Guidelines

Sunday, Jul 6, 2025 | 2 minute read

Authors

Typesetting

Authors should write their articles in Markdown and name them index.md. (Yes, just that. “Index” here is not a placeholder standing for anything else.) You should use this template , which lists the typesetting features we currently support.

Markdown can be opened by any text editor. You can send your bibliography (.bib/.bibtex) and figures as separate files.

Length

The editor assigned to you by the board will let you know how many pages long your article can be. Each page contains 400 words. Huge block elements such as illustrations usually take 100 words worth of space. Smaller bock elements, such as equations and tables, occupy a variable amount of space. Please work together with your editor to figure out the details.

Designers

Have the technical supervisor help you when setting up your machine. They can contact their predecessor in case you both run into trouble.

Prerequisites

Please:

  • install Scribus (1.7.* or higher);
  • install Pandoc ;
  • install Texlive (or any other $\LaTeX$ distribution with GhostScript and pdflatex);
  • download and extract scribus-writer.lua , folder from the button at the top of the linked page, on the right.
  • download 100_latex.xml , which contains our $\LaTeX$ custom preamble.

Ensuring LaTeX works on your computer

From within Scribus, “Insert”/“Render Frame” should allow you to create $\LaTeX$ content.

On MacOS, Scribus might have some trouble detecting your $\LaTeX$ installation. Go to “File”/“Preferences”/“External Tools”. If “Rescan” is not enough, type which gs in your terminal , and replace gs with the output in the first textbox. Then, select $\LaTeX$ under “Render Frames”/“Configurations”, and click “Change…”. You need to replace pdflatex in the resulting textbox with the output of typing which pdflatex in your terminal. You should still leave --interaction nonstopmode.

Adding custom $\LaTeX$ preamble

Within Scribus, open “File”/“Preferences”/“External Tools”. Under “Render Frames”/“Configurations”, you should see an “Add” button on the right. Click it to inspect where the current 100_latex.xml file is, and then replace it with the one you just downloaded from outside Scribus (making a backup of the old file for safety).

If your $\LaTeX$ distribution is missing the necessary packages, you can just install them from your terminal. For example, on MacTeX (TeX Live on MacOS):

sudo tlmgr update --self
sudo tlgmr install notomath newtxmath noto

Template

The board will share the template with you as a .sla file to be openend in Scribus, together with the necessary fonts to be installed. The .sla file already defines all the necessary styles to import the authors' articles as explained here .

© 2025 The Illogician

The student magazine of the Master of Logic at Amsterdam's ILLC