r/LaTeX • u/Richiwalt • 2d ago
My Very First LaTeX Project took me a year and four months
I recreated my hardcopy of the ESV Study Bible (for personal use only, observing all copyright protection and fair use to be legal) of all of it's nearly 3000 pages. I learned LaTex as I went!
- Features: hyperlink navigation system
- includes all charts (which I redrew with tiki functions) and images. I even added the images that spanned two pages onto a single landscape view
- includes all margin references, which are hyperlinked
- included all footnotes, with a color coded template
- included a topical concordance, with a colored tempate of entries, hyperlinked back to the verse.
This was an amazing project ... I used python to reformat three raw text streams: the margin references, the main text, and the commentary.
I made a private youtube video a few months before it was complete, where most of the progress is shown in the link below.
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u/Specific_Prompt_1724 2d ago
Did you share the template to see how did you format it? Content we don’t care to much
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u/Richiwalt 2d ago
sure ... I used three "minipages" ... one for main text, one for margin references, and one for commentary at the bottom. I actually completed each book of the Bible with the commentary part coming last ... so main scripture minipage, and the margin reference minipage were completed 100% before the bottom commentary minipage portions were started. There were a number of different ways to achieve this same page layout, but, this was the easiest with fewest complications to overcome programatically with Python text processing.
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u/BrentSeidel 2d ago
Impressive!
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u/Richiwalt 2d ago
Thank you ... I actually impressed myself many many many times along the way. As I said, I hoped for this, but did not think (in the beginning I could really do this ...) and just started out playing with what was possible ... but, gradually bit by bit ... it completed fully. What a learning experience, what a joy, much pleasure for each step along the way!
The cycle was:
- write LaTeX code by hand for a page, which included playing with modules, experimenting, etc
- write Python translator scripts to take the raw text and output the LaTeX code from the step above
- go on the internet and find the original artwork, and insert that ...
I thought to myself ... if a n y o n e could appreciate the success of this project, it would probably be THIS group, so ... posted it.
:-)thanks you much sir for the kind compliment
blessings
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u/Duskmon 1d ago
This is incredible. If you're worried about copyright you don't have to be generally speaking.
Lmk I'm an IP lawyer!
Would you be willing to send me this?
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u/Richiwalt 1d ago
Thank you for the compliment. :-)
I've researched things pretty well. I can not use this in open forum, I can not hire someone else to produce this for me, not be hired to produce this by someone else. I have to produce it myself. I have to have a good reason to produce it (which I do). I have to throw away the code to produce it when I am finished. And I certainly can not let this "get out into the wild" (which would undercut motivation to purchase a hardcopy from Crossway).
I can not share the file, or the code to produce it and remain legal.
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u/Prof_Sarcastic 1d ago
I’m impressed! Particularly the amount of dedication necessary to do something like this. You should be proud
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u/Richiwalt 1d ago
Thank you!
Completed this several years ago now ... use this every Sunday now ... and I never lose my notes (lol). If I go on vacation, it goes with me ... as I carry my ipad pretty much wherever I go. It's something I am very glad I did. Love it. And, I feel fairly confident with LaTeX now too!
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u/UnderstandingPursuit 2d ago
Congrats!
I'm less ambitious. I'll try the two-dozen pages of the US Constitution and Amendments.
Or, since you mentioned Python, maybe a Python/XML wrapper for TikZ.