julian-fietkau.de

Welcome to the penultimate bachelor's work report. First, I can announce before: The work is finalized and printed successfully and was already time to give my two supervisors. In the academic office, I'll still give as planned until next Monday, as they now on the 6.12. is predated (the final sprint was faster than expected).

Printing and binding

Last Saturday, I addressed the first time with text set for double-sided, bound printed. So far the work for screen reading and one-sided print was optimized, which, of course, fancier in bound form is not so much. That's why I sometimes read a little - again a topic on which you could spend weeks - and just the "twoside" for my document set and a bit of experimenting with style and page cleardoublepage. After a while I was also pleased. As a PDF, it looks at the page-scrolling from fairly modest, but in the two-sided view is really impressive times.

Sorry I have neglected the binding correction criminally, so that after printing and binding indoor unpleasant little white space. Dear authors of other work: Please think of a suitable binding correction, if it is for two-sided printing. In LaTeX the example could look like this:

\documentclass[twoside,BCOR=15mm]{scrartcl}

I'm smarter for next time anyway, but this time the printed copies to read, unfortunately, needs a little uncomfortable. Very sad.

Optimize for digital release with LaTeX

If I put the document available here as a PDF, then I suppose the version for single-sided printing, as well as for self-printing is most appropriate - this will be the sides so usually only loosely tied together or stapled. On the screen, I find this version more enjoyable.

But the PDF publication provides a few features that may be suitable for you are also quite interesting. At times, under which, increasingly, digital publications, do not be afraid to exploit the advantages of the medium.

Hyperlinks with hyperref: The first package, which should be in every LaTeX generated PDF publication, hyperref. It can work automatically, but can also adapt very well. What does hyperref do? It provides the document with internal and external hyperlinks. For example, each chapter heading in the TOC in the PDF viewer clickable and leads directly to the relevant section. Each abbreviation in the text literature leads to the corresponding entry in the bibliography, any other reference (e.g. figures or tables) will be opened by clicking on the browser to their respective objectives, or web link. The brightly colored frame that sets hyperref default, you have to find not necessarily beautiful - but they are not printed by default and can be adapted elsewhere or completely off. Seriously, hyperref is very convenient for people who read the document digitally, and in the PDF viewer can make miss the "Back" button.

Metadata with hyperxmp: XMP is a format for metadata specified by Adobe, which will come in all sorts of container formats used currently, however, to my knowledge for PDF files is most relevant. The hyperxmp package allows the inclined pdfLaTeX user metadata in this format, to the document added. To integrate it into hyperref, which will also be involved. This package can be in addition to title, author, keywords, etc. also define copyright and license information. If you want to read automatically at some point in the PDF files, the license information, it is a bargain when they are deposited in such a standardized format and not just somewhere in the document. For me it looks like this:

\hypersetup{
  pdfcopyright={This work is licensed to the public under the
    Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 License.},
  pdflicenseurl={http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/}
}

An explicit mention of the license is included in the document as readable, certainly added too.

Attachments with embedfile: Every now and then marched with like you would any file with the document, be it source code, images, data, or what one can think of. Less well known is that the PDF format supports file attachments, and that use the embedfile package, this feature makes for pdfLaTeX. Aid of some metadata about the file (e.g. the MIME type) you can then arbitrary files on the PDF document attachments. It is then for the PDF viewer to view these attachments to the reader. My PDF viewer, evince (now also available for Windows) does on the side bar below "Facilities". I'm attached to my final paper for example some Java source code to, so that the reader not difficult with the mouse and copy needs to copy them. Double-clicking the attachment opens directly to "Save" dialog, which is much nicer.

Attachments with attachfile2: The package attachfile2 allowed attachments, but it uses a different PDF feature, namely annotations. So that files are not generally attached to the document, but embedded in a specific location. This means that you then in the PDF file can have something like clickable icons (this time actually really in the document rather than as an attachment), behind which it is then a file. The use of attachfile2 is not easy, but after some reading I have a version out, work in my file annotations and displayed underneath my listings is a Java icon that is clickable. This is also very nice.

In my work I have combined this model with embedfile and included my source code as well as annotation as well as an appendix. Now the source code is indeed twice (or including the textual version of the document even three times) in the document, but the few hundred bytes, I consider it a small price for the appreciation of usability.

All these features are useful improvements to usability for people who use the document digitally, without penalizing the print reader. Therefore, I encourage anyone who's work would also disseminate digital, to deal with the possibilities.

Prior submission of the paper, outlook

To beat back the bow: As mentioned above I have given the work already been in print my supervisors. The three copies are for the academic office along with the burned CD or at my home and be given until next Monday. Thereafter, the procedure is outside my sphere of influence and I'm just waiting for the final grade.

Next Monday (not Tuesday) there is then read to the work here and download it. In addition there are some general thoughts and a conclusion drawn by me. And then, well, it's over. At least until the next degree... But first up Monday!