Directory macros/latex/contrib/LingTrees

       LingTrees Linguistics Tree-formatting Preprocessor and Macros
                  Avery D Andrews, March 2006

Purpose:

This is a LateX2e package for formatting linguistics trees (upside-down,
hanging by the root, with slanted branches from mother to daughters),
consisting of a prepreprocessor written in Python (freely downloadable from
http://www.python.org or http://www.activestate.com; the latter might be
easier to get working in Linux), and some LaTeX .sty files.  The preprocessor
allows trees to be entered as indented lists (no brackets to worry about),
and also deploys line-drawing and various other commands.  The macros are
responsible for the details of positioning.  Plain TeX is currently not
supported.

In addition to the preprocessor itself (trees.py), there's a simple
GUI for running it by pushing a button in the GUI subdirectory.
Free-standing executables for Windows may be found at:

 http://arts.anu.edu.au/Linguistics/People/AveryAndrews/Software/latex

The package is probably most suitable for irregularly-branching trees
with wide and complex node-labels, such as are prevalent for example in
LFG and HPSG. Other packages that might be worth looking at are pst-jtree
(good for heavily right-branching trees with small node-labels) and
qtree (which works with pdflatex).  It is an upwards-compatible
successor to the 'trees' package at CTAN/latex209/contrib/pstrees/trees.

Dependencies:

It requires either the pst-nodes module of the PSTricks, or Emma Pease's
tree-dvips (with less functionality), both available on CTAN.  

License:

  LaTeX macros:  LaTeX Project Public License
  trees.py:      GPL 2

Documentation:

The documentation for the macros and preprocessor commands is in the
file lingtrees.doc.pdf.  pst-nodes is accessed thru a partial emulation
of tree-dvips, documented in pst-tree-dvips-emu.doc.pdf.

For more information, see READMORE.txt and the pdf documentation.