Subject: TeXhax Digest V89 #58 From: TeXhax Digest Errors-To: TeXhax-request@cs.washington.edu Maint-Path: TeXhax-request@cs.washington.edu To: TeXhax-Distribution-List:; Reply-To: TeXhax@cs.washington.edu TeXhax Digest Friday, June 9, 1989 Volume 89 : Issue 58 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: Printing LaTeX postscript files to an LPS40 Request for modified TeXtures LFONTS file Down-sizing fonts for footnotes in Textures TeX T-Shirts Re: TeXhax Digest V89 #47 RE: Oldstyle digits in small caps font Importing TeX output into WordPerfect Underlining in LaTeX A LaTeX Bug? Re: Comments on TeX Comments on TeX EOF problems in TeX 2.95 Running TeX in batchmode ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1989 15:09:32.62 CDT From: (James T. Horn) Subject: Printing LaTeX postscript files to an LPS40 Keywords: LaTeX, PostScript, LPS40 We have just installed an LPS40 onto a VaxCluster and was wondering if anyone is having problems, and if not how do you create the postscript file to submit to the LPS40 postscript queue? Any help would be appreciated. James T. Horn Sam Houston State University HORN@SHSU.BITNET ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 6 JUN 89 07:45:15 PDT From: "Micro Mauler" Subject: Request for modified TeXtures LFONTS file Keywords: TeXtures, LFONTS I am looking for a suitably modified version of the TeXtures (MacIntosh TeX/LaTeX application) LFONTS file that will use (download) the PostScript Apple LaserWriter+ fonts, in particular Times-Roman, rather than the default CMR fonts. If you would be willing to share said same, please respond to: Len Schwer Micro2.Schwer@crvax.sri.com P.S. BinHex/StuffIt format would be fine. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue 6 Jun 89 11:50:55-PDT From: David Kreps Subject: Down-sizing fonts for footnotes in Textures Keywords: TeXtures, fonts, footnotes Help! I am using TeXtures to compose a book, in which I am using Palatino for all the text and Computer Modern for the math. Everything is fine except that when I downsize all the fonts for footnotes, the numbers used in the math expressions (which are being taken from cmr) are coming in at cmr10 (instead of cmr8). Since I'm using Palatino at 8pt for the text, I'm completelyat a loss what to do. Any suggestions? Thanks. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 2-JUN-1989 10:16:40 GMT From: FPS%VAXA.CC.IMPERIAL.AC.UK@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU Subject: TeX T-Shirts Keywords: general cf Knuth, The TeXbook, p483 `You can buy TeX T-shirts at these meetings' (i.e. TUG meetings). as usual, all life's answers are contained in The Book. i bought mine at the '84 TUG, and although faded, it is an object of much coveting. i believe that doug henderson usually does them, but this is only a rumour. i'm going to suggest to TUG that they start selling TeX and MetaFont t-shirts. i hope you're a TUG member. (in fact, i hope that all TeXhax recipients are TUG members -- if not WHY NOT? we do want to know.) malcolm clark --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 4 Jun 1989 0736-PDT (Sunday) From: lamport@src.dec.com (Leslie Lamport) Subject: Re: TeXhax Digest V89 #47 Keywords: laTeX, environments Jon Warbrick writes: Within an enumerate enviroment if the text for an `item' is in a center enviroment then the lable for the item is centered along with the text. The following demonstrates the problem: In a list, the label is part of the first line of the first paragraph of the item. Leslie Lamport --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 5 Jun 89 09:08:40 PST From: WMO@muon.JPL.NASA.GOV Subject: RE: Oldstyle digits in small caps font Keywords: Oldsyle digits, fonts Peter Flynn (TeXhax V89 #12) asks "if it would be possible to fudge things so that text in small caps (cmcsc10) would have \oldstyle numerals." My recommendation is that he scavenge the METAFONT CM source code and build his own font. All he has to do is to change "romand" to "olddig" in the tenth line of csc.mf and then regenerate the fonts in as many sizes and magnifications as he likes. This will alleviate the problem of trying to get TeX to paste fonts together behind the scenes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 2 Jun 89 11:39 CDT From: CHRDCWW%engvms.unl.edu@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU Subject: Importing TeX output into WordPerfect Keywords: TeX, WordPerfect Does anyone know of a way to take either *.dvi files or HP LaserJet specific print files (*.hp) and convert them to a graphics file that is compatible with WordPerfect 5.0 (a *.wpg file)? The primary intent is to incorporate mathematical equations created by TeX (or LaTeX) into WordPerfect documents. Clifford W. Walton CHRDCWW@ENGVMS.UNL.EDU University of Nebraska-Lincoln Department of Chemical Engineering 236 Avery Laboratory Lincoln, NE 68588-0126 (402) 472-2751 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 02 Jun 89 19:01:50 GMT From: Vivian Harrington Subject: Underlining in LaTeX Keywords: LaTeX, underlining A collegue here wishes to underline several continuous lines in a document. The underline command is fragile and does not work when more than one line is to be underlined. Is there any simple way around this difficulty ? thanks in advance Vivian Harrington Advisory Service, University College Dublin ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 2 Jun 89 13:39:30 EDT From: toms@ncifcrf.gov Subject: A LaTeX Bug? Keywords: LaTeX, bug Hi TeXhaxers! If I run the newest LaTeX: % /users/beav/bin/virtex '&lplain' notthere.tex and the file does not exist, it will say This is TeX, C Version 2.95 (no format preloaded) ! I can't find file `notthere.tex'. <*> &lplain notthere.tex Please type another input file name: If I then type a control-c, it will ignore me. If I type a control-d, it goes into an infinite loop that cannot be broken by either control-d or control-c!! I have to kill the process. We just set up this version of TeX, on a Sun 3/260 running Unix. Is this a bug or is something odd about the way we set it up? Tom Schneider National Cancer Institute Laboratory of Mathematical Biology Frederick, Maryland 21701-1013 toms@ncifcrf.gov ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 2 JUN 89 13:49:01 BST From: CHAA006%vaxb.rhbnc.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK Reply-To: Philip Taylor (RHBNC) Subject: Re: Comments on TeX Keywords: TeX Michael Barr recently sent some opinions of TeX. Whilst I would be the last person to suggest that TeX is perfect, and could never be improved, I really feel that Michael is going over the top with some of his criticisms, and that others are rather missing the point: >For example, I think that TeX's arithemtic is terrible. The >inability to give an expression as numerical parameter is very >troublesome. Surely what is wrong in this area is the lack of orthogonality: in some contexts, 2\x will multiply the current value of "x" by 2; in others it will concatentate "2" and the current value of "x". Very confusing for beginners. If I set \baselineskip = 12 pt plus 1 pt, and set \parskip = 2\baselineskip, as a beginner I might reasonably expect \parskip to hold the value 24 pt plus 2 pt; in practice the is coerced to a and \parskip ends up as 24pt, with no stretch or shrink. > Macro writing would be much simplified if you had the >ability to look ahead at the next token (\futurelet gives an awkward way >of doing this, but is not really satisfactory). In what way is \futurelet unsatisfactory ? The only restriction I've found is that it (necessarily) staticises the \catcode of the following character(s) [just sufficient characters to form the next ]. [Afterthought: is that true; does it perhaps staticise the \catcode of at least one more character ? If not, how does it ``know'' that that character can't form part of the next . ?] > Numerical (not just >integral) and string variables would be extremely useful. (I don't >understand how token variables work, but they don't do what I would >want.) Real variables: yes, I can certainly see a use for those, but string variables: well, I find that token variables do what I want, but then Michael admits that he doesn't understand how they work. > >My publisher wanted the book I am writing set in such a way that if >facing pages are the same length, then the left hand page is the longer. Then your publishers want miracles, or are working in a non-Euclidean geometry. >I'm not sure why they consider this important, but I am not a book >designer. At any rate, I had to tell him that if they insist on that, >then they are going to have to typeset it in the traditional way, for I >see no way of coercing TeX into doing that. I don't say it can't be >done; I suppose it might be possible to make TeX think it is doing >two-column style and cut the page myself, but this is far beyond my >ability of TeX programming. I also think I would run out of memory. If, on the other hand, we assume that what your publisher really wants is that if facing pages are NOT the same length, then the left-hand page should be the longer, then I would ask him/her how you are to deal with chapters which end on a left-hand page. They will frequently be considerably shorter than chapter opening pages on the corresponding right-hand page. However, once you have eliminated the special cases, a modified output routine should be capable of achieving all that you require; why should you think you "would run out of memory" ? > >Finally, I don't disagree with his remarks on hand-formatting. In fact, >I think that TeX still leaves too much of it to the user. TeX doesn't "leave too much to the user"; it allows the user to "[tell] a computer exactly how the manuscript is to be transformed into pages whose typographic quality is comparable to that of the world's finest printers;" [Knuth: ``The TeXbook''; Addison-Wesley 1984]. That is exactly what TeX sets out to do (and what, in my opinion, LaTeX seeks to take away again). >I have >published a book that includes some 600 diagrams, all done with LaTeX >picture mode. But the Latex book suggests that the way to prepare >diagrams is to lay them out on graph paper and read off the coordinates! >This is as far from logical typesetting as possible. On the contrary, it is extremely LOGICAL typesetting, but I suspect that isn't what you want. Instead of saying "I must have a line of length 7.4pc, with relative origin (0,0) and orientation pi/4 radians", I think you want to be able to say "I want a line that looks like this:"; that's fine for some diagrams, and useless for others. It's a bit like the "pull it around" approach of mouse-based document preparation: when the chap came here to demonstrate Aldus PageMaker, he pulled in a half-tone image, which he then shrank BY EYE to fit the column width; when I asked him "but why can't you just TELL PageMaker to shrink it to EXACTLY fit the column", he said: "Oh, you can't do that; you just keep magnifying the display until you get it as accurate as you need". Do you want to work in a world like that ? I don't. So, I 'm sorry to be critical of Michael's criticisms, but TeX can't defend itself (and Knuth is probably far too busy to defend it). Despite that, I really would like to see an ongoing discussion of real deficiencies in TeX, and suggestions as to how in a future system (UfY ?) these deficiencies might be resolved. I'm specifically not suggesting that we discuss how one might implement a totally new document preparation system, nor how WYSIWYG features might be integrated into a TeX environment: I'm sure we all have an intuitive {\it feel} for what makes TeX TeX, and for what makes it quite different from Ventura Publisher or Aldus Pagemaker; within the constraints of the original design philosophy of TeX, what improvements would YOU like to see ? Philip Taylor Royal Holloway and Bedford New College. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 05 Jun 89 18:13:22 EDT From: INHB000 Subject: Comments on TeX Keywords: general, TeX I would like to respond to Philip Taylor's response to some of my remarks. It is clear, first of all, that we are on totally different wavelengths as far as what we want from a typesetting system. What I mean by ``logical'' typesetting is a system in which I give a verbal, rather then pictorial, description of what I want and the system turns it into a document. This is the way Lamport has used this term repeatedly, in TeXhax and elsewhere. If Mr. Taylor wants to use it differently, he may go ahead, but he should make it clear that he is. Now LaTeX for the most part is an extremely logical system. This means, among other things, that you don't have to think about your layout and you don't have to spend much time previewing. The picture mode is something else again. You have to give a precise description of the actual physical layout and you may well have to preview a moderately complicated one 10-20 times, occasionally more. If one took Mr. Taylor's definition of logical seriously, one would have to call logical a typesetting system in which you had to specify individually the postion of every character on the page or perhaps every dot. I suggested that in order to implement my publisher's requirement that if facing pages were of different lengths (sorry about the typo), then the left-hand one be longer, I would run out of memory. Mr. Taylor disputes this. Well, the last time I ran the book through TeX, it reported having used: 65449 words of memory out of 65535 Since there is no way of achieving the desired result without compling two pages at a time, I think I may be pardoned for suspecting that the compilation of two pages at a a time would have certainly exhausted memory. If I am wrong, so be it. The one time I tried using token variables, the attempt foundered on the apparent inability to compile an empty string. I was attempting to coerce TeX into accepting more than nine parameters by some such business as \def\cs<#1><#2>{\setparms<#1>...} \def\setparms<#1,#2,...>{\tokena=#1 \tokenb=#2 ...} and everything worked fine until I tested it with something like \cs<,...><...> that is the first parameter empty, and then everything blew up. Since tokens are barely mentioned in the TeXbook, I certainly do not feel I understand how to use them. It is said that they you can store a token list and if they can store only a non-empty token list, the book should have said so. In the example above, I finally tried the equivalent of \def\setparms<#1,#2,...>{\def\tokena{#1} \def\tokenb{#2} ...} and that worked fine in that case. However, on a different trip through TeX's rather complicated alimentary canal it might not have. I will stick to my guns on the statement that TeX's arithmetic is terrrible. Suppose you want to kern 3 times \indent plus 5 points. The code you need is \newdimen \dimenvar \dimenvar=\indent \multiply\dimenvar by 3 \advance\dimenvar by 5pt \kern\dimenvar Surely it would have been possible to have designed TeX so that it could have accepted \kern{3*\indent+5pt}. And this is a simple example! In the macros I have for doing commutative diagrams, there are much more elaborate examples. The lack of orthogonality is annoying, but only part of the problem. The reason I find \futurelet unsatisfactory is that it ties the lookahead to one of TeX's defining word. I would like a procedure that would allow me to take a token from the input stream, assign it to a token variable, or use it in a definition and then put it back. Before I began using TeX, I had designed and implemented a math formatter. It worked quite well, but wasn't anything like TeX in its ability to put out print quality material. One of the most useful procedures was ungetchar that put the most recently read character back into the input stream. It was much easier both conceptually and in practice than \futurelet (one of whose worst features is its name). Virtually every user of plain TeX has told me that LaTeX takes away all the flexibilty of the former. When challenged, however, none of them has come up with a single example of something they actually do in plain that can't be done, usually with less pain, but sometimes with more, in LaTeX. I'm not saying examples don't exist (although with enough work, it is evident that anything from TeX could be done in LaTeX), only that is the very rare TeX user who will do such a thing. To take one trivial example, several methematicians have told me they won't use LaTeX because it doesn't allow them to put in their own equation numbers. Of course it does! Try running the following sample text through LaTeX: \documentstyle{article} \begin{document} \begin{equation} e=mc^2 \end{equation} $$e=mc^2\eqno \rm off-the-wall$$ $$e=mc^2\leqno\hbox{\rm(\theequation a$'$)}$$ $$e=mc^2\eqno\hbox{\refstepcounter{equation}\rm(\theequation $''$)}$$ \end{document} In conclusion, may I remind Mr. Taylor and others that each of us has his own needs and one man's features are another's deficiencies. If someone says he misses a feature, he probably does. One feature that I would dearly love to see is a procedure that places one box over another opaquely, that is wiping out a portion of the other. Take my word for it, I have sufficient reason to want it. The main reason I hesitated to mention it before is that such a feature would render every device driver obsolete. Michael Barr ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 3 Jun 89 23:02:25 PDT From: lgy@newton.phys.washington.edu (Laurence G. Yaffe) Subject: EOF problems in TeX 2.95 Keywords: TeX 2.95, EOF problems How can one fix the response of TeX to end-of-file conditions so that, for example, "tex somefile < /dev/null" will not cause an infinite loop if somefile.tex tries to include a missing file? Will this be fixed in 2.98? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Sat, 3 Jun 89 22:59:06 PDT From: lgy@newton.phys.washington.edu (Laurence G. Yaffe) Subject: Running TeX in batchmode Keywords: TeX, batchmode Given a dumped format file (called "phyzzx.fmt") which includes the command "\everyjob {\input myphyx.tex}", why is it that "virtex &phyzzx a.tex" creates a log file called "a.log", while "virtex &phyzzx \batchmode \input a.tex" creates a log file called "myphyx.log"? Is there any way to run tex in batchmode on a given input file, using an arbitrary format, and ensure that the log file receives the same name it would if tex were running interactively (without, of course, changing the input file itself)? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- %%% Concerning subscriptions, address changes, unsubscribing: %%% BITNET: send a one-line mail message to LISTSERV@xxx %%% where xxx is the nearest geographical site in the %%% tree shown below %%% SUBSCRIBE TEX-L % to subscribe %%% or UNSUBSCRIBE TEX-L %%% %%% Here is the BITNET re-distribution tree as shown in a recent %%% REVIEW (The geography is guessed at from the subscription list) %%% %%% CLVM TAMVM1 FINHUTC %%% | | (Finland, UK, Scand, CERN) %%% | | | %%% TeXhax ----> UWAVM ----- MARIST ----- EB0UB011 ----- BNANDP11 %%% | (France,Italy,Spain) (Belgium) %%% | | %%% UBVM HEARN --- DEARN %%% (Netherlands) (Germany) %%% %%% Internet: send a similar one line mail message to %%% TeXhax-request@cs.washington.edu %%% %%% 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 %%% %%%\bye %%% End of TeXhax Digest ************************** -------