Subject: t

thanks to everyone who responded to my questions about latex fonts and using linux in general . respondents were : jen hay ( jennifer . hay @ vuw . ac . nz ) mark hale ( hale1 @ husc . harvard . edu ) greg iverson ( iverson @ csd . uwm . edu ) " james a . mcgilvray " ( jim @ dep . philo . mcgill . ca ) michael covington ( mcovingt @ ai . uga . edu ) james magnuson ( magnuson @ hip . atr . co . jp ) uli sauerland ( sauerlan @ mit . edu ) tom green ( tmgreen @ mit . edu ) " larry trask " ( larryt @ cogs . susx . ac . uk ) ted . harding @ nessie . mcc . ac . uk ( ted harding ) " c . a . creider " ( creider @ julian . uwo . ca ) mark liberman ( myl @ sansom . ling . upenn . edu ) first of all , the responses clearly indicate that there exists at least two ipa fonts for latex ( see below ) . responses to my more general questions ranged from enthusiastic encouragement about using latex and linux , to fervernt wishes that i rethink my abandonment of the macintosh os , to recommendations of other operating systems and / or text-processing or dsp systems . i should perhaps have mentioned that i am already relatively familiar with bsd unix , so switching to linux will not be much of a shock in and of itself - though obviously using latex will be quite a change from a mac - based word processor . . . the score is currently : pro latex w / ipa : 7 pro linux : 4 pro mac : 1 pro nextstep : 1 anti latex : 1 and a number of somewhat mixed responses , suggesting for the most part that i remain with a mac for text processing , but work with some kind of unix environment for dsp and data processing , or that i stick with a mac for the actual sound manipulation but switch to linux for everything else . re : dsp there were at least two recommendations for signalyze for the macintosh , and two for ogi-tools for unix systems . some select quotes ( anonymously to discourage os partisanship from seeping into real life ) : " i thoroughly recommend switching to latex . " " i ' m running a linux box and use latex for all professional word - processing these days . . . i have n't found anything i can't do yet . " " i ' ll say this for linux , compared to dos , windows , os / 2 , desqview , and windows nt ( latest versions of all ) , i ' ve been running linux for a year and a half and it has never once crashed . never . every one of those others has . " " gee , i hope switching from a macintosh to a linux workstation is n't too painful . . . do you really have to do this ( power macintosh machines are indeed powerful , and the word processing situation is well developed with wordperfect 3 . 1 , nisus writer 4 . 06 , others ) . " " while on the topic of unix instantiations of tex , you might look at nextstep instead of linux . . . next 's gui is , honestly , elegant . " " there are several good ipa font sets for latex , as well as a whole bunch of accents available even if you do n't use special fonts . " " i use latex ( both on linux and on other unixes ) for all my papers and there are a couple good packages of phonetic symbol fonts that work great with latex . " " first of all , i dislike latex intensely , as do most of my colleagues in linguistics . we find it uniquely user-hostile : basically , you can't change any defaults unless you have a degree in hacking . . . on the whole , then , my advice is to stay away from latex . " " i am a linux user , and can assure you that latex and all sorts of extensions work very well with linux . so if you can find the linguistic tools for latex you should be able to use them with linux . " i have also had a few requests that i share the information regarding where to find latex ipa fonts : there are apparently at least two , maybe more . one is called tsipa and is from japan . another is called wsuipa , and is from washington state university . one other person mentioned a font set from waterloo , but did not give more details . tsipa is available at ftp . shsu . edu in tex-archive / fonts / tsipa a couple people mentioned the tex - for-linguists newsgroup , at listserv @ shsu . edu , but this may no longer be running . there is also a tex newsgroup , comp . text . tex for more info . thanks again to all the people who responded so quickly . i am going to give the linux / latex system a shot , and see what i can make of it . - alex afrancis @ midway . uchicago . edu alex francis ( 312 ) - 667-5432 department of linguistics afrancis @ midway . uchicago . edu university of chicago ( 312 ) 667-5432 ( home ) 1010 e . 59th st . ( 312 ) 702-9861 ( ling . dept . fax ) chicago , il 60637 ( 312 ) 702-7045 ( lang . lab )
