I was wondering how people write / layout a technical report / book. I have the following requirements:
- main text is two columns
- each chapter contains many graphs / figures / tables that span both columns
- bibliography at the end of most chapters (but these references are not cited in the main text)
- I receive all of the source documents in Word.
I would naturally do this with LaTeX and the memoir
class, however after spending only a day at this task, I'm facing the following problems:
- copy & pasting text is slow
- forcing figures and tables to show up at a certain position and spanning two columns is way too hard - it basically never works (maybe I'm doing something wrong) and figures end up always at the end of a section / chapter.
- I don't feel like I could delegate this job to someone without LaTeX knowledge.
- You constantly need to recompile because if you don't do it, you'll never find the problems.
Again, maybe I'm doing something wrong here and I'm open for any suggestions and advice.
EDIT: regarding the contents / design that I'm looking for, I guess the following pdfs might be a good example
- almost ideal example http://www.mpe.mpg.de/Highlights/FB2010/JB_07_09_final_g.pdf
- not ideal example, since they have a figure @ the end of every page http://www.fischer.de/PortalData/1/Resources/fixing_systems/connectit/_documents/10/2008-10-11.pdf
- good example http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/rco/research/mamu/tr029.pdf