is that it handles multiple indices beautifully. I don't know that I will include tutorials about it here, but if I do write any up, I'll put them on my techblog.\footnote{\kref{https://techblog.kjodle.net/}{https://techblog.kjodle.net/}}
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%\newpage % Use only to keep the afterword together if we end up with orphans
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\section{Afterword}
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\begin{multicols}{2}
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\begin{small}
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\noindent{}The past year has been a difficult one for me, for a lot of reasons, and it's taken a while to get this issue put together.
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\paragraph{Good writing takes time.}I actually knew this, but I was curious as to how much time it actually takes to write an issue of this zine. So for issue \#6 I grabbed a timer and kept track. (If you look at the git repo, there is a \texttt{.csv} file in there where I kept track of this.) I had a total of 3,429 minutes, which works out to 57.2 hours. Of course, when I was finished, I had more material than I could fit, so I moved an entire chapter (on flash cards in \LaTeX{}) to this chapter. That chapter required 871 minutes (14.5 hours) to research, write, and edit, which means that the total time spent on what would eventually become the finished product was 2,558 minutes or 42.6 hours. That's over a week's worth of work.
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I'm okay with that number. After all, I have to justify the price as well. I wish I could spend all those forty hours in a single week though, because I could just take a week off work and write all day. But writing doesn't work like that—things need time to fully form in my mind.
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\paragraph{New cover design!} For a while now, I've used the same cover design (originally done in LibreOffice because I had no idea how to do it in \LaTeX{}), printed on color paper. Going forward, I've updated the cover design to use color printing on white paper. This is partly because colored paper is expensive, and I have to buy a 250 or 500 sheet package to get a new color. Because the print runs of this zine are fairly limited, that means I have a lot of paper sitting around that I can't do much with. Going forward, I'll use this new cover design with the issue number in large print in color on the front (to help distinguish one issue from the other in your collection), and some bars in the same color on the spine that correspond to the issue number.
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I also found out about the \texttt{tikzpingus} package recently, so I can add a cute little penguin to the front cover as well. If you look closely, you'll see that his tie matches the color theme of the rest of the cover.
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\medskip
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\begin{flushright}
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\noindent{}Thanks,\\—Ken
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\end{flushright}
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\end{small}
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\end{multicols} |