Date: Sun 17 Apr 88 09:41:11 PDT Subject: TeXhax Digest V88 #36 TeXhax Digest Sunday, April 17, 1988 Volume 88 : Issue 36 [SCORE.STANFORD.EDU]TEXHAX36.88 Editor: Malcolm Brown Today's Topics: Immoderate notes: forced migration of BITNET subscribers Fill-in-the-blanks macro kludge TANGLE.P (TeXhax Digest V88 #34) Width of columns in \halign TeX version \obeylines and MPSX input files doublespace Contents of the LaTeX style collection, April 4th 1988 pageinserts LaTeX footnote problem TeXhax Digest V88 #30 TeXhax Digest V88 #30 No offense taken New Discussion List for Xerox Printers XyWrite and TeX Problem with table lookup algorithm in TeX TeX VMS change files Problem with table lookup algorithm in TeX Computing sines in TeX ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 16-Apr-88 From: Malcolm Brown Subject: Immoderate notes: forced migration of BITNET subscribers %%% This note is for those folks on BITNET who have still not migrated %%% to the list server. Beginning with this week, I will be signing you %%% on the list server so that you receive the digest via that server %%% system. You'll know when you've enrolled when you receive a file %%% that contains instructions on using the list server program. You'll %%% also start getting duplicates of the digests, one from the list server %%% and the other one from Score. %%% Once you begin receiving duplicates, send a note to texhax-request %%% to request deletion from the Score list. %%% Keep in mind that from that point on, all transactions that have %%% to do with your TeXhax subscription should be directed to your local %%% TeXhax list server. Submissions to TeXhax should be sent to %%% "texhax@score.stanford.edu" as usual. %%% Sorry to be heavy-handed about this, but I have been asked repeatedly %%% by the folks who maintain the BITNET gateway to see that this happens. %%% And I have made numerous pleas in the past for co-operation in this %%% regard. Malcolm ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Apr 88 20:27:08 EDT From: Hal_Varian@um.cc.umich.edu Subject: Fill-in-the-blanks macro I've designed a macro for printing fill-in-the-blank type questions and answers. If you write "Mares eat \Ans{oats}" then you get either "Mares eat _________" or "Mares eat OATS" depending on whether a \DoAnswers flag is set to true or false. This works fine unless I use mathematics. A question like "$(x+1)^2$ equals \Ans{$x^2 + 2x + 1$}" generates an error message about a missing dollar sign. I think that the problem has something to do with the difference between a math list and a horizontal list. Here follows the current definition of the \Ans macro. Does anybody have any ideas about how to get it to work with mathematics? ----------------------------cut here------------------------------- %list processing routines taken from TeXbook, p. 310-11 \def\dolist{\afterassignment\dodolist\let\next= } \def\dodolist{\ifx\next\endlist \let\next\relax \else \\\let\next\dolist \fi \next} \def\endlist{\endlist} %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %print out answers or not? \newif\ifDoAnswers\DoAnswerstrue %See if next token is a space. If it is, set a low penalty for %line breaking. Set box 0 to be the next token. If we should %do answers, underscore box 0, back up and print box 0. Otherwise %just underscore box 0. \def\\{\expandafter\if\space\next\penalty0\fi\setbox0=\hbox{\next}% \ifDoAnswers\underscore\llap{\raise2pt\box0}\else\underscore\fi} %Underscore -- put in strut so there is enough space for handwriting. \def\underscore{\bigstrut\vrule height 0pt depth.5pt width\wd0} \def\bigstrut{\hbox{\vrule height 16pt width 0pt}} \font\AnsFont=cmtt10 at 14pt \def\Ans#1{\space{\AnsFont {\dolist#1\endlist}\underscore}} %%%%Example of use: Question: Mares eat \Ans{oats}, and does eat \Ans{oats}, and little lambs eat \Ans{ivy}. Kids'll eat ivy too, \Ans{wouldn't you}? --------------------------------cut here--------------------------------- Hal Varian Internet address: Hal_Varian@um.cc.umich.edu Department of Economics University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Apr 88 21:51:44 EDT From: Ray Hirschfeld Subject: kludge What's the purpose of the kludge in lfonts.tex? It seems that cmcsc10 is just as easy to generate at mags .8 and .9 as amcsc10. Easier, perhaps, because it's easier to get ahold of a new mf than an old one. A shrunk cmcsc10 may not be as good as a real cmcsc8 or cmcsc9, but isn't it better than a shrunk amcsc10? Why use the am font? I assume there's a good reason but I can't figure out what it is. Ray ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Apr 88 20:47:26 PDT From: mackay@june.cs.washington.edu (Pierre MacKay) Subject: TANGLE.P (TeXhax Digest V88 #34) Tangle.p is on any copy of the UnixTeX distribution and has not changed for about 18 months, so you can copy it from any available tape. There is also a pretty-printed tangle.p (much easier to read, but with no system dependencies, so it will require hacking) on ./tex82/unsupported Again you can get it from any recipient of a recent TeX tape. You should never consider hand editing Tangle.web. All system dependencies should be written into tangle.ch, which consists of variant lines of code to replace the unusable generic lines in tangle.web. The whole point of the WEB system is that there should be only one authorised WEB, which is the one found on SCORE.STANFORD.EDU. Change files may proliferate, but there is only one WEB. Are you writing from a European or a North American site? On most Unix systems, you may want to use the soon-to-be released bootstrap of tangle.c, which is generated through WEB-to-C. THe code is still directly linked to the WEB, but compiles faster into a more efficient executable. Email: mackay@june.cs.washington.edu Pierre A. MacKay Smail: Northwest Computing Support Group TUG Site Coordinator for Lewis Hall, Mail Stop DW10 Unix-flavored TeX University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195 (206) 543-6259 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Apr 88 09:58:04 EST From: i5f@l.cc.purdue.edu (S Bechtolsheim) Subject: Width of columns in \halign Is there a STRAIGHT FORWARD WAY of getting the width of each column as a result of an \halign? I would like to say something like \setbox 0 = \vbox {\halign ....} and as a side effect \dimen i contains the width of the ith column. Stephan v. Bechtolsheim, i5f@l.cc.purdue.edu, (317) 463 0162 Statistics Department, Purdue University, Math Sc Bldg, W Lafayette, IN 47907 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Apr 88 13:55:11 PDT From: tun@lbl-rtsg.arpa (Coban Tun) Subject: TeX version Dear Sir or Madam In reference to V88 #32, Mr. David Fuch wrote of Tex Version 1.0. He also mentioned of CM* fonts being outdated. What is the latest version of TeX? I notice his mail was dated 1983 Dec. We have Tex82 V2.0 from Maria Code. Version number seem to have decreased. I am lost. Is Tex82 already outdated? coban tun tun@lbl.rtsg.arpa tun%sfsu1.hepnet@lbl.arpa ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Apr 88 19:27 ADT From: Gus Gassmann Subject: \obeylines and MPSX input files I came upon this rather strange feature of TeX this morning. I intended to typeset a sample input file for a linear program and started out by saying {\tt\obeylines NAME EXAMPLE ROWS cNccOBJECT cLccROW1 COLUMNS ccccCOL1ccccccROW1ccccccccccc1.0 ccccCOL2ccccccROW1ccccccccccc2.0 RHS ccccRHScccccccROW1ccccccccccc3.0 ENDATA } The actual file had a few more lines than this, but the principle should be clear. In MPS format column alignment is important, so I chose to illustrate this using ties. (This would have been extremely convenient, because the file itself was constructed with a matrix generator and after hauling it into TeX I simply changed the blank spaces to ties.) Unfortunately, a tie does not constitute a valid page break (it seems that TeX does not recognize the ties as the beginning of a new paragraph), so I got very strange results. I understand that \obeylines explicitly starts a new paragraph at a line break, so this behavior is a bit puzzling. More to the point, what is the quickest way to fix it up? Gus Gassmann ( GASSMANN @ DALAC.bitnet ) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Apr 88 19:03:59 EDT From: toms@ncifcrf.gov Subject: doublespace DOUBLE/SINGLE SPACE QUESTION Sorry I didn't answer all your comments faster. I got lots of responses (thanks a whole bunch!) and found out that the best solution is the one that George Greenwade just mentioned: use the doublespace documentstyle. You can obtain the style file (doublespace.sty) from Rochester. (Mail me if you need instructions on the ftp protocol.) Jean-Francois Lamy sent me a new version of doublespace.sty, and Ken Yap has kindly put this into the collection. It took awhile to arrange this, hence the delay. There is also a simple solution, but it must be of the form \small \renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{1} \normalsize This won't do footnotes and figures automatically as the style does. David Murray points out that "It is not sufficient to set the \baselinestretch to change the spacing. The \baselinestretch is only inspected when the font size is changed. And because of the way \normalsize is defined, that means *changed*." Tom Schneider National Cancer Institute Laboratory of Mathematical Biology Frederick, Maryland toms@ncifcrf.gov ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 04 Apr 88 17:17:44 -0400 From: Ken Yap Subject: Contents of the LaTeX style collection, April 4th 1988 The LaTeX style collection now contains the files listed below. You should retrieve the file 00index first to obtain a brief description of current directory contents. The file 00directory contains a reverse time sorted list of files; this may be helpful in keeping your collection in sync with LaTeX-style. More submissions are very welcome. 00directory 00index 00readme a4.sty a4wide.sty aaai-instructions.tex aaai-named.bst aaai.sty acm.bst agugrl-sample.tex agugrl.sty agujgr-sample.tex agujgr.sty alltt.sty amssymbols.sty apalike.bst apalike.doc apalike.sty art10.txt art11.txt art12.txt article.txt biihead.sty bsf.doc bsf.sty captcont.sty cyrillic.sty dayofweek.tex deproc.sty deprocldc.tex docsty.shar doublespace.sty draft.sty drafthead.sty drop.doc drop.sty dvidoc.shar1 dvidoc.shar2 epic.shar1 epic.shar2 espo.sty format.sty fullpage.doc fullpage.sty geophysics.sty german.sty ieeetr.bst ist21.sty latex.bug latex.dif layout.readme layout.tex lcustom.tex lfonts_ams.readme lfonts_ams.tex lgraph.shar local-suppl.tex man10.sty man11.sty man12.sty manual.readme manual.sty memo.sty mfr.sty mitthesis-sample.tex mitthesis.sty natsci.bst natsci.sty newalpha.bst nl.sty nopagenumbers.doc nopagenumbers.sty remark.sty resume-sample.tex resume.sty rscsencode.shar sc21-wg1.sty sc21.sty schedule.doc schedule.sty sfwmac.sty shapiro-btxbst-0.98.readme shapiro-btxbst-0.98.doc shapiro-makebst.sh showlabels.sty siam.bib siam.bst siam.sty siam.tex siam10.sty siam11.sty siam12.sty slem.doc slem.sty spacecites.doc spacecites.sty suthesis.doc suthesis.sty texindex.shar texnames.doc texnames.sty tgrind.sty threepart.sty titlepage.txt trademark.sty uct10.doc uct11.doc uct12.doc ucthesis.doc ucthesis.readme uuencode.shar vdm.doc vdm.sty vdm.tex wsltex.shar xxxcustom.tex xxxslides.sty ***** Please note that ieeetr, acm, siam and apalike BibTeX styles require BibTeX 0.99b. The others require an 0.98i or older. 1. For Internet users - how to ftp: Here is an example session. Disclaimer: ftp syntax varies from host to host. Your syntax may be different. The syntax presented here is that of Unix ftp. Comments in parentheses. % ftp cayuga.cs.rochester.edu (a.k.a. cs.rochester.edu, a.k.a. 192.5.53.209) ... (general blurb) user: anonymous password: ftp> cd public/latex-style (where the files are) ftp> ls (to see what is there) ... (lots of output) ftp> get 00index ... (more blurb) ftp> quit 2. Non-Internet users - how to retrieve by mail: An archive server has been installed. Send a piece of mail to LaTeX-Style (@cs.rochester.edu, via uucp or your favourite gateway) in the following format: Subject line should contain the phrase "@file request". Body of the mail should start with a line containing only an @ (at) sign. The first line following should be a mail address FROM rochester TO you. Then follow by the names of the files you want, either one to each line, or many to each line, separated by spaces. End with a line containing only an @ sign. Case is not significant. For example, if you are user at site.bitnet, this is what you should send: To: latex-style@cs.rochester.edu Subject: @file request @ user%site.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu (don't forget your address!) 00readme 00index @ A word to the wise: it is best to fully qualify your mail address. Our mailer is pretty ignorant of Bitnet, CSnet or UUCP addresses unless they are in registered domains. It is best that you supply explicit gateway routes. Use the new domainized form or addresses whenever possible. If the Subject: line looks like: Subject: @file request uuencode or Subject: @file request rscsencode then the mail will be encoded with the requested scheme before sending. This _might_ help sites that get mail through gateways with unfriendly EBCDIC/ASCII mappings. You can find sources for the two types of en/decoders in the collection. You may have to do some porting of sources. Be patient as the server is actually a batch program run once a day. Files will be sent in batches, each not exceeding 100kbytes in size. 3. Distribution for IBM PC and clone users: There are two sources. David W. Hopper 446 Main Street Toronto, Ontario Canada M4C 4Y2 has LaTeX style files only. 1. Either one 1.2 MB diskette or three 360KB diskettes, blank and formatted. 2. Indication of the format required, 3. A self-addressed mailer, and 4. A $5.00 donation per set of files, to cover postage and equipment wear & tear. (If you live outside North America, airmail delivery will probably require more postage. You should probably contact David for details.) 5. No phone calls or personal visits please. Jon Radel P.O. Box 2276 Reston, VA 22090 has LaTeX style files and other goodies. For a list or other info send a SASE. 1. 360KB diskettes, blank and formatted. 2. A stamped, self-addressed mailer, and 3. $1.50 per disk. If you live outside North America, skip the stamps and send additional money or International Reply Coupons. As a convenience for people who have more money than floppies, Jon will supply everything for $6.00 per disk to U.S./Canada/Mexico addresses. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 04 Apr 88 21:43:07 ADT From: hebert%DAL.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu Subject: pageinserts I am interested in inserting pages in TEX. As far as I can see I have to put the insert at the end of a paragraph. The problem occurs when the page inserts are figures. If the figure is referred at the statrt of the paragraph and the paragraph ends on the next page, the page insert is two pages away from the first reference. I would like TEX to have something like footnotes for pageinserts - it inserts the page in the next page but continues the present page to the end. The only way I see to get around this is to print the page, then to hard break the page around the right spot, insert the pageinsert, then start the paragraph with noident. Does anyone have a better way? Thanks Dave Hebert@dal.Bitnet ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 05 Apr 88 12:47:40 GMT From: Marion Neubauer <$90%DHDURZ1.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu> Subject: LaTeX footnote problem In a document typsetted with LaTeX I have many short footnotes. I tryed to print them like a single paragraph with generous spacing between the individual items. Knuth describes the modification for the output routine in the TeXbook, Appendix D: Dirty Tricks page 398. But I wasn't sucessfull, I get lots of errormessages from LaTeX and TeX. Has anyone tried it before? Marion Neubauer RZ90 at DHDURZ1.bitnet ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Apr 88 09:06:20 EDT From: Charlie Martin Subject: TeXhax Digest V88 #30 Pierre, the point is that I've got SliTeX and I've been trying to install it; it don't seem to go. In particular, many fonts are missing, and while I know you don't want to ship out lots of fonts, Metafont doesn't match its documentation and I'm having a hell of a time installing it either. As a particular example, there is at least on spot in the readme files that specifically states SLiTeX is on the tape but still doesn't work on UNIX. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Apr 88 08:24:07 PDT From: mackay@june.cs.washington.edu (Pierre MacKay) Subject: TeXhax Digest V88 #30 That has to be a very old tape. The message dates from the time that there were no mf files for SliTeX. I wrote those about two years ago, and they have been on SCORE.STANFORD.EDU for about 18 months. Most Slitex fonts are Huge magnifications of cmssq*8, along with a few oversize lasy* lcircle* (aka circle) cmsy* and cmex fonts. METAFONT 1.3 has no trouble with them, but METAFONT at a lower version number just might. (Usually large sizes are not the problem, however) Other than that, making SliTeX is just a matter of digesting splain.tex rather than lplain.tex and treating the resultant splain.fmt as you would any othe *.fmt file. Maybe you have an old incompatible splain? ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Apr 88 08:49:44 PDT From: mackay@june.cs.washington.edu (Pierre MacKay) Subject: No offense taken I did not take your remarks as an attack, and thus was in no way offended. But I do think your exasperation is misdirected. The problem of access to free software is one that will have to be solved in Europe, by Europeans. FTP and related protocols are the backbone of resource sharing systems in North America, at least in the educational research community and, to put it very simply, I have barely the time to keep up to date via FTP, let alone learning another (usually more limited) protocol. I recently suggested, not entirely in jest, that the EEC might divert some of the savings from a rationalization of CAP (1992 is not that far off) to establishing something like the UUNET server. Brussels or Strassbourg are the obvious places, and since Strassbourg is a very active TeX site, Strassbourg seems to be the winner. But I doubt that the University there would be able to take on a major distribution server all on its own. If I suggested that to the University of Washington, I would be laughed off campus. The redistribution of TeX, like the redistribution of GNU is unrestricted, and should be undertaken in exactly the same spirit. But I can't presume to manage European network access protocols, and I haven't the resources to repackage things from this end. It is up to Europe to set up a public domain EuroNet for software distribution, and it sounds as if the time has come. Compared with other Common Access Protocols presently in force in the EEC, this would be relatively cheap, and it would certainly be a lot more productive Email: mackay@june.cs.washington.edu Pierre A. MacKay Smail: Northwest Computing Support Group TUG Site Coordinator for Lewis Hall, Mail Stop DW10 Unix-flavored TeX University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195 (206) 543-6259 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Apr 1988 19:20:31 CDT From: "Thomas J. Reid" Subject: New Discussion List for Xerox Printers I have recently created an open discussion list for Xerox centralized and decentralized printing systems. Topics for discussion include communications-related concerns (both hardware and software), printer operating system software, printing technology, Xerox support, page description languages, host-based software packages, and fonts among other issues. If you are interested in subscribing to this list, send a command in the form: SUBSCRIBE XEROX-L Your Name to LISTSERV@TAMVM1.BITNET. The command can be sent as an interactive message or as the first line (not the subject line) of a mail message or file. Once you are subscribed to the list, mail should be sent to XEROX-L@TAMVM1.BITNET. Thomas Reid Computing Services Center Texas A&M University College Station, Texas 77843-3142 Tel: (409) 845-8459 Email: X066TR@TAMVM1.BITNET ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Apr 88 12:02:23 EDT From: dow@wjh12.harvard.edu (Dominik Wujastyk) Subject: XyWrite and TeX I use XyWrite III plus (ver. 3.53) on an AT as my editor. It has a great deal going for it, as anyone who reads comparative word processor reviews will know. A world class word processor. It is pretty ideal as a TeX front end too, because of its transparent file format and programmability. I have written a simple program in the XyWrite language which converts my files into LaTeX, and it works well for me. This makes unmatching braces almost a thing of the past, since I see underlining and bold text on the screen as I type it. I also have a couple of XyWrite programs that check matching braces, and matching \begin and \end statements. But my conversion program is limited to my needs in preparing the current book I am doing: it is not general to all features of LaTeX; it does for me, I know how to twiddle it to get anything else I want, and so on, but it is not good enough to give away, and it is not particularly "clean". A couple of days ago I received a disk in the mail from XyQuest -- unsolicited -- containing a XyWrite driver for the CORA typesetting language. Wow! I rang up to thank them, and made noises about TeX. XyWrite uses the hyphenation algorithm from TeX (Liang's), so some or all of the XyQuest programmers must be familiar with TeX. Well, the person I talked to said that they would be happy to do a full driver for TeX, and that they are currently concentrating on preparing drivers for typesetters in general. He also said that they decide what to work on simply on the basis of how many enquiries they have had for a particular product. You can guess what is coming next. If you have the energy, please write to XyQuest, or phone them, and ask for a printer file to drive TeX. Address: XyQuest, Inc., P. O. Box 372, Bedford, MA 01730. Phone: (617) 671-0888 Dominik Wujastyk ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 06 Apr 88 12:27:19 -0700 From: kelem@aerospace.aero.org Subject: Problem with table lookup algorithm in TeX I'm having trouble implementing a table lookup algorithm in TeX/LaTeX. [ message duplicated in texhax 8837; look there for text ] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Apr 88 14:06:49 PDT From: Subject: TeX VMS change files Hello...I am trying to find out how I can get change files for the VMS version of TeX...I am most interested in the change file for the GFtoPK.WEB program...any help would be appreciated...thanks ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Apr 88 22:02:18 PDT From: mackay@june.cs.washington.edu (Pierre MacKay) Subject: Problem with table lookup algorithm in TeX I am only guessing, since I have never tried this sort of trick, but it looks to me as if #3 is defined in such a way that it must have a number rather than a variable. \the is the usual way to treat this situation. \expandafter is not much help here because I don't think it forces the result of the assignment to be fed to height. All expandafter does is go through the character expansions in a non-standard order, and that won't deliver a genuine number to height. Would it be possible to evaluate indexnumber first and then set up \vrule? I confess I am not clear what would be being expanded after what in your case. I don't know how the grouping token is treated by \expandafter. If it is effective in creating the group, it seems to me that the \ after the closing brace might be what was expanded out of order. Stefan Bechtolsheim has a little treatise on \expandafter in the new TUGboat, which will soon be out ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Apr 88 12:21:56 BST From: CMI011%IBM.SOUTHAMPTON.AC.UK@forsythe.stanford.edu Subject: Computing sines in TeX I want to set text in TeX rotated through an arbitrary angle; I am using a PostScript printer. OK, so I bung the text in a box, work out its dimensions, leave some space, then dump the box (telling TeX it has no size) with appropriate PS code to do the rotation. In the case where the rotatiion is 90 degrees, no problem, but when it isn't, we need to work out the 'some space' I mentioned earlier. Seems to me that to work out the space required by a rectangle rotated through 23 degrees requires trigonometry such as what TeX doesn't have. You gurus who did all this years ago are yawning by now. But can you just tell me how to do it? I last did maths in 1970, so be patient. I imagine that other people have come across and tackled this many times. Is my explanation clear enough? If you have the macros to hand, I'd be very glad of them... Sebastian Rahtz Computer Science University SOuthampton, UK ------------------------------ %%% %%% Concerning subscriptions, address changes, unsubscribing: %%% BITNET: send a one-line mail message to LISTSERV@TAMVM1.BITNET: %%% SUBSCRIBE TEX-L % to subscribe %%% %%% All others: send mail to %%% texhax-request@score.stanford.edu %%% please send a valid arpanet address!! %%% %%% %%% All submissions to: texhax@score.stanford.edu %%% %%%\bye %%% End of TeXhax Digest **************************