PREFACE

A technical document rarely has a preface because a preface describes the document itself without describing the content. This document partly describes the accompanying electronic document which includes my recent textbook, SEP progress reports 70 and 72, and Joe Dellinger's thesis, SEP report 69.

ABSTRACT

I have created a textbook on echo soundings that provides a model for all publications where the results are contained in figures and illustrations. In this arrangement, programs are linked with the text file. Located in each figure caption is a pushbutton that launches the commands that recreate the figure. This gives new meaning to the hallowed words, ``reproducible research.'' The software is all free and nearly all of it is in widespread use. Experience at the Stanford Exploration Project shows that preparing such documents is little extra effort for those already using L^ATEX and makefiles. However, the required software is many megabytes and installing software on UNIX systems is daunting for amateurs. Therefore, I plan to distribute a CD-ROM with software preinstalled for machines of several manufacturers. This gives instant access to my book and it also provides a model of reproducible research. With luck, this document may appear on CD-ROM simultaneously with the paper report.