As I write this, I’m printing out a hard copy of the Gödel book — hopefully the version to be taken along to CUP along with the PDF file when they re-open next week.
I’ve been tinkering with this second edition, on and off, since I got the contract back in July 2011 (and no doubt bored everyone who visits here by talking about it so much). It’s a long-ish book: 403 pages in all, with lots of symbols, lots of cross-references to resolve, not to mention auto generated bibliography and index. I’ve been using TeXShop + LaTeX (plus BibDesk) on a Mac. How many times did this document processing system crash, foul-up, or produce unintended gremlins over the eighteen months?
Zero. Yep, zero.
I’d say I was really impressed if it weren’t what I’ve come to take for granted. But it is pretty amazing now I stop to think about it. So it surely should occasionally still be said: Three cheers for LaTeX, for BibDesk, and not least to Richard Koch for TeXShop, my constant companion!
Do you think that it will be released as a successful kindle version? I have been disappointed in the past by kindle versions of books that are relatively heavy in symbols.
Well, not a native Kindle version, I’m sure. Assuming CUP publishes an e-book version, they will use the PDF [not a reflowing epub version), and you’ll be able to read it on any device that can read PDF ebooks from ebooks.com — but looking at their site suggests that that wouldn’t include Kindles.
TeXShop (and MacTeX) is indeed one of the most wonderful things on the Mac for a mathematician. It has never crashed once on me either (though I am yet to write anything on the scale of a book).
Speaking of this edition of the Godel book, will CUP typeset it in a classic typeface like Sabon (as it did your other book)? Do you have a say in such decisions? The book is wonderful as it is … just that it could be given a more classic look. :)
No, CUP just use my PDF, and I’m very boringly using the default LaTeX fonts.
I agree with you about Sabon being beautiful. When I was editing Analysis, I got very interested in fonts and typography, and redesigned the journal about eighteen years(?) ago using Sabon, which perhaps wasn’t quite as well known then as it has become.
The trouble about using fonts other than Computer Modern or Times with LaTeX for a symbol-heavy text is that you then can run into problems getting nicely matching size/weight for symbol glyphs, and may have to do a lot of hand-tweaking. So that’s why I’ve been so very boring, typographically speaking.