Thursday, January 31, 2008

Designing On-Screen Versions of Mathematics Texts?

Help 1?
I have redesigned the on-screen versions of our real analysis textbooks. They are here
if you want to download them. BBT is the graduate level real analysis, TBB is the undergraduate level real analysis and TBB-Dripped is ...well something else.

Open one of these in Adobe Reader, resize the reader, resize the fonts, and open the bookmarks. Is this design workable on your screen? Pick your favorite real analysis topic, look it up in the index, click to see the text and scan a couple of pages. Any suggestions?

Help 2?
Specifically, does anyone know how to work around the fact the the LaTeX packages endnote and hyperref ignore each other? That is one of the bugs in my on-screen version. SEE NOTE in yellow doesn't link forward to the hint in the NOTES. I do have a link back though.

Help 3?
We are working on a PRINT-ON-DEMAND service for all three of these titles. Does anyone have stories, good or bad, to relate about CreateSpace, the new Amazon.com service?

[Some students in a class in the midwest used the on-screen versions for their assigned text, but most ended up finding used copies anyway. So, if this is a common reaction, we are trying to supply inexpensive trade paperback copies. Or, perhaps, we just needed a better on-screen version.]


The texts here are Elementary Real Analysis and Real Analysis by Bruckner, Bruckner and Thomson, previously published by Prentice Hall (Pearson) in 2001 and 1997. Full versions of these texts (recently corrected) are available as free downloads.

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