1 CD and DVD Drives
1.1 How do I burn a data CD?
1.2 How do I burn a data DVD?

2 LATEX
2.1 How do I spell check a TEX file?

Collect all items (including subdirectories in a single directory).

For a generic CD that is compatable with all systems:
mkisofs -r -o cd_image name_of_your_dir/

If you don't care about iso9660 compliancy (e.g. your only going to use a Linux machine).
mkisofs -r -U -o cd_image name_of_your_dir/

Check the location of you cdburner.
cdrecord -scanbus
This will produce an output like:

        
Cdrecord-Clone 2.01a18-dvd (i686-suse-linux) Copyright (C) 1995-2003 Jörg Schilling
Note: This version is an unofficial (modified) version with DVD support
Note: and therefore may have bugs that are not present in the original.
Note: Please send bug reports or support requests to .
Note: The author of cdrecord is not to be bothered with problems in this version.
Linux sg driver version: 3.1.25
Using libscg version 'schily-0.7'
cdrecord: Warning: using inofficial libscg transport code version 
(okir@suse.de-scsi-linux-sg.c-1.75-resmgr-patch '@(#)scsi-linux-sg.c  1.75 02/10/21 
Copyright 1997 J. Schilling').
scsibus0:
 0,0,0     0) 'HL-DT-ST' 'DVDRAM GSA-4160B' 'A301' Removable CD-ROM
 0,1,0     1) *
 0,2,0     2) *
 0,3,0     3) *
 0,4,0     4) *
 0,5,0     5) *
 0,6,0     6) *
 0,7,0     7) *
 
 

To burn the cd

For a 2.4.xx kernel (use uname -r to determine your kernel)
cdrecord -v dev=0,0,0 speed=8 -driveropts=burnfree -eject cd_image

For a 2.6.xx kernel (use uname -r to determine your kernel)
cdrecord -v dev=ATAPI:0,0,0 -driveropts=burnfree -eject cd_image

For DVD-R you can follow the same procedure as a CD.
You must add the command -dao to cdrecord
I also recommend reducing the speed.
e.g.
cdrecord -v dev=0,0,0 speed=2 -driveropts=burnfree -eject -dao cd_image

Similarly, you could use dvdrecord or cdrecord-prodvd
But since I did not compile them as root, they don't have permission to access the DVDburner.
Hopefully, I will remedy this in the near future....

For DVD+R (and also DVD-R)
You can use growisofs.
growisofs also allows you to add to the DVD (as opposed to cd_record which makes you record
the entire DVD at once ( -dao )
Although I have NOT tried this yet.

Option 1 Burning on the fly
Collect all your data in one directory

For the FIRST session of a multi-session DVD.
growisofs -speed=2 -Z /dev/dvd -r -U name_of_your_dir/
See above for the -U option.

For the later session of a multi-session DVD.
growisofs -speed=2 -M /dev/dvd -r -U name_of_your_dir/

For a single session closed disk.
growisofs -dvd-compat -speed=2 -Z /dev/dvd -r -U name_of_your_dir/

Option 2 Burning an isofs
Create an iso file system as described above for a CD.
growisofs -dvd-compat -speed=2 -Z /dev/dvd=cd_image


See option 1 for discussion about -Z versus -M

DONE!

American spelling is the default on my computer, so
ispell -x -t your_file.tex

For British spelling
ispell -x -t -d british your_file.tex

For German
ispell -x -t -d deutsch your_file.tex

For nedit, you can set-up different spell checks.
Look under

Preferences
  Default Settings
    Customize Menus
      Shell Menu
    

I have three spell check options
spell -> cat>spellTmp; xterm -e ispell -x spellTmp; cat spellTmp; rm spellTmp
spell_tex -> cat>spellTmp; xterm -e ispell -x -t spellTmp; cat spellTmp; rm spellTmp
spell_br_tex -> cat>spellTmp; xterm -e ispell -x -t -d british spellTmp; cat spellTmp; rm spellTmp