http://www.cs.umass.edu/~mccallum/papers/acm-queue-ie.pdf
I want to write a document that has the style like this one. Like having a light colored background on a page, having a big header (like the EXTRACTION) shown in this link. Do you think it is possible to something like this in Latex?
I am comfortable with doing normal things in latex.
That document smell like made with InDesign or QuarkXPress ... I guess there is a way to do it in latex but will not be straightforward at all ...
Hi
Off the top of my head:
-- check out ConTeXt, strictly speaking an alternative to LaTeX but one designed for something closer to DTP than LaTeX itself;
-- LaTeX has lots of facilities for DTP-like work, a good place to start would be the newsletter on link text
-- investigate packages such as PGF/TKZ, eso-pic, newspaper.
Regards
Mark
Your best bet for a document like this is to use a desktop publishing system. A Free/Open Source Software solution would be Scribus Desktop Publishing.
If you download and look at the document properties, it was made with InDesign CS3. Could you do this in LaTeX? Yes. The cover page is... just a cover page. If you use fancyhdr and make a page header, you can increase the header height, then lay the page header in there as an image. Try eso-pic for page backgrounds. But in all honesty, that document is kind of ugly. :D
Actually it's quite feasible using LaTeX, it's just a pity that the learning curve and the technical involvement are higher than when using DTP tools like Adobe InDesign.
This explains why few people are willing to involve the required amount of time and energy into mastering LaTeX for such kind of projects, and consequently why few introductory material is available on the subject.
One notable exception is the recent workshop given by Dominik Wagenführ at Ubucon 2009 in Göttingen. Its proceedings are freely available a the bottom of the page, as well as the related source code. It's all in German but fairly easy to understand and very educational, so I'd recommand you to study it.