TeXhax Digest Wednesday, March 1, 1989 Volume 89 : Issue 18 Moderators: Tiina Modisett and Pierre MacKay %%% The TeXhax digest is brought to you as a service of the TeX Users Group %%% %%% in cooperation with the UnixTeX distribution service at the %%% %%% University of Washington %%% Today's Topics: Crudetype version 2 now available Re: Obtaining boldface greek symbols in math mode Needed: any information concerning Singhalese Fonts Removing TeX commands before spell checker. Re: Needed: a spell checker that can be used with TeX or LaTeX Document preparation/fundamental difficulties with TeX Conflicting settings for \strutbox in LaTeX LaTeX citation styles Problems with LaTeX and figures Classified document markings Re: tabs in LaTeX source files Making SliTeX work with PiCTeX Umd-dvi previewers don't work on Sun 386i Memory for LaserWriters Needed: information on certain drivers Quoting pages of TeX in TeX Defining macros with defaults in TeX Plain TeX vs LaTeX wars Needed: university seal metafontised ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 25 Feb 89 16:13:38 GMT From: Dr R M Damerell (RHBNC) Subject: Crudetype version 2 now available Keywords: Crudetype This is now available. By the time you get this message, I hope that it will be available at Aston and at Washington. The most important changes are: Change files for Unix (by P.King, Heriot-Watt University) Primos (J.Warbrick, Plymouth Poly). A changefile for NOS-VE is in preparation, but I regret to say that the author has been unwell recently, so this may be delayed. Many of the changes are actually improvements to the basic program; in particular Crudetype can now read a command line (if the system allows). So you can invoke it by something like: (RUN) crudetype (qualifiers) (dvi-file) instead of having to answer a tedious questionnaire. I decided that these improvements should be in the program, and a lot of very VMS-specific code ought to be in the VMS changefile. All previous changefiles are therefore obsolete, but I hope that V.2 will be stable and I hope the system interface is much cleaner than before. This software is offered free, AS IS with absolutely no guarantee. Neither the authors nor their institutions accept any liability for failures, or for any consequential loss or damage however caused. Mark --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Montag, 27. Februar 1989, 16.54 Uhr und 46 Sekunden MET From: XITIJSCH%DDATHD21.BITNET@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU Subject: Re: Obtaining boldface greek symbols in math mode Keywords: math mode, boldface greek symbols The statement of Pierre MacKay ``Almost everything you need in boldface is potentially available in LaTeX. Cmmib? and cmbsy? are declared, but commented out in lfonts.tex. If you need them, [...] uncomment all the relevant lines [...]'' is not completely correct. The outcommented lines have nothing to do with the fonts LaTeX uses -- in them are only the fonts mentioned which {\it may} be preloaded in lplain.fmt. In the current version of LaTeX only bold math types in (math) text size in documentsize 10, 11, and 12pt are declared, if they shall be used in sub/superscripts, too, every \boldmath in the definitions of \xpt, \xipt, etc, has to be altered. Also note, that in the sizes below 10pt bold math is not implemented. It must be defined similar to the one in \xpt. By the way, this will {\it really} look ugly. Jan Tschichold, one of the most important typographers in this century, wrote once that bold types should only be used on places where the reader should start with his reading but never for emphasizing---his eye would stumble across the bold letters. Only if the bold math types are used very often in different TeX runs the procedure Pierre MacKay describes might be followed to get the run a little bit faster. (But I don't know if this minimal speedup is it worth to alter lfonts.tex...) Obviously, this doesn't concern his remarks on the creation of the fonts. They must be available in every case. Everybody who wants to know more about the usage of fonts in LaTeX should read the comments in the beginning of lfonts.tex. My article ``LaTeX fonts and suggested magnifications'' in the last TUGboat may serve as an introduction to the principles and show what fonts are used by LaTeX. Joachim P.S.: The late reaction is due to the receipt of TeXhax #9/89 at 27 Feb. Also I don't know the question -- perhaps it was in those TeXhax's I'm still missing. There seems to be much trouble with the distribution on Bitnet. TH Darmstadt Institut f\"ur Theoretische Informatik Joachim Schrod Alexanderstr. 10 Bitnet: XITIJSCH@DDATHD21 (Please try again if I don't answer --- D-6100 Darmstadt our Bitnet connection is very instable...) West Germany ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 24 Feb 89 19:39:34 MEZ From: Tim Doherty Subject: Needed: any information concerning Singhalese Fonts Keywords: fonts Help! In TUGBoat 9/2 pp. 131--151 there was a rather impressive list of all different kinds of language fonts presently available to the TeX community. Sorry to say, the one we need wasn't listed. Some colleagues of mine here at the University of Muenster are preparing a didactically oriented Singhalese--German vocabulary/dictionary for publication. They have come to realize --- due in part to some persuading on my side --- that TeX/LaTeX is the only real way for a language scientist (not only mathematicians!) to live. Dumb luck! One of the columns has to be typeset in Singhalese characters. Now my plea: Does anybody out there have METAFONT source code or fonts or the like for anything resembling Singhalese? Is anyone working on this or even have it planned? Does anyone know of anyone else who fits this description? We'll take anything, no matter how preliminary, provisional, or crude it may be. Reply: Tim Doherty Bitnet/EARN: NAO02@DMSWWU1A.BITNET Altorientalisches Seminar der WWU Rosenstrasse 9 D-4400 Muenster BRD (West-Germany) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 24 Feb 89 17:50:13 PST From: charlie@mica.stat.washington.edu (Charlie Geyer) Subject: Removing TeX commands before spell checker. Keywords: TeX, spell checker For people with UNIX the following shell script (call it spelltex) works well. #! /bin/sh if test -f $1.spell then sed 's/\\[a-zA-Z]*//g' $1.tex | spell | sort | comm -23 - $1.spell else sed 's/\\[a-zA-Z]*//g' $1.tex | spell | more fi It strips out of the specified file all strings of the form "backslash followed by zero or more upper and lower case letters" and then runs the result through the UNIX spell program. USAGE: spelltex foo spell checks the file "foo.tex". If there exists a file "foo.spell" containing correctly spelled words, sorted in the standard collating sequence (i.e. output of "sort"), none of these words appear in the output of "spelltex". This is for use in making a stop list of things that no pattern matcher could detect as TeX or LaTeX syntax. Such a list can be made by spelltex foo > foo.spell when foo contains no spelling errors. For British spelling change "spell" to "spell -b" in both lines of the shell script. Sorry about the lack of a "man" page. I don't do troff. Charlie Geyer Department of Statistics University of Washington ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 23 Feb 89 09:14:43 -0700 From: corbet@stout.UCAR.EDU Subject: Re: Needed: a spell checker that can be used with TeX or LaTeX Keywords: TeX, LaTeX, spell checker > From: Joachim Schambach > Is there something like a spell checker that can be used with TeX or > LaTeX? Or maybe a modification of an existing spell checker from > a wordprocessor? ...Jo Schambach Try ispell. It can be ftp'd from prep.ai.mit.edu. Jonathan Corbet National Center for Atmospheric Research, Field Observing Facility corbet@stout.ucar.edu ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 27 Feb 89 05:02 EDT From: Paul Davis Subject: Document preparation/fundamental difficulties with TeX Keywords: TeX, documents From: mdk@arbortext.com I saw your posting in TeXHax, and am interested in knowing if you are familiar with "The Publisher" from ArborText, Inc. >What we want is a WYSIWYG system that uses TeX's algorithms for >line-breaking, alignment and mathematics, offers us `batch' mode >processing . . . [ goes on to describe the wonders of The Publisher ... ] Dear Ms. Kesler thank you for your e-mail. I have seen and used The Publisher, and I regret that I do not believe it meets the challenge of document preparation for the 1990's. Specifically: 1) it is NOT a WYSIWYG system. As far as I know, VorTeX is the only piece of software based on TeX that approaches this capability. 2) The Publisher is NOT a re-implementation of TeX's superb typesetting algorithms, and as such, does not deal with some of the fundamental difficulties that TeX's approach present, to wit: a) No concept of `ink on a page' - TeX deals in empty rectangular boxes of specified dimensions, and knows nothing about their contents. This has important consequences for the inclusion of figures, and doing many of the tricks currently handled with ease by Mac-based DTP systems. b) No optimisation of pagination. c) The confused and confusing notion of one language being used for macro definition (as in text replacement), and for building style files. Im my opinion, only a complete rewrite of TeX, that takes its algorithms for hyphenation, paragraph-setting, kerning/ligatures, mathematics handling, and general goodies, but places them in the context of a system which provides a REAL programming language as well as a simple macro definition facility, and moves on towards assimilating the lessons Don Knuth might have learnt had DTP been in existence when he began work on TeX, will meet the requirements of the 1990's. If ArborText are interested in sponsoring a group of TeX fiends (including myself) so that we can continue work on the TinT project (TinT is not TeX), we'd be happy to hear from you. yours etc. Paul Davis Paul Davis at Schlumberger Cambridge Research ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Feb 89 12:15:20 PST From: KARNEY%PPC.MFENET@NMFECC.ARPA Subject: Conflicting settings for \strutbox in LaTeX Keywords: LaTeX, \strutbox \strutbox is defined twice in lfonts.tex (11 Nov. 86) and in conflicting ways! In \@setsize, \strutbox is set according the UNSTRETCTED \baselineskip. But \@setsize then immediately calls one of the size- setting macros, e.g., \xpt, which calls \@setstrut, which resets \strutbox according to the STRETCHED \baselineskip. What is the "right" definition of \strutbox? (I vote that it be set according to the unstretched \baselineskip so that it tracks the point size but in independent of \baselinestretch. This is what the comments on \@setsize imply should happen.) Whatever Leslie Lamport decrees to be the correct definition, perhaps lfonts.tex can be revised to be more consistent? 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 08543-0451 Bitnet: Karney%PPC.MFEnet@LBL.Bitnet ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 28 Feb 89 17:18:13 -0600 From: Jay H Beder Subject: LaTeX citation styles Keywords: LaTeX, citation Our installation (using Berkeley Unix) has several optional documentstyles and bibliographystyles in addition to those offered in standard LaTeX. The "apalike" style, based on the American Psychological Association's guidelines, is closest to what I want, but there is one feature I would like to include. That is a second citation command (say, \cite*) that would produce only the date. The current style (when \cite is invoked in the apalike style) gives the name and date as the entire key, so that one can now write ... as is known (Smith, 1980) .... What I would like to be able to write is ... Smith (1980) has shown .... I would appreciate any suggestions as to how this might be done. Thank you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 28 Feb 89 12:44:41 PST From: Darrell Long Subject: Problems with LaTeX and figures Keywords: LaTeX, figures Why is it that LaTeX likes so much to put figures on a page by themselves? For example, if I need 4 inches of space for a figure I (sometimes) have to tell LaTeX I want 2 inches and it will give me the 4 that I ask for. If I ask for 4 inches, it will give me an entire page. Is there a magic formula that I know about? I am using figure*. Thanks, DL ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Feb 89 17:59:14 EST From: Mark D. Grover Subject: Classified document markings Keywords: LaTeX. classified documents Does anyone have experience creating documents using LaTeX which include classified information markings that meet DoD 5220.22-M (Industrial Security Manual) standards? MDG Mark D. Grover (grover@potomac.ads.com) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 22 Feb 89 09:28:02 PST From: lamport@src.dec.com (Leslie Lamport) Subject: Re: tabs in LaTeX source files Keywords: LaTeX, tabs Chris Thompson asks Why is it, then, that on the (Stanford) distribution tapes the LaTeX source files contain tabs while the Plain TeX ones don't? Horrified by the thought of tabs in LaTeX source files, I searched them out. They appear in openbib.doc, which I didn't write, and in latex.tex. Most of the ones in latex.tex are in some picture-object commands that were rewritten by someone else. There were a couple in the definition of \fbox; I don't think I got that code from anyone else, so I suspect they were typos. (If you accidentally type an "x", you can see your mistake; that's not the case if you accidentally type a tab.) I will remove the ones in latex.tex. Since there are no tabs in openbib.sty, I presume that the tabs are only in the comments of openbib.doc, so I'll leave them there. If there are any other tabs in the LaTeX sources on Stanford, then someone has been tampering with them. Dominik Wujastyk asks if he is going mad. While I'm not medically qualified to make such a diagnosis, I expect that his fears are groundless. In the 29 April 86 release, the \arabic command was changed to print a "0" instead of doing nothing when the counter value equals zero. The bug reported by Anne Brueggemann-Klein should have been fixed in the 13 Oct 88 release. Leslie Lamport ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 Feb 89 11:21:44 GMT From: alien%VULCAN.ESE.ESSEX.AC.UK@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU (Adrian F. Clark) Subject: Making SliTeX work with PiCTeX Keywords: SliTeX, PiCTeX, fonts It's quite easy to make SliTeX work with PiCTeX; the only tricky part is in ensuring that the 5-point roman font is defined, since PiCTeX uses it for lline-drawing. Here's a complete recipe ($ represents the machine's command-line prompt, * TeX's): $ initex This is TeX, version 2.95 (INITEX) **\input splain *\font\fiverm=cmr5 *\input prepictex *\input pictex *\postpictex *\dump $ This creates splain.fmt (and splain.log); but it would be a good idea to give it a different name (I use splain-pictex.fmt, and make the version of SliTeX `slipictex'). Adrian F. Clark JANET: alien@uk.ac.essex.ese ARPA: alien%uk.ac.essex.ese@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk BITNET: alien%uk.ac.essex.ese@ac.uk Smail: Dept. of Electronic Systems Engineering, Essex University, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex C04 3SQ, U. K. Phone: (+44) 206-872432 (direct) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 28 Feb 89 13:40:01 -0800 From: daisy!kelem@uunet.UU.NET Subject: Umd-dvi previewers don't work on Sun 386i Keywords: previewer I'm having trouble with the previewers on the tex82 distribution tape. I'm trying to get them to run on a Sun 386i, but am having problems with both texsun and texx: texsun: the window comes up ok, but the overview shows only a few pixels from some of the letters. The blow-up view shows enough of the pixels to show that the letters are being displayed reversed (like the R in "Toys R Us"). texx reports: X Protocol error: BadMatch, invalid parameter attributes Major opcode of failed request: 70 (X_PolyFillRectangle) Minor opcode of failed request: 0 Resource id in failed request: 0x4077ffff Serial number of failed request: 32 Current serial number in output stream: 179 Does anyone have fixes for these problems? Thanks, Steve Kelem (415)960-6936 internet: daisy!kelem@uunet.uu.net Daisy Systems Corporation MS/A23 uucp: ...!uunet!daisy!kelem 700 E. Middlefield Road uucp: ...!pyramid!daisy!kelem P.O. Box 7006 Mountain View, California 94039-7006 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 Feb 89 17:17:05 -0800 From: daisy!kelem@uunet.UU.NET Subject: Memory for LaserWriters Keywords: memory, printers, LaserWriter How much memory should Apple LaserWriters (LW+, LWIINT, and the LWIINTX) be configured with to run TeX and psfig? I'm running into problems with a LW IINT printing two pages of the (9 page) psfig user's guide and then quitting. Thanks, Steve Kelem (415)960-6936 internet: daisy!kelem@uunet.uu.net Daisy Systems Corporation MS/A23 uucp: ...!uunet!daisy!kelem 700 E. Middlefield Road uucp: ...!pyramid!daisy!kelem P.O. Box 7006 Mountain View, California 94039-7006 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 24 Feb 89 11:53:01 EDT From: "Prof.Heinz W. Engl" Subject: Needed: information on certain drivers Keywords: dviware could i please receive information if (and where)drivers are available for digital equipment vt330 graphic terminals and/or dec la75 printers? e-mail: k310773@aearn.bitnet thanks heinz w. engl ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 Feb 89 18:51:49 GMT From: Sebastian Rahtz Subject: Defining macros with defaults in TeX Keywords: TeX, macros Is there a way to define macros with defaults in TeX. For example, I want to be able to use a macro, test, for example, in the following two ways and have it do the right thing both times: \test{Arguement is here} \test % no argument, so use default value. Phil Windley | windley@iris.ucdavis.edu Division of Computer Science | ucbvax!ucdavis!iris!windley College of Engineering | (916) 752-7324 (or 3168) University of California, Davis | Davis, CA 95616 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 27 Feb 89 13:41 GMT From: Peter Flynn UCC Subject: Plain TeX vs LaTeX wars Keywords: TeX Brian Hamilton Kelly's suggestion that Plain TeX should be banned will undoubtedly raise a few hackles. My own experience supporting TeX at our site indicates about 50%-50% of Plain vs LaTeX users. My experience of the digest indicates more problems in hacking LaTeX than Plain TeX! We do in fact need both. While LaTeX may indeed solve all BHK's needs, there are many more complex formatting requirements in the real world than LaTeX is suited to. We've just produced a book for one user which had an overview double-spread at the start of each chapter, which called for a two-page \valign, not something I would relish doing in LaTeX. Peter Flynn PS When will the BITNET distribution be fixed? I ***cannot*** believe that the delay is necessary, but if it is, could BITNET subscribers at least be told what the state of play is? leaving them uninformed is a bit much. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 27 Feb 89 13:45 GMT From: Peter Flynn UCC Subject: Needed: university seal metafontised Keywords: METAFONT Is there an organisation anywhere who would contract to metafontise our university seal into a TFM and PK file at mags 1 thru 5 for 300dpi. We have mf, but i really do not have the time to learn it, and we are getting a lot of requests for this. Peter Flynn ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- %%% The TeXhax digest is brought to you as a service of the TeX Users Group %%% in cooperation with the UnixTeX distribution service at the %%% University of Washington %%% %%% Concerning subscriptions, address changes, unsubscribing: %%% BITNET: send a one-line mail message to LISTSERV@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU %%% SUBSCRIBE TEXHAX % to subscribe %%% or UNSUBSCRIBE TEXHAX %%% %%% All others: send a similar one line mail message to %%% TeXhax-request@cs.washington.edu %%% Please be sure you send a valid internet address!! %%% in the form name@domain or name%routing@domain %%% and use the style of the Bitnet one-line message, so that %%% we can find your subscription request easily. %%% %%% All submissions to: TeXhax@cs.washington.edu %%% %%% Back issues available for FTPing as: %%% machine: directory: filename: %%% JUNE.CS.WASHINGTON.EDU TeXhax/TeXhaxyy.nn %%% yy = last two digits of current year %%% nn = issue number %%% %%% For further information about TeX Users Group services and publications %%% contact Karen at KLB@SEED.AMS.COM or write to TUG at %%% TeX Users Group %%% P.O. 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