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Is there any common way to mention that a document has been typeset by TeX? So non-TeXnicians (TeXperts) may become a little familiar with the TeX world.

Update: It would be nice if one hero make a package that inserts such information in beauty and concise manner in a given language, so even lazy TeXnicians will credit TeX. For example:

...
\usepackage{colophon}
...
\colophon[language=fa,packages=bibtex,xepersian]
...
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    I know this might sound odd, but IMHO documents typeset in TeX speak for themselves. :) I recently created a song booklet for my parish and everybody was amazed by the quality! People came to me and asked how I made "Word produce such beautiful documents"; then I gently explained about TeX and friends. :) Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 11:20
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    @PauloCereda: could you show me the song booklet? Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 11:34
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    @HiggsBoson: Sure! :) Here is an image from the PDF and here is the real booklet (sorry for the quality). I took a minimalist approach because we had to put as many songs as possible. This document basically relies on multicol, lettrine and xcolor. :) Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 12:02
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    @HiggsBoson: Thanks for the kind words. :) This one is a songsheet we did for St. Joseph's mass; the document relies on the songs package. :) Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 12:10
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    @PauloCereda: Why don't you add this to tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1319/…? It's always nice to see contributions there that aren't academic theses. Plus I love seeing TeXed documents actually printed, they usually look even better than on screen.
    – doncherry
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 21:25

5 Answers 5

79

TeXies have a good chance of recognizing TeXed documents, especially if Computer Modern (or Latin Modern) is used. But assuming you want to convert Word-users and other heathens, figuratively speaking, you could use a colophon, a "brief description of publication or production notes relevant to the edition, in modern books usually located at the reverse of the title page, but can also sometimes be located at the end of the book" (Wikipedia). Some of the theses listed at Showcase of beautiful typography done in TeX & friends have such notes:

This thesis was typeset using the LaTeX typesetting system originally developed by Leslie Lamport, based on TeX created by Donald Knuth.

(Eivind Uggedal)

Typeset by the author in Fedra Serif B using LaTeX. Cover design by Sam Ross-Gower.

(Michael Ummels)

And here's a particularly pretty one:

Colophon. This document was created using LaTeX2ε and BibTeX and edited in the Mac-Vim environment with the LaTeX-vim plug-in. The typesettings software used the XeTeX distribution and the fontspec package. The text is set in Hoefler Text and Candara. The source code is set in Consolas. The animal depicted on the cover is a common eland (taurotragus oryx). The original photograph was taken from flickr.com/photos/paulmullett/505797443/ and is used and modified with permission under the Creative Commons “by-nc” license. The author of the original picture is Paul Mullett.

(Konrad Rudolph)

Here's another cool one from The Book of Tea by Okakura Kazuko as typeset by William Adams. Part of this book can be found as an example of TeX typography in the TeX showcase.

Colophon. Typeset in Octavian, by David Kindersley. by Dr. Donald Knuth’s TeX system. Printed on Crane’s Crest paper. with a NeXT Laserprinter. by an ’040 NeXT Cube. Converted to .pdf. by pStill.app.

If you actually want to get people started by your notes (and not just potentially curious), I'd point them to Tobias Oetiker's The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX2ε, and – obviously – to tex.sx.

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    Beat me by a few seconds, nice answer :)
    – ienissei
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 12:16
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    I wish this were still common. I've read several books recently where I wish I knew what typeface they were using! I know I could take a picture and upload it to this or that site, but just having the info in the book would be great.
    – Seamus
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 14:00
  • Regarding that bachelors thesis: it is really nice looking. But better use the ccions package.
    – bodo
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 14:05
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    What's the ccions package, what is it good for, and why is it not coming up on google?
    – alexis
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 15:37
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    oh, I meant ccicons. This is not directly related to the original question. Just noticed the ugly creative commons symbols there.
    – bodo
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 16:21
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Here's an angle: Don't do anything. Instead, have a look at the PDF information (in case of PDF output), in this example, Preview.app's cmd+i -window (sorry for the localization, but I hope you get the idea):

enter image description here

Et voilà, unobtrusive and simple.

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    This is interesting for people who want to find out how the document was produced, but I think the OP is looking for a way really to put the info about LaTeX in people's faces. Also, this information is "lost" when printing.
    – doncherry
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 14:07
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    @doncherry: true that. Though, who said anything about LaTeX?
    – morbusg
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 14:12
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    I prefer to say "LaTeX" for marketing reasons, because it makes people curious what kind of a kinky thing is going on there ... ;)
    – doncherry
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 14:21
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    @doncherry: Hahah, I see :)
    – morbusg
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 14:25
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First of all: it seems a good idea to mention somewhere "Document typeset with LaTeX". Because your readers may realise that this is a well typeset document, but may have no clue how it has been produced.

Where you mention your machinery surely depends on your document. In a book the acknowledgements are the place to mention LaTeX or whatever. I a report maybe on the last page or the last footnote in smaller print? This seems a question of taste.

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    @Abu-Lu'lu'ahal-Nahawandi I disagree, your honor: If you were informed "typeset by TeX", you'd have to figure out by yourself whether it was LaTeX or ConTeX or whatever. But it's LaTeX which consists of a kernel, thousands of packages and a lively community. "LaTeX" is the helpfull piece of information to people who never have heard of anything but Wörd.
    – Keks Dose
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 13:12
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    @Abu-Lu'lu'ahal-Nahawandi: The difference is that all that I -- as an end-user -- use is LaTeX. I say latex thesis.tex, not tex thesis.tex. It's like saying "I got here by car" instead of "I got here by combustion of gasoline". The fine difference might be saying "This document was typeset with LaTeX" instead of "by LaTeX".
    – doncherry
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 14:16
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    @doncherry: I don't think it's fruitful to start thinking of analogies here. It's just that, well, I think it's empathy that gets me all riled up when people say LaTeX (read: Leslie Lamport et co.) does this or that, when in fact it is TeX (read: Don Knuth) that does it.
    – morbusg
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 14:23
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    It would be very hard to mention LaTeX and leave out TeX. In LaTeX: A document preparation system` (section 1.3), Leslie Lamport writes "The TeX in LaTeX refers to Donald Knuth's TeX typesetting system." Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 17:31
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    From the LaTeX Companion ("Production Notes"): "This book was typeset using the LaTeX document processing system.... The book was typset with the base LaTeX release dated 2003/12/01. The pdfTeX program was used as the underlying engine, but it was not set to produce PDF output [because they wanted 'hanging punctuation' from the pdfcprot package]." Also: I don't think many people use the TeX engine anymore; isn't it almost always pdfTeX, LuaTeX, or XeTeX?
    – jon
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 19:37
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  1. Make the document as easy on the eye as possible. This'll make people wonder what package you've used to produce it.

  2. At the end of the document put a small - very brief - note in the bottom right corner :

       [LaTeX typeset]
    
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    Plainly that's for the other posters to judge not you or me. But I'd have thought that my reply was easier to absorb.
    – Deek
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 13:53
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\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\AtEndDocument{%
\begin{flushright}
    \sf\small This document was typeset by \href{http://tex.stackexchange.com}{\TeX}.
\end{flushright}}

\begin{document}
\lipsum
\end{document}
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    It is not really LaTeX that typesets it; it is your TeX engine that typesets it. LaTeX is just a bunch of macros like any other package. Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 11:56
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    @Abu-Lu'lu'ahal-Nahawandi I think the distinction between LaTeX and TeX is ridiculous. For a beginner, it is doing more harm than good (they start looking for TeX books such as the TeXbook) and for experts, well, they know the difference.
    – topskip
    Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 16:25
  • @Abu-Lu'lu'ahal-Nahawandi What about this document was created with LaTeX? I was already using LaTeX for a while when I noticed that people tend to use the word 'typesetting' here, and some more time until I started to have a faint idea about what it means. For an ordinary person there is no distinction IMO. This way we could stop this ridiculous discussion about TeX vs. LaTeX etc.. (Do I need the two periods here by the way? :-) )
    – marczellm
    Commented Jul 2, 2013 at 20:20
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    @marczellm No, you don't. See english.stackexchange.com/questions/8382/… . Commented Jul 16, 2013 at 12:07
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    how about: This document was typeset using the LaTeX document processing system originally developed by Leslie Lamport, based on TeX typesetting system created by Donald Knuth. Inspired by doncherry nice answer.
    – A.GH
    Commented Aug 26, 2014 at 14:30

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