TeXhax Digest Friday, April 29, 1988 Volume 88 : Issue 42 [SCORE.STANFORD.EDU]TEXHAX42.88 Editor: Malcolm Brown Today's Topics: New version of AFTOPL now available TeX/LaTeX on a Gould Powernode 9080 Correction to LaTeX - letter.sty Problems: \tableofcontents command and [titlepage] option Line breaking in programs. POSTSCRIPT FOR DEC SCRIPTWRITER 256-character fonts and ArborText's DVILASER cnaf txmapper TeX for line printers Multilingual TeX/LaTeX (TeXhax Digest V88 #40) Re: TFM checksums may not be a TeX-to-C problem SPRINGER.TXH \newread and reading and writing the same file. Painless Greek letters? VMS manuals in TeX String Operations? need psdf filter for Sun DVI -> Postscript on VMS Re: TeXhax Digest V88 #33 (LaTeX Notes) Re: TeX mystery (TeXhax #41) supertabular PK file blocking on CMS tuglist on-line Flogging TeX BibteX 0.99c for Vax/VMS Problem with TeX ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 26 Apr 88 02:08:39 EDT From: elwell@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Clayton Elwell) Subject: New version of AFTOPL now available Today I did a complete rewrite of `aftopl', a program to convert Adobe Font Metric files (AFM files) to TeX PL files, which can then be converted via the standard `pltotf' program into TFM files for PostScript fonts. This version is much improved over version 1. It now correctly handles all of the ligature and kerning information, and makes reasonable guesses at italic corrections. It is available via anonymous FTP from tut.cis.ohio-state.edu as `pub/aftopl.c'. I have also placed a copy on june.cs.washington.edu (Pierre, feel free to toss it into the Unix TeX stuff with psdvi). Clayton M. Elwell -=- "Gee, the Captain's vanished utterly so we'd better beam down the second-in- command to exactly the same coordinates to see what happened to him!" ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 88 08:40:48 EDT From: jp@atrp.media.mit.edu (Jean-Pierre Schott) Subject: TeX/LaTeX on a Gould Powernode 9080 I would like to bring up TeX/LaTeX on a Gould and I would need change files for TeX and a bootable tangle.p for the Gould. As an alternative or a complement, it would be nice to have diffs for Pat Monardo's ctex that take care of variables to be put in the "far" address space. Monardo's ctex compile fine except for warnings unsigned >= 0 always true in box.c (lines 205, 220, 240, 257, 281) hash.c (line 86) print.c (lines 139, 161, 199) tokenlists.c (lines 396) but does not link big of the 256kb limits on segments i.e the message near subsegments too big for 5 bases .... Thanks. Jean-Pierre Schott (ARPA) jp@atrp.media.mit.edu (UUCP) ..!mit-eddie!mit-atrp!jp ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 88 08:54 EST From: "Jim Gerland (Postmaster)" Subject: Correction to LaTeX - letter.sty I found a missing \def in letter.sty. Sorry if this has been announced before but I haven't seen it so I thought I'd let you know. Are there any other 'fixes' I should know about? Thanks, Jim Gerland (User Services Postmaster) University Computing Services State University of New York at Buffalo Buffalo, NY 14260 (716) 636-3557 ========================New Letter.Sty======================== % letter.sty 21 Jul 85 \typeout{Document Style 'letter'. Released 21 July 1985} \def\name#1{\def\fromname{#1}} %...added the next line - 25-Apr-1988 jrg \def\fromname{} \def\signature#1{\def\fromsig{#1}} \def\fromsig{} ============================================================== ps. Don't forget to modify your letter.doc also ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 88 12:00 EST From: Subject: Problems: \tableofcontents command and [titlepage] option I am a novice user of TeX and a more advanced user of LaTeX. I have encountered two problems when running LaTeX one which I've been able to solve and the other which I haven't. They are as follows: 1. When I create a table of contents, I must include the \tableofcontents command at the end of the document otherwise my output will consist of an empty page with the word CONTENTS on the upper left hand corner. Before I process the .TOC file, I must edit it to include a \setcounter{page} command. For example, if the last page in my document is page 80, the first page of the table of contents will be 81. I assume this is because the \tableofcontents command appears at the end of the document. I may may then process the .TOC file. 2. When I choose the [titlepage] option in the article style (to create a separate title page) in addition to a \thanks command, the footnotes are not numbered "properly." With the book and report styles and the article style in which the [titlepage] option is NOT chosen, footnotes to the title page are marked by an asterisk, dagger, double dagger and so on. However, once the [titlepage] option is chosen, footnotes are numbered (1, 2, etc.) By the way, this does not affect the numbering of footnotes in the document. For example, the first footnote in the text will be numbered 1. Does anyone know how I can number the footnotes correctly? Many thanks, Josie colmenar@fordmulc colmenar@fordmurh ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 88 14:47:16 EDT From: "Karl Berry." Subject: Line breaking in programs. Personally, I've always found weave's ``smart'' line breaking to be a pain. When I write my code, I put line breaks where I want them, on logical grounds. I don't need or want weave to string things together on typographical grounds. This means that the final version of my programs tend to have many, many @/'s in them. Things are even worse with CWEAVE. Why not just leave the line breaks in the code alone? One command to join two lines is all I ever really want (when the line is more than 80 characters long, so I have to break it up to see it with my text editor, but it's really only one logical line), besides leaving what I break broken. For that matter, it's always puzzled me that DEK bothered to make WEAVE understand Pascal with that nifty bottom-up parsing. Recognize tokens, yes; but why bother with syntactic units? (And if you break lines where the input is broken, you almost certainly don't need it.) Karl. karl@umb.umb.edu ...!harvard!umb!karl ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 88 10:31:55 mdt From: vince%kryos@boulder.Colorado.EDU (V.J. Troisi, CU-Boulder/NSIDC/CIRES (303)492-1827) Subject: POSTSCRIPT FOR DEC SCRIPTWRITER Does anyone have a dvi2ps driver for VAX/VMS supporting the DEC Scriptwriter? ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 88 16:16:00 EDT From: cld@arbortext.com Subject: 256-character fonts and ArborText's DVILASER Several weeks ago someone expressed the desire for ArborText's DVILASER printer drivers for IBM PC's and compatibles to support fonts with 256 characters. I'm afraid that I have not been able to find the name of that person, but our newest updates of DVILASER for PostScript, Hewlett Packard LaserJet Plus, and Imagen printers now can handle 256-character fonts. If anyone is interested in obtaining an update for their PC version of DVILASER, please contact me. Thanks Cheri DeRosia ArborText technical support ------------------------------ Date: 26 Apr 88 16:24 -0600 From: Jim Walker Subject: cnaf txmapper Does anyone have a FORTRAN version of the TXRDVM routine that can read STREAM_LF format files? I would really like to use TXMAPPER with the .pxl files that I already use with dvi2ln3. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 88 10:32:12 edt From: tipler@skl-crc.arpa (Brad Tipler) Subject: TeX for line printers I've just joined this list and I unsuccessfully tried to get the archives so I haven't been able to completely pursue an answer to what is likely to be a common question. After some amount of scouting about I have not yet found any "industrial strength" solutions: I'm looking for a means of producing a draft of a TeX document on a line printer (we have a laser but we find it too expensive for drafts). The draft has to be a readable document and will, I expect, have line and page breaks which are different from those of the laser version. We just use text with a variety of fonts but no mathematical equations or other items which would have no easy mapping to the "vocabulary" of a line printer. I expect that these requirements will require a tty oriented tfm file and a matching DVI-to-printer driver. So far I have only seen DVIDOC which I got from rochester.arpa (Much thanks to Ken Yap). Are there any other alternatives? I would be happy to buy one if necessary. Brad. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 88 07:39:55 PDT From: mackay@june.cs.washington.edu (Pierre MacKay) Subject: Multilingual TeX/LaTeX (TeXhax Digest V88 #40) Michael Ferguson's INRS version of TeX from the PQ bilingual environment is one approach, but I seem to remember that he found that a certain data element overflowed if you tried triple hyphenation tables. The alternative is to reserve enough space for your largest hyphenation table (either by array size or the use of pointers) and add some code and a primitive that can pause and read in alternative hyphen tables when asked. The code for hyphenation is quite well isolated in the program, and there have been several successful modifications of it. The results, of course are not TeX. In addition to the hyphenation table it is also necessary to provide some way of substituting exception strings at the end of the string pool. These are the very peculiar strings you wil see near the end of a *.fmt file. (the character codes are offset by one to produce gibberish---there is a reason for that) 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 ------------------------------ Subject: Re: TFM checksums may not be a TeX-to-C problem Date: Wed, 27 Apr 88 00:27:14 -0400 From: Ken Yap This is probably unrelated, but there is another source of TFM checksum mismatches. For Unix TeX at least, if you got the normal fonts off the tape and later made SliTeX fonts, the checksums may not match for those typefaces SliTeX have in common with La/TeX. You see, there are two tfm files involved, the ones off the tape and the ones generated by METAFONT and the mode settings during generation differ, in all probability. I've been telling users to ignore checksum mismatch messages from SliTeX output. I intend to remake the whole set of fonts when I get some free time and a willing machine. When I find out what "the whole set" should be, that is. Ken ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 88 06:42:38 EDT From: Mark W. Eichin Subject: SPRINGER.TXH seems to be corrupted, in that some lines are broken in order to be less than 80 columns. This generally happens within comments, leading to bits of text in places that make latex fail on manual.tex. Diffs to fix the shar file (*not* the txh file, but the shar file that remains when you strip off the headers. #!/bin/sh is line 1.) follow at the end of this message, based on what I did that seemed to work; I may have missed something, and someone should check these diffs. It would have been helpful to use a shar that at least counts lines or characters when unpacking. Also, latex flags a large number of overfull hboxes (13 in 8 pages) in manual, and for some reason our laserwriter (and Bechtolsheim's dvi2ps) fills VM on page 3. Any one else have such problems? Mark Eichin SIPB Member & Project Athena ``Watchmaker'' diff oldspringer.sh newspringer.sh 10,11c10 < Released Nov < ember 1, 1987}}% --- > Released November 1, 1987}}% 20,21c19 < % Running head: 9 pt TR, c/lc, 2em# inside of fl. outside folio, base < aligns --- > % Running head: 9 pt TR, c/lc, 2em# inside of fl. outside folio, base aligns 93,94c91 < \vskip 16pt % 2.5pi b/b between title and chapter autho < rs --- > \vskip 16pt % 2.5pi b/b between title and chapter authors 243,244c240 < \typeout{Sub-style 'svsa' (Springer-Verlag Single-Authored). Released November 1 < , 1987} --- > \typeout{Sub-style 'svsa' (Springer-Verlag Single-Authored). Released November 1, 1987} ------------------------------ Date: 27 Apr 88 09:26:00 EDT From: "DARREN STALDER" Subject: \newread and reading and writing the same file. Two questions: 1. I get a Runaway definition - Forbidden control sequence while scanning the definition of \frrno when \newread is inside a macro definition. The problem goes away totally when the \newread is put before the macro def. 2. I am producing a document that is sequentially numbered. Each time the document is TeX-ed, the number should be one higher. I can open and read the file without any problems whatsoever but when I try to write to the file, the file is always closed. In both cases above, I am using TeX 2.9 from Stanford on VMS 4.7. Both these cases could be done in other ways but those ways are less elegant and less efficient. -- Darren Stalder Blessed Internet: dstalder@gmuvax2.gmu.edu Be! Bitnet: dstalder@gmuvax ATTnet: 1-703-352-8124 Hail uucp: multiverse!uunet!pyrdc!gmu90x!dstalder Eris! Snail: PO Box 405/Fairfax, VA 22030/USA ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 88 10:16:59 EDT From: lang@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Francois-Michel Lang) Subject: Painless Greek letters? Does anyone know of a reatively painless way in LaTeX to generate a string of Greek characters a la SCRIBE? What I have in mind is, say, if I wanted to print out the sequence of chars alpha, beta, gamma, and delta, all I'd have to do is say something like \greek{abcd} or {\greek abcd} instead of $\alpha \beta \gamma \delta$ This may not look like a real pain, but if I want to include a number of Greek words in the text, this can easily become quite tedious. Many thanks. Francois-Michel Lang Paoli Research Center, Unisys Corporation lang@prc.unisys.com (215) 648-7469 Dept of Comp & Info Science, U of PA lang@cis.upenn.edu (215) 898-9511 ------------------------------ Date: 27 Apr 88 10:03:00 EST From: "Michael J. Porter" Subject: VMS manuals in TeX I noticed recently that DEC's VMS manuals are typeset using TeX. (See the back of the title page). Does anyone have a copy of their style|format? I would like to document our local run-time routines in a fashion similar to DEC. Mike Porter mike@vax.oit.udel.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 88 11:02 EDT From: Kissel@BCO-MULTICS.ARPA Subject: String Operations? I have a simple (I think) problem, which then leads to a more general question. I have def'ed two control strings: \def\docnum#1{\gdef\@docnum{#1}} \def\docrev#1{\gdef\@docref{#1}} The user then types: \docnum{001} and \docrev{NN}. What I would like to do is to make a string that looks like: "001.NN" where NN is the revision "number". If the revision is the string "00" then I just want "001" (no ".NN"). The revision should be allowed to be any string, e.g. "Draft" producing "001.Draft". Is there a simple way to do this? My first thought was to find some sort of string handling commands in TeX, like maybe \ifstring \@docrev="00" \@docnum \else \@docnum.\@docrev \fi would be about what I want (if there were such a thing, by analogy with \ifnum). However, long thought and TeXbook study has not shown me the light. The more general question is: Is there any sort of string handling, like substring, index, verify, search, etc.? If not, how would you go about defining such things? -- Rick ------------------------------ Subject: need psdf filter for Sun Date: Wed, 27 Apr 88 12:45:33 EDT From: jhs@mitre-bedford.ARPA Where can I get the filter "psdf" that my friendly local lpr command is telling me is not available on my system? It is apparently needed to convert TeX .dvi files into PostScript. Is this filter available as a PD program? Please reply directly to me at jhs@mitre-bedford.arpa, as I do not currently subscribe to texhax distributions. Thanks for any help that is available. -John Sangster / jhs@mitre-bedford.arpa ------------------------------ Date: Wed 27 Apr 88 10:43:39-PDT From: Richard Steinberger Subject: DVI -> Postscript on VMS I am looking for a (free ?) conversion routine (running under VAX/VMS) that will take TeX DVI files as input and produce Postscript files as output. I'm using a DEC LN03R (postscript) printer with Scriptprinter SW. Thanks to any and all who reply. I'm in the process of RTFM but am neither a TeX or Postscript guru. -Ric Steinberger steinberger@kl.sri.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 88 12:16:06 PDT From: lamport@src.dec.com (Leslie Lamport) Subject: Re: TeXhax Digest V88 #33 (LaTeX Notes) I do not wish to enter the Plain vs. LaTeX debate; I'm happy to let users choose for themselves. My own recommendation to naive users is to use Scribe if (1) they don't need very high quality output [most users don't and can't tell the difference anyway], (2) they don't have a lot of math formulas, and (3) they can afford it. There are some users to whom I recommend Plain over LaTeX because they are not going to be satisfied with anyone else making formatting decisions for them. I would, however, like to comment on one point made by Daniel M. Zirin--namely, 4) Portability. LaTeX users may have to carry around style files to make sure it will work the same on another system (this may have changed recently, but I started with pre-TeX80). Plain TeX users have *nothing* to worry about with this regard. The standard LaTeX styles should be available at all sites. Locally written style files in principle present the same portability problem as locally written macro packages for Plain. However, it's easier for a naive user to tell if nonstandard styles are called by LaTeX input; he just has to look at the \documentstyle command, which should be the first thing in the file. I have, in the past observed two sources of nonportability present with Plain but not with LaTeX: 1. Plain preloads a limited number of fonts. Users who need additional fonts call them by name. Unfortunately, all sites don't have the same selection of fonts. While a LaTeX user can also ask for a font by name, he seldom has to. 2. A Plain input file that doesn't call outside macro packages specifies the precise positioning of everything on the page. This can lead to inappropriate formatting when printing the document on an output device different from the one it was intended for--for example, when shipping a document from the US (formatted for 8-1/2 by 11 paper) to Europe (where A4 paper is standard). This is likely to be a minor problem for producing a simple paper copy, but it illustrates a very important advantage of LaTeX over Plain. There is a local style option here that formats a document for viewing with a screen previewer. (It produces no page heading or foot, so the document is effectively a continuous scroll.) I can reformat any LaTeX source file for viewing on the screen by simply changing the \documentstyle command. Although one could probably write a similar macro package for Plain TeX, it's nontrivial to figure out where to \input the package and it's likely to foul up in many cases. (For example, the \input would have to go after any macro packages that set \vsize but before one that, for example, set some other dimension to .7\vsize.) Leslie Lamport ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 88 14:51:18 BST From: CET1%phoenix.cambridge.ac.uk@NSS.Cs.Ucl.AC.UK Subject: Re: TeX mystery (TeXhax #41) Congratulations on finding a real genuine TeX program bug. Claim your $40.96 from Don Knuth! The error arises when, during the course of reading a "file name" (routine scan_file_name) a never-before-encountered control sequence is read while no_new_control_sequence is *false* (i.e. when read by get_token rather than get_x_token). This will typically be a a macro argument, as in your \ifb argument to \newif. Here is another example: \def\test#1{#1} \input abc\test\xyz ghi This first complains about an undefined control sequence \abcxyz, and then tries to open file "ghi.tex". Internally, the problem is that both more_name (section 516) and id_lookup (section 260) use the "current string" as workspace. I suspect it is a brute of a bug to fix. Chris Thompson JANET: cet1@uk.ac.cam.phx ARPA: cet1%phx.cam.ac.uk@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 88 09:42:12 +0100 From: mcvax!ruuinf!piet@uunet.UU.NET (Piet van Oostrum) Subject: supertabular Ik ben wel geinteresseerd in de long table macros. Bij voorbaat dank Piet van Oostrum, Dept of Computer Science, University of Utrecht Budapestlaan 6, P.O. Box 80.012, 3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands Padualaan 14, P.O. Box 80.089, 3508 TB Utrecht (after May 11) Telephone: +31-30-531806 UUCP: ...!mcvax!ruuinf!piet ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 88 14:01 PDT From: Don Hosek Subject: PK file blocking on CMS A warning regarding the file formats used for PK fonts on CMS. The standard Stanford distribution that we have at UIC uses Fixed 32 byte records; Arbortext, on the other hand has distributed PK fonts in Fixed 1024 format. I don't know whether they still do (perhaps somebody at Arbor can tell me). The F1024 format makes more sense in terms of consistency (all the other TeX binary files are F1024), but since the standard has been F32, I suspect that too much software has already been distributed in this format to change now. -dh ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 88 17:11:49 pdt From: Alex Woo Subject: tuglist on-line Is there any chance that the TUG membership could be kept on-line somewhere like the nalist? The ability to query the nalist on ne netlib@anl-mcs.arpa is very handy. For instance, where is Jane Colman, the author of DVI2QMS? Alex Woo woo@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov ------------------------------ Date: 27 Apr 88 00:53:36 bst From: mcvax!ed.ac.uk!G.Toal@uunet.UU.NET Subject: Flogging TeX Hello Barbara & texhax folks, I put this question out to the UK recently but no-one would risk volunteering an answer! I have all but finished a port of TeX to the Acorn RISC machine, and am now (well, soon...) willing to start letting people have it. I am trying to come to an arrangement with Acorn for them to distribute it via their customer service department as a low-volume product which they will duplicate in house and supply only to those who ask - i.e. they do not believe it will be in sufficient demand to be worth making into a packaged product with book, fancy box, advertising etc. (Personally I think they are wrong but time will tell...) Partly the problem is that we are under the impression that TeX cannot be sold for more that the cost of duplicating the discs, so the company is understandably reluctant to splash out on packaging which will do no more than pay for itself. However, we have noticed that many companies who sell TeX and derived systems, with support, charge in the $200 - $500 range, and that even people who do a garage-bench cheapo implementation charge $50 - $75. So, what is the official line on charging for a TeX port. We would not be supplying any local code (at least not at first - a good previewer is in the pipe-line) nor have we written our 'own' implementation. If we can only charge the cost of the discs, say $10 or so, TeX will not be advertised save by word of mouth and many people will miss out. If we could charge around $UK 50, I can see that it is made a proper product, and honour would be satisfied all round. There would of course be no copying restrictions and the conditions of READ.ME on the tape would be followed (including putting our implementation through the trip test). Comments please? Graham. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Apr 88 09:26 EDT From: MICHELLE%ATC%atc.bendix.com@RELAY.CS.NET Subject: BibteX 0.99c for Vax/VMS Does anyone have a VMS change file for BibTex 0.99c? I ftp'd it from SCORE, but the only VMS change file there was for BibTex 0.98i. Thanks, Michelle McElvany Aerospace Technology Center Allied-Signal Aerospace Company Columbia, Maryland ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Apr 88 10:13:07 +0200 (Central European Summer Time) From: XBR2D78V%DDATHD21.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu Subject: Problem with TeX Hi Folks, I'm quite a newcomer in TeX, but I'm trying hard to become better. And now I have a hard problem to solve and my way went wrong. Perhaps some of you did make something equal and can help me now. I want to create pages with two components. These components both are \hboxes with a fixed \hsize and a \vsize of the whole page. These boxes are located besides each other. The left box contains only three rulers at a specified location and this box is roughly one inch wide. The other box should contain the text on this page. Because I need this on every page, I tried to rewrite the \output-routine, but the result failed. Here's my resolution: \fullhsize=22truecm\hsize=17truecm\leftmargin=5truecm \newbox\marcolumn={% the box with the rulers \hbox to\leftmargin{\vbox to\vsize{% \vskip90truemm\hbox to5mm{\hrulefill} \vskip38truemm\hbox to10mm{\hrulefill} \vskip57truemm\hbox to5mm{\hrulefill} \vfil}\hfil}} \def\fullline{\hbox to\fullhsize} % the complete line \output={% \shipout\vbox{\makeheadline \fullline{\box\marcolumn\hfil\leftline{\pagebody}} \makefootline}\advancepageno \ifnum\outputpenalty>-20000 \else\dosupereject\fi} \newbox\makeheadline={\relax} % to make it easier to test \newbox\makefootline={\relax} % I defined them zero This macro is nearly the same as the macro to create doublecolumn-pages in TeX, described by Knuth in his book. The result now is very funny. Even if I have only three lines of text, the \output will be two pages. The first page contains the rulers as wanted but no text and some curious signs in the lower left half. The second page then contains the text in perfect way, but no rulers. Has anybody an idea to fix it or is this just one of the unsolvable problems? Another little problem: I am searching for new fonts, especially for old GOTHIC or 'FRAKTUR'-Fonts to design old fashioned letters and this kind of stuff. Any source, if .MF or .PK, is good for me (MF would be best). Thanks a lot! My adress: XBR2D78V@DDATHD21 Mathias Gaertner, Darmstadt ------------------------------ %%% %%% 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 ************************** -------