MAA Workshop Notes

Subsection6.1Use a template

Writing XML is tedious. There are many things to do to make it easier, including having an awesome text editor (which I do not). But the most important one is not to start from scratch!

For your first article, I recommend using the PTX minimal example, but for some even that one might be too maximal. If you want to make a really minimal example, please go directly to the most minimal document possible at the author's guide. I will do something in between here. See Example 8.1 for a little of the output.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

 <mathbook>

    <article xml:id="minimal">
        <title>A Minimal Article</title>

        <frontmatter>

            <titlepage>
                <author>
                    <personname>Your Name</personname>
                    <institution>Your Place</institution>
                </author>
            </titlepage>

            <abstract>
                <p>An abstract.</p>
            </abstract>

        </frontmatter>

        <section xml:id="section-first">
            <title>A first (and only) section</title>

            <p>This paragraph has some inline math, a 
            Diophantine equation, <m>x^2 + y^2 = z^2</m>.  
            And some display math about infinite series: 
            <me>\sum_{n=1}^\infty\,\frac{1}{n^2} = 
            \frac{\pi^2}{6}.</me></p>
        </section>

    </article>

</mathbook>