The Teach Yourself Logic Guide has a new look.
Now, instead of being a standard A4 PDF, it should be an ideal size for reading on screen. Read it either (i) on an iPad (download in Safari, open e.g. in iBooks), or (ii) on a lap-top (e.g. read two pages side-by-side using Adobe Reader in full-screen mode). The changes in this new version are modest, then, but should I hope make the Guide significantly more readable.
If you do want to print it out, then using the two pages side-by-side format with Adobe Reader works very well. (Printing from other readers, you may need to change the page set-up of the printer to recognise the reduced paper size, approximately A5.)
Comments on the new layout, for or against, are welcome.
I don’t know if this has been noted yet, but the link to Aczel and Rathjen’s ‘Notes on Constructive Set Theory’ on p. 93 is broken. All I can find on Google is a 2001 version of that document – do you know if there is a more recent version still available?
Just a thing. I was browsing through the computability section and I noticed that there is no mention of Martin Davis’s work (neither the collection The Undecidable nor his introductory book Computability and Unsolvability). Considering that they are published by Dover at very accessible prices, shouldn’t there be at least some mention of them?
Fair point! I’ve made a note to look again at the two Martin Davis books before the next update.
Apologies for doing this, but something popped out after I submitted my last comment, and I can’t directly edit the original reply.
The complaint on the kindle seems to be about equation formatting, which I know is always a trouble point for non-pdf formats. If a direct epub authorship has similar issues, instead of the Amazon pdf-to-epub conversation being used currently, then pdf would certainly be the choice format.
I do wonder, though, if it is worth making available both the A4 and A5 versions. For those who might be printing the guide, there is a large jump from 84 pages to 144 pages in the change.
The document is produced using LaTeX, and converting LaTeX to epub produces too messy a result to be useful without time-consuming additional formatting, which is not practicable for a document which is repeatedly updated.
Printing out two A5 pages side-by-side on A4 paper works well, as I now say. Indeed produces a nicer output that the previous A4 version I think.
A welcomed changed.
I do wonder, though, as this appears to be a simple configuration change, whether your authoring tools would allow you to deploy to both pdf and epub formats? The new layout is reminiscent of what is achieved when increasing the font size and decreasing the margins in eReader software. The epub format makes this trivial, and would, for instance, make the usability on the kindle, as mentioned by the other post, much higher.
If both old-format pdf were available for those who are looking to print, and new-format pdf and epub available for others, I think it would cover the large majority of everyone’s preferences at once.
In any case, thank you for your continued effort in producing this guide. It has been a favorite resource of mine to share with others looking to obtain a stronger background in formal logic, and has provided me with plenty of guidance as well.
Thank you for this. It’s nicely formatted and very easy to browse, except for one little quibble: it would be easier to use in a PDF/eBook reader if the logical page numbers agreed with the printed page numbers. Specifically, the 1st physical page should be “Cover”, the 2nd physical page “Colophon” (or something similar), physical pages 3 to 8 should be lower-case Roman numerals (i.e. i, ii, etc.), and physical pages 9 onwards should used decimal Arabic numbers. …
In any case, your great work on this guide is much appreciated!
In Adobe Reader, the roman numerals are recognised, and asking for page n, for n > 2 delivers the right result. The only problem is that there are two page 1s and two pages 2s. Any suggestion about how to fix this?
I’ve tried two experiments with my Kindle (which, in case it matters, is one of the old keyboard sort).
First, I put the pdf file directly onto the device. The type was small but readable. The smaller page size helps here, because it fits each page to the screen. (You can magnify, but then have to scroll to get to every part of the page.) Internal links don’t work. “Go to … page” does work, but you have to add 8 to the page number at the bottom of the page because of the 2 unnumbered and 6 roman-numbered pages before the page that numbers itself 1. Proofs and formulas look as they should.
Switching the Kindle to landscape viewing gets a larger type size while still not needing scrolling. Instead, you use the next-page controls to move to successive parts of each page. Each page has three parts. (I’m using “parts”, even though you use next-page to move through them, because the page numbering and “Go to … page” still count pages as before.)
Then I e-mailed the pdf under a “convert” subject to my “send to Kindle” e-mail address. That gets a better (and adjustable) type size, but the formulas and proofs don’t look right.
Many thanks for the info. I guess reading on a Kindle won’t be ideal — but reading this (approx) A5 version will be better than trying to read the previous A4 PDF.
There’s a comma instead of a period after “www” in the link.
Anyway, I like the new layout when I reading on my laptop, because each page fits neatly on the screen vertically, but I’m not sure what to do if I want to print it.
Ooops. Thanks for spotting the comma.
I’ve added a couple of sentences about printing out.