use Perl

Since I don't know who I'll be sending $writing_project to or what format they'll expect it in, I chose to write it in POD. However, my independent study advisor needs to review it in hardcopy form, so I typeset the document with LaTeX.

Unfortunately, pod2latex's "-full" option adds a \usepackage[T1]directive which makes pdflatex's output icky. Also, I wanted a sleeker look to the pages. I took a look at the latest O'Reilly book I had hanging around and decided to mimic the style. The result is, IMHO, really nice.

I do all my writing in "thedoc.pod" and have a Makefile that converts it to LaTeX, inserts it into a full, pre-formatted LaTeX document, and does what it needs to with that.

Here's the TeX document that includes the output of pod2latex:

\documentclass{article}
 
\usepackage{newcent} % use New Century Schoolbook for normal font
\renewcommand{\ttdefault}{pcr} % use Courier for typewriter font
\usepackage[sf,bf,compact]{titlesec} % sans-serif, bold, compact headings
\parindent=0em % no indenting on first paragraphs
\parskip=0.6em % tighter spacing between paragraphs
 
\begin{document}
\include{thedoc}
\end{document}

Here's the Makefile (probably not written properly, but it works):

# vim:set noet:
PRINTER = xxxxxxx
BASENAME = thedoc
PRINTABLE = printable
 
help:
    @ echo "usage: make { pdf | print PRINTER=xxxxxx | clean }"
 
$(BASENAME).tex:
    pod2latex $(BASENAME).pod
 
print: $(BASENAME).tex
    latex $(PRINTABLE).tex
    dvips -t letter -P $(PRINTER) $(PRINTABLE).dvi
 
pdf: $(BASENAME).tex
    pdflatex $(PRINTABLE).tex
    open $(PRINTABLE).pdf
 
clean:
    rm -rf *.aux *.idx *.log *.toc \
        $(BASENAME).tex $(PRINTABLE).pdf

There are a few issues with really long lines of code, but these could probably be fixed with changing the font size of verbatim or using the fullpage package.