TeXhax Digest Friday, January 15, 1988 Volume 88 : Issue 05 [SCORE.STANFORD.EDU]TEXHAX05.88 This weeks Editor: Malcolm Brown Today's Topics: IBM ALA print train via TeX? Wanted: PicTeX X-Window-10 previewer Apple Laserwriter .TFM files available? TeX sources for BITNET users hyphenation exceptions Tex compatibility among Macintosh, VAX and IBM dropped capital letter macro Re: dropped capital letter macro Pictures in TeX Creating PK fonts from PX fonts for DVIDIS \arraystretch command in LaTeX \specials in GF files DVItoVDU and PK pixel files Music typesetting in TeX TeX Version 2.9 Phonetic Symbols New LN03 Driver three column output in LaTeX or TeX. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 12-Jan-88 06:51:23-PST,859;000000000000 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Jan 88 09:29:27 EST From: "Wayne Podaima, NRC Comp. Services, Ottawa CAN" Subject: IBM ALA print train via TeX? Has anyone in IBMland looked at providing an ALA "print-train" replacement using TeX/LaTeX? The ALA (American Library Association), or LC (Library of Congress), train was used on IBM printers to provide all the characters required in printing library citations and catalogue cards. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Jan 88 18:41:24 +0100 From: Alexander Koerner Subject: Wanted: PicTeX Hi, How can I get `PicTeX' ? At our site we have only access to BITNET and USENET and I'd heard that it is available via anonymous ftp in ARPANET. Thanks in advance... Alex Alexander Koerner, Technische Universitaet Berlin (West) BITNET: koe@tub.BITNET UUCP: ...,seismo!unido,pyramid-!tub!koe ------------------------------ Date: 12 JAN 88 19:12- From: DIVKO%DGATUM5P.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: X-Window-10 previewer Please, is there any DVI previewer for XWindow 10.4 available? Thank's, Robert Divko TU Muenchen Physik Department, T30 James-Franck-Strasse D-8046 Garching ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Jan 88 17:08:53 -0100 From: mcvax!ruuinfvax!piet@uunet.UU.NET (Piet van Oostrum) Subject: Apple Laserwriter .TFM files available? Sorry for the late answer. I got a collection of tfm files for most (if not all) the LaserWriter-plus builtin fonts. I didn't make them myself, but I got them from Southampton University, England. They are available for FTP (together with a dvi2ps version that uses them) from: host: ulysses.cs.ucla.edu (128.97.2.19) file: ~ftp/pub/dvi2ps.tar.Z public ftp area on host oddjob.uchicago.edu [128.135.4.2], in file pub/dvi2ps.pk. There is one known problem: The courier files miss the '<' and '>' signs. By the way: do you know how to obtain the Adobe AFM files? Piet van Oostrum Telephone: +31-30-531806 Dept of Computer Science UUCP: ...!mcvax!ruuinfvax!piet University of Utrecht Budapestlaan 6, P.O. Box 80.012 3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Jan 88 09:43:14 Greenwich Mean Time From: Subject: TeX sources for BITNET users I think that we need something better than only a redistribution of TeXhax on BITNET. Those people that are on ARPANET are able to ftp new versions and bug fixes from SCORE but what about all the people having only BITNET access (as for example many people in Europe)? Here in Germany we are still working with a LaTeX version dated April or even January 1986, and nobody has ever got something better than TeX 2.1. It is certainly conceivable to order a fresh distribution tape for major changes but not every time a few lines of code are corrected. Therefore I think that we need a BITNET redistribution of the sources for TeX and METAFONT as well as for LaTeX and the CM fonts. Maybe it is not possible to do this because of lack of disk space etc. Perhaps one could use a scheme similar to the diff/patch files that are distributed for UNIX sources. I'd be very grateful to hear your comments. Rainer Sch\"opf Inst. f. Physik Univ. Mainz Staudinger Weg 7 D-6500 Mainz West Germany ------------------------------ Date: Wed 13 Jan 88 09:01:09-EST From: b beeton Subject: hyphenation exceptions the list of hyphenation exceptions that appeared in tugboat 8#3 has just been installed in tb0hyf.tex at score.stanford.edu, replacing an earlier version (from tugboat 6#3). it's currently planned to publish an updated version of this list in tugboat once a year, in the last issue. since there seems to be interest in obtaining the latest list electronically, the file at score will also be updated at the time of paper publication. additional exceptions are welcome; please send them to me. there's also a new version of the tugboat header file, in the same directory, called tugbot.sty. (regardless of what it sounds like, it's plain tex, not latex.) there is also a "top-level" file, tugbot.tex, that inputs the header and then two "article" files. the second article file, tb0cyr.tex, requires the fonts mcyr10, msx10 and msy10 to run; it is essentially the article from tugboat 6#3 describing the math society's cyrillic and extra symbol fonts. -- barbara beeton ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Jan 88 18:04 SET From: Renzo Beltrame Subject: Tex compatibility among Macintosh, VAX and IBM We are planning our in house publishing, having the idea to export the experience in the italian scientific network too. So I am interest in experiences about compatibility of TeX, at level of source file, and at level of DVI file among VAX and IBM main-frames, and Macintosh and PC IBM. We have TeX on IBM 3081 and we use it on 3812 and 3820 laser printer. We use LaTeX too, and we would have compatibility also at LaTeX level. We would also use the same TeX and LaTeX on Macintosh using the Apple Laser Writer. The problem does not seem too difficult, but I am interesting in practical experiences, mainly in the choice of drivers, products, etc. Thank for the very useful help, -renzo Acknowledge-To: ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Jan 88 15:31:45 EST From: matt moelter Subject: dropped capital letter macro Does anyone have a macro for producing enlarged, dropped capital letters at the beginning of a paragraph, for example: TTTTTTT his is the begining of a paragraph and I want the text to wrap T around the enlarged letter T .... T A style like this is seen frequently in older religious texts, T fancy documents etc. It would be useful to be able to specify T size of the enlarged character (ie. n lines ). Any help, hints, ideas, suggestions greatly appreciated. thanx ...matt BITNET: ST401014@BROWNVM INTERNET: ST401014%BROWNVM.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU Send response to me unless general interest then to TeXhax. %% Barbara Beeton replies: ------------------------------ Date: Wed 13 Jan 88 15:04:27-PST From: Barbara Beeton Subject: Re: dropped capital letter macro anne br\"uggemann-klein contributed some macros for special handling of first lines to tugboat, vol 8#2, pp 193 ff. the last paragraph of her article tantalizingly shows a dropped capital, but that is not included in her macros. you might ask if she still has the macro, though -- her csnet address is brueggem@germany . in a much earlier issue (2#3, pp 61 ff) this problem was solved for tex80. the names have changed, but the code may still be clear enough to allow it to be translated without too much trouble. \font H=cmr10 at 30pt \def \fancy#1{{\:H\save0\hbox{\chop to 0pt{\hbox{\lower 12pt \hbox{#1}\hskip .1em}}}\hangindent 1wd0 for 2\noindent \hide\box0\hskip -.1em}} \hide is the old name for \llap . \chop is trying to reduce the vertical dimension(s) of the specified box. the old syntax didn't include a \ on the \wd and required a multiplier. another place to look is in knuth's manual macros (manmac.tex), the definition for \danger . there have been a number of suggestions that macros published in tugboat be put on the network somewhere, available for ftp, etc. the editor of tugboat agrees. the board of tug agrees. all that is needed is some good texnical help in the tug office with the time to organize the files. (there's been a job opening there for over a year.) anyone interested can get in touch with me, and i'll get the message delivered to the proper destination. -- barbara beeton (bnb@seed.ams.edu) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Jan 88 15:56:48 EST From: beck@svax.cs.cornell.edu (Micah Beck) Subject: Pictures in TeX In a recent submission, Sebastian Rahtz asks about various picture generating environments for use with LaTeX. Of the options he lists, PicTeX is both 1) general (no restriction on the slope of lines or diam. of circles); 2) and is implemented completely by TeX macros. LaTeX pictures are restricted; TeXtyl makes use of a postprocessing program and non-standard fonts; tpic uses a preprocessor and requires the DVI driver to recognize its \special's; PostScript requires a PS device. The main problem with PicTeX is that it is slow and uses a LOT of TeX's internal memory. Many PicTeX users switch to Common Tex to get a larger memory than is possible with standard TeX. Eventually, all DVI drivers may understand a standard graphics description language such as PostScript. For now, one cannot assume that they do. I suggest the adoption of a standard TeX graphics interface (such as the PicTeX macro interface). A version of the macros could be devised which would produce PostScript \special's, allowing installations which have PS to make use of it. This would preserve the portability of the TeX source code. The choice of PicTeX and PostScript in the above discussion is not meant to imply that they are the only possible choices. Micah Beck Dept. of Computer Science Cornell University beck@svax.cs.cornell.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Jan 88 14:23 EST From: "Jerry Leichter (LEICHTER-JERRY@CS.YALE.EDU)" Subject: Creating PK fonts from PX fonts for DVIDIS I have receive two reports of problems with my DVIDIS VAXStation DVI previewer and PK font files. In each case, DVIDIS fails to display most of the charac- ters in most fonts. When run in DEBUG mode, it reports that the affected characters have a width of 0. I'm seeking additional information on one of these cases, but the other I tracked down to PK font files produced from PX font files using Version 2.2 of PXTOPK. This version has a serious bug that leads it to compute spurious values for the X- and Y-offset fields. A quick check with PKTYPE will usually reveal values for these fields in the millions; correct values are rarely more than 20 in absolute value. For the convenience of those copying DVIDIS, I have placed a copy of the latest version of PXTOPK.WEB, Version 2.3, in the same directory as DVIDIS itself (i.e., subdirectory [.DVIDIS] of the default directory for ANONYMOUS). This file is exactly as I copied it from Score a couple of weeks ago. Also in the same directory is DVIDIS.VMS-CHANGES, a change file originally written by Robert Bittl (BITTL AT DGATUM5P) and modified trivially by me to work with Version 2.3. I find it interesting that attempting to compile Version 2.2 of PXTOPK leads to a warning from the Pascal compiler about an uninitialized variable. Apparently, people have been ignoring this warning and going ahead and using the resulting executable file anyway. Sure enough, the variable IS uninitialized, and the files produced contain garbage. -- Jerry ------------------------------ From: (Mike Hannon; UCD Physics; [916]-752-4966) Subject: \arraystretch command in LaTeX Date: Thu 14 Jan 88 09:45:47-EST I have tried without success to make the LaTeX command "\arraystretch" work. We are running VMS V4.5, TeX V2.0, LaTeX V2.09 on an 8600. I would greatly appreciate receiving working examples showing the use of this command. Thanks. - Mike ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Jan 88 06:30:56 PST From: KARNEY%PPC.MFENET@NMFECC.ARPA Subject: \specials in GF files While you're about it, why not include also specials giving: (a) the name of the font being produced (e.g., cmr10) (redundant info to the file name, I know, but files sometimes get mistakenly renamed). (b) the magnification (c) the symbolic name of the \mode parameter (e.g., qms) so that it is clear what output device the parameters settings were intended for. (This may require a change to mode_def?) Charles Karney Plasma Physics Laboratory Phone: +1 609 243 2607 Princeton University MFEnet: Karney@PPC.MFEnet PO Box 451 ARPAnet: Karney%PPC.MFEnet@NMFECC.ARPA Princeton, NJ 08544-0451 Bitnet: Karney%PPC.MFEnet@ANLVMS.Bitnet ------------------------------ From: RMOWAT%DALAC.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu Date: Thu, 14 Jan 88 10:33 AST Subject: DVItoVDU and PK pixel files I have a little problem with DVItoVDU. I am currently using it on a MicroVAX II 630 QB running VMS. I am about to move it to a VAX 8800 running VMS. The problem is that the VAX 8800 version of TeX uses PK pixel files while the MicroVAX'es version of TeX uses PIX pixel files,DVItoVDU seems to require PXL files. Is there a way to modify DVItoVDU to enable it to read PK files? Without incurring too much programming costs ? Is there a version of DVItoVDU which reads PK files? If not, Is there a screen previewer available which reads PK files? (Preferably being able to use Visual 500 and Tektronic terminals) ------------------------------ Date: Thursday, 14 January 1988 1048-EST From: TEX%PENNDRLS.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu Subject: Music typesetting in TeX Sorry to bother the list with this again, but I can't find the piece of paper on which I wrote the reference address: Some time ago, someone posted a message concerning a couple of thesis written on the subject of music typesetting using TeX. The message indicated this material would appear in TUGBOAT in the near future. The near future has come and gone, and I now have an immediate need for this capability. Is the code to accomplish this feat available? Can someone give me a network address to contact? Thanks. -- R. David Murray Arts and Sciences Computing Facility University of Pennsylvania ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Jan 88 08:26:29 PST From: mackay@june.cs.washington.edu (Pierre MacKay) Subject: TeX Version 2.9 The TEX.WEB file on SCORE has acquired ASCII formfeeds at the head of every starred module, which is understandable as an organizational scheme, but there is one extra form-feed that is probably not supposed to be there. Here, extracted from a diff file is the occurrence: 20618c20573 < begin scan_char_num; f:=cur_font; p:=new_character(f,cur_val); --- > begin scan_char_num; f:=cur_font; p:=new_character(f,cur_val); (it now occurs to me that I should have replaced the form-feed with the explicit characters ^L, but I assure you it shows up on an EMACS screen.) TeX-2.7_to_2.9.diff will be available on june.cs.washington.edu in ~ftp/pub later on this morning. All Unix sites should take a look at tex-to-c.tar.Z also. It is the supercharged translation to C from WEB by Tim Morgan, based on Tom Rokicki's earlier translator. Compared with Pascal compilations, it is smaller, tighter code, runs faster, and loads so much faster that it may become unnecessary to store preloaded TeXs at all. Moreover, if you really need a HUGE TeX, the pc 16-bit array index limitation is no longer stopping you. All we need now is the same sort of translator for TeXware, METAFONT, and MFware. It would be especially satisfactory to be able to send out a bootstrapping tangle.c in place of the old tangle.p. That could eliminate most, perhaps all, of the machine-dependent Setup stuff in the distribution, and would make SystemV ports a breeze. Tim Morgans stuff passes Trip with full honors. Pierre A. MacKay TUG Site Coordinator for Unix-flavored TeX ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Jan 88 10:07:21 CST From: Pat Lestrade Subject: Phonetic Symbols To font gurus: I am looking for a font that contains the standard phonetic symbols such as schwa et. al. Your help in locating these would be greatly appreciated. P.L. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Jan 88 15:53:19 est From: padwa%harvsc3@harvard.harvard.edu (Danny Padwa) Subject: New LN03 Driver We currently have a DVI2LN3 driver on our system that uses the ...PXL files for font information. We now have some new utilities that require the .PX files. Is there a driver out there for the LN03 that can read the .PK files? Also, where can we get a driver for the HP Laserjet?? Thanks, Danny Padwa Harvard University | BITnet: PADWA@HUSC3.BITNET INTERnet: PADWA@HUSC3.HARVARD.EDU | MFEnet: PADWA@MFE.MFENET UUCP: ...harvard!husc4!padwa | HEPnet/SPAN HUHEPL::HUSC3::PADWA (node 57.503) | USPS: 38 Matthews Hall | Harvard University | Cambridge MA 02138 USA ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Jan 88 13:47:14 PST From: uw-nsr!uw-warp!dennis%beaver.cs@beaver.cs.washington.edu Subject: three column output in LaTeX or TeX. Greetings. Last June and again last September, people posted queries about the existence of any three column macros for LaTeX. I searched through all the back issues of TeXhax that I have, but didn't find any responses. So, I'll ask again: Is anyone using LaTeX (or even TeX) for three column output? If you are, how do you do it? I think I could (and probably will, if no one answers) write the TeX myself, but it seems like someone would have already done this. Thanks, Dennis. arpa: uw-nsr!uw-warp!dennis@beaver.cs.washington.edu usenet: {ihnp4|decvax|...}uw-beaver!uw-nsr!uw-warp!dennis %%% Barbara Beeton has a response: ------------------------------ Date: Fri 15 Jan 88 04:28:37-PST From: Barbara Beeton anyone who reads tugboat has probably noticed that there are a couple of sections in 3 columns -- author addresses and institutional members. the output routine is kind of a kludge (an artifact of coping with arcane output devices with wildly different capabilities in their output drivers -- i can hardl