TeXhax Digest Tuesday, December 8, 1987 Volume 87 : Issue 99 [SCORE.STANFORD.EDU]TEXHAX99.87 Editor: Malcolm Brown Today's Topics: Metafont mode definitions for LN03R. Textures & Latex, Amstex, fonts Metafont Standard for German TEX and LATEX commands VAXStation previewer, plus comments on font-finding and sub-sampling Comments invited on TeX adaptions ideas. Looking for previewer for AT&T 3b1 Overwriting / blank page problem with QMS printer fixed : available. Diagrams/graphics with TeX output. tex's parsing of digits ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 30 NOV 87 20:13-EST From: DAK%CUTHRY.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu Subject: Metafont mode definitions for LN03R. Does anyone have an appropriate Metafont mode definition for the DEC LN03R (the "ScriptPrinter"), DEC's low-end PostScript box? It may or may not have the same engine as the original LN03 (for which I don't have the mode definition either). Thanks, David A. Kosower DAK@CUthry.BITnet ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Nov 87 17:33:48 PST From: king%entropy.ms@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Jim King) Subject: Textures & Latex, Amstex, fonts I have two related questions about Textures for the Mac. 1) I would like to use the AMS fonts (math, cyrillic) with Plain TeX (as I do on a Vax). What do you need to produce fonts that can be used with TeXtures? Those cute little suitcase files are neater than the directories with endless numbers of files on the PC or on Unix, but at least in the latter case I have some idea what is going on. I gather that the suitcases have the fonts at screen resolution and also at printer resolution. Can such suitcase files be built with Metafont (either a Mac version or transferred from font files created elsewhere) or are TeXtures users completely at the mercy of Addison-Wesley for their font supply? 2) I would like to use Latex with TexTures, but I do not need the fonts for the picture environment very much, since TeXtures can use postscript graphics. Has anyone gotten Latex to work with Textures, or must one wait for the official Addison-Wesley version? If you did it, how did you do it? Note: According to Addison-Wesley, they will ship Latex for Textures on 1/15/88 at a price of $44.95 with manual. I assume that the manual is Lamport's Latex User's Guide, which is too bad for those of us who have already bought a copy. AMStex will ship in 3/88 for $86.95 with Spivak`s Joy of TeX manual. Finally, a version of Textures compatible with the new Mac System 5.0 software will not be available from Addison- Wesley until 2/88 (I hear there is a problem printing). Jim King uucpnet address: uw-beaver!uw-entropy!king Internet (arpanet) address: king@entropy.ms.washington.edu Bitnet address: king%entropy.ms.washington.edu@beaver.cs.washington.edu Dept of Math Univ of Washington Seattle, WA 98195 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Nov 87 19:56 PST From: Don Hosek Subject: Metafont I have noticed the following unusual behavior in Metafont: When turningcheck=0, some portions of letters (the diagonals on V, v, Y, and y, for example) will disappear. These letters will be generated properly with turningcheck at its default value. I would think that turningcheck shouldn't affect the raster output at all. Any suggestions for why this is happening? -dh ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Dec 87 17:52:26 MEZ From: Z3000PA%AWITUW01.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu Subject: Standard for German TEX and LATEX commands Standard for German TeX commands The 6th Meeting of German TeX Users in Muenster (October 1987) has agreed on a standard for commands that make it easier to set german texts with TeX (or LaTeX or AmSTeX or WEB). This set of commands consists of the following: % "a for Umlaut-a (like \"a), also for all other vowels. % "s for sharp s (like \ss{}). % "ck for ck to be hyphenated as k-k. % "ff for ff to be hyphenated as ff-f, also for certain % other consonants. % " to separate ligatures. % "- like \-, but allowing hyphenation in the rest of % the word. % "" like "-, but producing no hyphen sign. % "` or \glqq for german left double quotes (similar to ,,) % "' or \grqq for german right double quotes (similar to ``) % \glq for german left single quotes (similar to , ) % \grq for german right single quotes (similar to ` ) % "< or \flqq for french left double quotes (similar to <<) % "> or \frqq for french right double quotes (similar to >>) % \flq for french left single quotes (similar to < ) % \frq for french right single quotes (similar to > ) % \dq for the original quotes character (") % \setlanguage{n} to switch to the language specified by n, which % should be one of the following command names: % \austrian \french \english \german \USenglish; % - this changes the date format, captions and (if % ``multilingual TeX''is installed) hyphenation. % \originalTeX to restore everything to the original settings % of TeX and LaTeX (well, almost everything). % \germanTeX to re-activate the german commands and settings. The last three commands have been designed such that they can easily be extended to other languages (``polyglot.tex''). A "`quick and dirty"' realisation of this standard exists as the file GERMAN.STY that can be \input in Plain TeX or selected as document style option in LaTeX. It works with the original TeX software and fonts and with the existing hyphenation patterns (for english or, better, german language). A copy of this file is available at Netserv@Aearn (Bitnet) and will soon also be available in the Rochester Latex Style Collection (Arpanet). For the future, a "better" realisation is planned, in which the Umlaute and the german and french quotes etc. shall be separate characters (ligatures) in the fonts, and the Umlaute and sharp s shall be included in the hyphenation patterns. Comments are welcome! Hubert Partl Technical University of Vienna, Austria z3000pa@awituw01.bitnet ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Dec 87 16:38 EST From: "Jerry Leichter (LEICHTER-JERRY@CS.YALE.EDU)" Subject: VAXStation previewer, plus comments on font-finding and sub-sampling I have a TeX previewer for VAXStations running VMS and VWS. It's called DVIDIS, and has a long and checkered past which can be traced back to an old and hoary DVI-Impress converter. DVIDIS is available via anonymous FTP from VENUS.YCC.YALE.EDU [192.26.88.4]. Log in as ANONYMOUS and do a CD [.DVIDIS]. That directory contains the (3) files you need: A documentation file, a sample font substitution file (compatible with Nelson Beebe's DVI drivers), and the executable image. The first two are simple ASCII files. The image is, of course, a binary file and MUST be transfered using BINARY mode if you expect it to work. DVIDIS supports PK fonts files ONLY. (Actually, I have a version for the old Imagen RST fonts, and others could be created.) All the directory organizations I've seen around are supported. Note that you MUST read the documentation carefully and set up the logicals as it tells you to - DVIDIS will NOT work "out of the box" unless your system happens to be set up EXACTLY like mine. Sources are NOT available for general distribution at the present time. Nor do I have any way to make DVIDIS available to you if your site does not support FTP; sorry. (Re-distribution sites are welcome; please get in touch.) re: Finding font files: After playing around with various algorithms, the best I've found is the one that Nelson Beebe uses in his DVI drivers. (In fact, the PK font file code I use is mainly cribbed from his stuff.) How- ever, even it doesn't always work, and it and other algorithms have a certain fragility: If they miss even slightly, they usually cannot recover. After various attempts to modify the algorithms to account for this, I finally concluded that there IS no "correct" solution - you are trying to coordinate several independently-written pieces of software that were created without a common understanding of what to do. So DVIDIS takes the pragmatic approach: From the TeX point size and magnification, it computes a simple first guess as to the correct font file size parameter. (I've never seen a standard term for this - the "300" in CMR10.300PK, for example.) It searches a table, provided as part of configuration, of all size parameters that the user has indicated correspond to any font files at all. It tries to open fonts using the listed size parameters, starting with the one closest to the computed guess and working further away until it either succeeds or decides the error is too large. Since I implemented this algorithm, I've had no further problems with "miss is as good as a mile" phenomena. Finally, as to sub-sampling: The VAXStation display has about 78 dpi. DVIDIS supports two sub-sampling modes: It can use fonts at either 150 or 75 dpi. The second sub-sampling step, if requested, is always done by simply OR-ing together squares of 4 bits. The first sub-sampling step is done either by OR-ing or by using the indicated font at an effective magstep -2. (I've got all the common fonts at that magnification, thanks again to Nelson Beebe.) My experience is: - At 150 dpi, either "sub-sampling" technique works, but, surpris- ingly, OR-ing usually looks better! The reason: OR-ing produces quite acceptable letters, except perhaps at the smallest font sizes, and preserves the spacing better. (No, I'm not exactly sure why.) - At 75 dpi, the output from either form is readable, though not something you'd want to spend hours looking at. You can usually make out different faces, though bold, for example, doesn't really look BOLD, it just looks "different". Italic and slanted fonts get pretty badly squashed, but are still readable. Using a smaller font and then one level of OR'ing produces the best results, though the differences are not large. The most noticable change is in things like the letter "e", whose bottom loop closes up after two levels of OR'ing but stays just barely open after the combined sub- sampling. You could play around with other ideas, but I suspect nothing you do short of hand-tuning the glyphs will help very much. In any case, I am skeptical that you can produce any represen- tation of, say, 12 point CM at 78 dpi, that you'd be willing to spend hours reading. But even simple techniques produce output that's perfectly good for quick reviews. Oh, and for slides, the 75 dpi stuff really shines! -- Jerry ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Dec 87 00:37:53 +0100 From: Per Westerlund Subject: Comments invited on TeX adaptions ideas. I have a low-priority project that (hopefully) eventually will enable me to input, and output, documents in Swedish. I would like the input from those of You who are more experienced TeX and MetaFont users than I am. There are problems with input, output and hyphenation. Input: The problem is that the ASCII-codes for the special characters '{', '|', '}', '[', '\' and ']' in Sweden normally are used to represent '\"a', '\"o', '\aa', '\"A', \"O' and '\AA'. There has been some efforts of using other special characters, such as '<' and '>', but the results are not completely satisfactory. Especially frustrating when you want to prepare a Swedish text on programming in C, with lots of {, }, [, ], \ and |! My proposed solution is to use 8 bit ANSII codes. In this standard the glyphs '\"a', '\"o', '\aa', '\"A', \"O' and '\AA' are encoded as (hex) E4, F6, E5, C4, D6 and C5. These codes are already used in some terminals, VT200 as an example, so I would even be able to look at my manuscript in swedish while keeping '{' etc. --Question: Can I teach TeX to use 8-bit characters, or use the ANSI-defined code-extension techniques? (The extension-technique is to encode 8-bit characters as ESC+something). Output: The glyphs made with the sequences '\"a', '\"o', '\aa', '\"A', \"O' and '\AA' are not "right", they don't qualify as typographically correct Swedish characters. Some accents are in the wrong place, especially in italic fonts, ant the size of the diereses and rings are wrong. I am prepared to make new descriptions, in MetaFont, with the help of a Swedish typographer, and prepare bitmaps, but where do I put the glyphs? If I put them among the upper 128 characters permitted in each font, then I can keep all the others at their regular places and be compatible with the rest of the world. I guess I should use the same codes as used by ANSI, just to have something to stick to. --Comments? Hyphenation: Another problem is hyphenation. Even if I make hyphenation patterns that fit Swedish (I am not even sure it is theoretically possible!), TeX won't hyphenate words with accents in them. If I solve the output problem above, then my Swedish characters won't be accented letters, so that won't be a primary problem. There are, however, other problems. TeX only hyphenates words with \lccode non-zero (from memory out of the TeXbook). \lccode can only be specified for characters with 7-bit codes, again from the TeXbook. --Question: Is this problem solvable? Another question: If the input problem is not solvable (in 8-bit sense), can I redefine some input codes with values less then 32 for my Swedish characters, and then have them mapped to characters with codes greater than 127? This will probably still keep me in touch with the rest of the world, since few manuscripts contain the "letters" ^^A through ^^_. If I get to many "No, can't be done"-answers, I will have to remove some of the lower-numbered glyphs and replace them with my own. This will enable me to use hyphenation-patterns without change to TeX. But: I won't be able to use an ANSI-compatible terminal for comfortable input and editing, but will be forced to use only bitmapped displays with cusom software. Also, I will not be able to use the same plain.tex to prepare manuscripts from the rest of the world, AND I WILL HAVE TO KEEP SEVERAL SETS OF FONTS! (Unless I make strange things to my dvi-driver. Can that be a way? "020 is dotless i, unless ...., when I fetch it at 243, where it is \"a.") --Comments? Per Westerlund Holistic Technology AB -----> perw@holtec.se <----- ^ | | (Don't just say "reply", out sendmail is broken) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Nov 87 01:32:49 EST From: Alex S. Crain Subject: Looking for previewer for AT&T 3b1 I am desparately looking for a TeX previewer for an AT&T 3b1. I have heard of such an animal, but I have not seen it. This thing runs GSS graphics, if that helps. ThanX in advance, :alex. alex@umbc3.umd.edu ------------------------------ Date: 2-DEC-1987 14:17:50 GMT +00:00 From: MACALLSTR%vax1.physics.oxford.ac.uk@NSS.Cs.Ucl.AC.UK Subject: Overwriting / blank page problem with QMS printer fixed : available. From: John_Macallister I've recently become responsible for TeX at our site and have now been able to fix what was for us a major nuisance with our QMS lasergrafix800 laser printer for the past few years. The problem was that we could either have wasted blank pages after most files or we would have the occasional files being overprinted by following ones. I have, I believe, pinpointed the problem as a bug in the QMS printer software. At any rate I have an effective work-round in the absence of access to the laser printer formware code. If anybody else is experiencing similar problems I can arrange for them to have my fix. If QMS are listening they, too, may be interested. I'm not certain that we have the very latest version of the software ( ours is QUIC 3.2 ) so QMS may already have sorted this. John ------------------------------ Date: 2-DEC-1987 18:29:30 GMT +00:00 From: MACALLSTR%vax1.physics.oxford.ac.uk@NSS.Cs.Ucl.AC.UK Subject: Diagrams/graphics with TeX output. From: John_Macallister Although plain TeX has the facilities to perform line drawing, it is very difficult to do in practice. An easier interface is LaTeX which has a 'Picture' mode with easy drawing commands. This has the advantage of giving you high quality text and drawing on the same page. For many laser printers, another option is simply to draw the picture using a 'standard' graphics package. The QMS Lasergrafix800 ( the one of which I have personal experience ) has a Tektronix 4014 graphics mode as a standard feature. As it is possible to 'clip' the picture and overlay pages within the printer itself, it is easy to mix text and graphics on the same page. As most graphics packages can produce Tektronix 4010/4014 output this would seem to be the easiest way of having diagrams and high quality text on the same page. The graphics can be added at any point, either in the TeX processing ( using a 'verbatim' facility ) or in the DVItoprinter file. John ------------------------------ Date: Wed 2 Dec 87 16:21:44-EST From: b beeton Subject: tex's parsing of digits the problem whereby two tests for the value of a register which presumably should have the same value turn out different, depending on the presence of a space after a digit: \advance\dummy by 1 \ifnum\dummy ... vs. \advance\dummy by 1\ifnum\dummy ... has been known for a long time, and since there is an explicit explanation in the texbook (pages 208 and 269-270), this can be considered a truly unfortunate design feature, but not a bug. the problem was discussed in tugboat 5#1, page 48, where some equally unfortunate and confusing examples were cited. there are two reasonable solutions -- make sure the space is always there, or insert \relax after the offending digit to halt tex's parsing. the \relax approach is probably safer, since it avoids the use of extra spaces that may obscure others that could creep into the output when they occur in macros used in horizontal mode. -- barbara beeton ------------------------------ %%% %%% subscriptions, address changes to: texhax-request@score.stanford.edu %%% please send a valid arpanet address!! %%% %%% submissions to: texhax@score.stanford.edu %%% %%% BITNET redistribution: TEX-L@TAMVM1.BITNET (list server) %%% %%%\bye %%% ------------------------------ End of TeXhax Digest ************************** -------