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Are there books or tutorials that walk one through creating a professional publication quality notebook?

For example, I would like to create a two column article using an IEEE format. Is this possible?

Cross-link to Wolfram Community post

Related Math Stack Exchange post

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Doug Kimzey
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    Please don't. It will save you a lot of headaches. Yes, you can create nice documents with reference in Mathematica, but it is just not comparable to e.g. LaTeX documents. Why don't you go to ShareLaTeX and create an IEEE article and start writing? – halirutan Jan 28 '17 at 15:38
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    Reluctantly, I have to agree that this will be more headache than it is worth. What I do is write up in Mathematica using one of the article styles, then Save as > LaTeX and do further processing in a text editor, after adding the appropriate article class and the like. Not much fun, not as efficient as I would like. But the biggest problems tend to be getting formatting just right during the text editing.I hope some day we improve the save-to-TeX end of this (possibly via style sheets that are journal-aware). – Daniel Lichtblau Jan 28 '17 at 16:54
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    It certainly is possible to create beautiful documents with Mathematica - we did our book in this manner, which also has the huge advantage of having live electronic versions of the same document/book that are interactive and identical to the printed version. BUT ... two column text is not something that Mma can practically do (at least the last time I tried, other than a manual grid box), and page layouts are a pain. – wolfies Jan 28 '17 at 16:54
  • Thanks all - this is useful information. I looked at some seminar material from an individual who authored a book using Mathematica. This did not fully answer the mail on workflow. In other words, what is the process of making the inevitable edits to creating a file that is acceptable to the publisher? There is also a practical problem of staff writers working with Mathematica. Most will not know how to write Mathematica code required to make publication quality tables. The AuthoringTools package is useful - but dated and just not there. I agree Save as > LaTex is the best way. – Doug Kimzey Jan 28 '17 at 17:08
  • Isn't not possible yet... perhaps WRI will release some newer book making toolset eventually? – M.R. Jan 29 '17 at 14:38
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    @Daniel The TeX conversion is very much in need of updating. It should support the newly added common symbols, like the <| in associations. Instead of producing \unicode{...} when it doesn't know the correct LaTeX command, it should produce something which is easier to use directly, e.g. \symbol{"...} (like here). (I did suggest this to support before.) – Szabolcs Jan 29 '17 at 14:48
  • http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7135572/2-column-documents-in-mathematica/7138184#7138184 – Chris Degnen Jan 29 '17 at 14:51
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    Related: Where is the “Insert > Citation> Bibliographical Reference” Command?, Export Plots to LaTeX, Using Mathematica in Conjunction with LyX. Path Issues?. Use Lyx! – Jens Jan 29 '17 at 19:42
  • I have been asking for material of this sort for years and years. There's bits and pieces strewn all across the internet, but Wolfram has never put some consistent and non-trivial sets of material together to help. There are a few examples of nice articles and even entire textbooks that demonstrate what can be done. However, the people who created these had brought years of experience plus several man-years of work in those specific projects to the table to make it happen. Without that kind of an investment it's pretty much impossible to do what you and I and many others would love to do. – Pirx Jan 30 '17 at 00:17
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    As an aside, apart from the above, Mathematica's typesetting quality is, of course, "make-your-skin-crawl" atrocious when compared to a true typesetting system such as LaTeX. So, "professional publication quality" is never going to happen in any case; not in the foreseeable future, anyway. – Pirx Jan 30 '17 at 00:21
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    All comments make me terribly sad. This should really be Prio #1 within WRI. – nilo de roock Dec 12 '18 at 15:59

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