i've taken a deep breath and standardized on using emacs and latex-beamer and org-mode for writing/rewriting all of my courseware. after several hours of messing around, i wrote a simple tutorial and posted it here: http://www.crashcourse.ca/wiki/index.php/Using_Beamer_and_org_mode_to_write_slide_shows i've barely scratched the surface of what i can do with this, but the major features i'll be taking advantage of are: * ridiculous levels of customization * the ability to write in outline mode (arbitrarily expanding and collapsing parts of the manual i'm working on at the time) it's that second part that i find absolutely essential these days -- the ability to first define the chapters, then slowly start filling them in, and be able to see the top-level structure whenever i want, and then to dig down into a chapter or section and work there for a while, close it up, move to another part of the manual, rinse and repeat ... i suspect this weekend is going to be spent immersed in pdflatex and emacs and beamer. good thing it's raining. if i can't get out to enjoy it, i don't see why anyone else should be able to. rday -- ======================================================================== Robert P. J. Day Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA http://crashcourse.ca Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday ========================================================================