1. Ma 375 - Communicating Mathematics
Carl Eberhart and Paul Eakin
Class 17
Building books of worksheets with Perl scripts

2. Today we will
show how use hyperlinks and bookmarks
to make a book of worksheets, and
also show how to use two perl scripts,
mkcontents.pl and mkindex.pl to build
a table of contents worksheet and an
index worksheet.

3. A book of worksheets is a set of worksheets which are connected by hyperlinks.
You can think of a directed graph where the vertices are the worksheets and the edges are the hyperlinks.
There are many forms such a graph might take:
A linear (circular?) book of worksheets
A rooted book of worksheets

4. Since hyperlinks can get you to a bookmark in a worksheet your vertices have to be thought of as ‘fat’
worksheet 1
worksheet 2
worksheet 3
bookmark
hyperlink

5. To construct a table of contents worksheet by
hand, simply open a new worksheet and insert
a hyperlink to each worksheet in your book of
worksheets.
To construct one with the perl script mkcontents.pl
1. put the names of the worksheets in the book
in a file, one name to a line. Put in the .mws suffix.
2. From the TeXShell, execute the perl script with
the command
perl -S mkcontents toc.mws fileofworksheets
where toc.mws is the name you want for the table
of contents worksheet and fileofworksheets is the
name of the file containing the names of the

6. To make an index worksheet,
1. bookmark all of the items in all of the worksheets in
your book. You can only put one bookmark per paragraph.
2. From a TexShell, issue the command
perl -S mkindex index.mws toc.mws fileofworksheets
where index.mws is the name of your index worksheet
toc.mws is the name of your table of contents worksheet
and fileofworksheets is the file where you have listed the
names of the worksheets in the book.

7. Homework Assignment: due Monday, March 30
Take a collection of three or more worksheets
from the Chisel disk, and bookmark them and
otherwise modify them however you want to.
Then construct a table of contents worksheet,
either by hand or with mkcontents.pl and construct
an index worksheet with mkindex.pl. Finally, put
in a hyperlink back to the table of contents worksheet
from each worksheet in your book.
Send me an when you have completed the task,
describing what you did and any difficulties you had
in carrying out the task.