Subject: TeXhax Digest V89 #85 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 Thursday, September 21, 1989 Volume 89 : Issue 85 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: HPGL to DEC Sixels converter wanted WordPerfect to TeX converter Line numbering Re: \TeX{} at the end of a sentence Re: TeXhax Digest V89 #80 (AmSTeX) Thanks for the help, and now for a Matrix question... Re: TeXhax Digest V89 #81 (typesetting) Customizing LaTeX A time to troff, a time to die Re: TeX, troff, man pages Re: Needed: a way to display the sign for per thousand --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 12 SEP 89 11:41:30 BST From: TEX%rmcs.cranfield.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK Subject: HPGL to DEC Sixels converter wanted Keywords: HGPL, DEC, sixel Certain users at this site (which is generally committed to using DEC LN03 printers for output) are making use of a PC-based package (MathCAD) to generate figures which they would like to include in their LaTeX-formatted theses, etc. Although the package supports the concept of configuration files to describe output devices (and is capable of sending the output to a file, for later transfer to the physical device), the only graphics output supported on what it terms ``plotters'' (as opposed to ``printers'') is HPGL. (Producing a configuration definition for a ``printer'' is of no help, because it will then send textual information assuming the device supports an IBM printer character set [we have the IBM-PC ROM for our LN03, but intermingling this with DVI output seems rather hairy!].) Therefore, my question is this: has anyone written a program (which runs on, or could be ported to either a Vax or IBM-PC), which can interpret HPGL and generate the corresponding bitmap in DEC's sixel format? Such an output could then readily be incorporated using Rose's \special{ln03:plotfile xxx} support in his or my DVI-LN03 driver. Please mail me direct and I will summarize to the digests. Brian {Hamilton Kelly} | JANET: tex@uk.ac.cranfield.rmcs | | BITNET: tex%uk.ac.cranfield.rmcs@ac.uk | | INTERNET: tex%uk.ac.cranfield.rmcs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk | | Smail: School of Electrical Engineering & Science, Royal Military | | College of Science, Shrivenham, SWINDON SN6 8LA, U.K. | | Phone: Swindon (0793) 785252 (UK), +44-793-785252 (International) | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 12 Sep 89 12:44:58 -0400 From: Thomas J Hacker Subject: WordPerfect to TeX converter. Keywords: WordPerfect, TeX Hello!! Does anyone know of a WordPerfect to TeX conversion utility?? -Thanks! Thomas Hacker hacker@unix.secs.oakland.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 12 Sep 89 09:05:41 PDT From: wagman@Csa1.LBL.Gov (Gary S. Wagman (415)486-6610) Subject: Line numbering Keywords: TeX, line numbering Dear Wei-Chang Shann, This is not exactly what you requested, but maybe it is better than what you thought you could have. There will be numbers 1 through 24 down the left side of the page with two vertical rules separating them from the body of your text. This is the way legal documents are done. The trick is to put this constant format in the headline. Crop marks for camera-ready copy would be done with the same trick. The only restriction (acceptable for legal documents but perhaps not for mathematical ones) is that the baselineskip of the numbers is regular whereas the text itself may be irregular because of irregular vertical glue (\parskip not equal to \baselineskip, tall formulas, etc.) Gary Wagman WAGMAN@LBL.GOV \baselineskip = 24pt \def\STRUT{\vrule height 24pt depth 0pt width 0pt} \headline{% \offinterlineskip% \setbox0=\vtop{% \setbox2=\hbox{% \hglue 5pt% \vrule height 24pt depth 12pt width 1pt% \hglue 2pt% \vrule height 24pt depth 12pt width 1pt} \ht2 = 0pt \dp2 = 0pt \llap{\STRUT\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{1\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{2\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{3\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{4\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{5\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{6\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{7\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{8\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{9\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{10\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{11\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{12\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{13\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{14\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{15\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{16\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{17\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{18\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{19\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{20\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{21\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{22\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{23\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{24\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{25\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{26\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break \llap{27\STRUT\copy2\qquad}\hfil\break} \dp0=0pt \setbox1=\vbox to 0in{\vskip -24pt \box0 \vss} \box1 \hss} This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text.\par This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text. This is some test text.\par \vfill \end ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 12 Sep 89 00:34:29 -0400 From: Chris Torek Subject: Re: \TeX{} at the end of a sentence Keywords: TeX, \TeX{} In TeXhax Digest V89 #81, Robert Messer writes: >In TeXhax v89 #79, Chris Torek suggests using \TeX{} everywhere in >place of \TeX. However, the expansion of the macro \TeX ends in an >uppercase letter. Hence if it appears at the end of sentence, TeX >will interpret the "X." as an abbreviation, and insert interword glue >rather than the glue between sentences. As indicated in the answer to >Exercise 12.6 of the TeXbook, an easy way around this is to end >such sentences with \TeX\null. This is correct, but irrelevant to the original question (which was about a `universal' way to end macros that makes following whitespace significant). Although `\TeX{}. Foo' is set using ordinary interword glue, the same is true for `\TeX. Foo'; and `\TeX{}\null. Foo' works as well as `\TeX\null. Foo'. (Incidentally, the LaTeX for this is `\TeX\@. Foo'---or of course `\TeX{}\@. Foo', or even `\TeX{}\@{}. Foo'.) Anyway, the point is that `end a macro with {}' really does work as a universal rule. It does break up ligatures, but it is rare that someone defines `\f' as `f' and then writes The reasoning that led to typing this sentence in this di\f{}\f{}icult fashion is beyond me. (If the point is to avoid ligatures, `dif{}f{}icult' works just as well. And if the point is to write the word `difficult', no macros are needed at all!) In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163) Domain: chris@mimsy.umd.edu Path: uunet!mimsy!chris ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 11 Sep 89 15:15:20 PDT From: rodrique%hplmjr@hplabs.hp.com Subject: Re: TeXhax Digest V89 #80 (AmSTeX) Keywords: AmSTeX Two questions for our readership: What is the current status of AMSTeX? Is anyone currently developing/supporting it? And, how does one acquire a copy for use on either a Mac or PC? Can anyone provide information about training for TeX users; specifically for AMSTeX? 1-4 day workshops, tutorials, etc. are what I have in mind. thanks Mike Rodriquez rodrique@hplabs.hp.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 11 Sep 89 18:04:11 EDT From: kerner@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu Subject: Thanks for the help, and now for a Matrix question... Keywords: LaTeX, TeX, Matrix Dear LaTeX/TeX Experts, Thanks very much for your responses. All of your answers were informative as well as helpful, and one (from David Shepherd) included a one-line definition of \sloppy that eliminated the problem completely, in plenty of time to meet the deadline for the November-December issue of Ada Letters. I really appreciate the rapid, helpful responses. I do have this one other problem, in the address list at the end of the Matrix, where the minipage only seems to be working for the first page. For now, I just broke it up into 2 files, so I've got my workaround, and the next Matrix isn't due till end of February, so no hurry, but if anyone happens to know this one ... Thanks again. And lest you think I only have complaints, let me state that I think LaTeX is great, overall -- probably my favorite tool after Emacs! Judy Kerner. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 12 Sep 89 10:03:29 PDT From: lamport@src.dec.com (Leslie Lamport) Subject: Re: TeXhax Digest V89 #81 (typesetting) Keywords: LaTeX, typsetting In response to a question of style, Benjamin J. Woznick cited four books "lying on my table" as examples. All four were about programming. While I encourage looking at real books when faced with design questions, I advise against using books about computers. Most books about computers are typeset by their authors, often with little or no guidance from the publisher. Such books are likely to offer examples of bad design. Leslie Lamport -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 12 Sep 89 10:06:14 BST From: Sebastian Rahtz Subject: Customizing LaTeX Keywords: LaTeX, Karl Berry doesn't like LaTeX: Although I believe that LaTeX has the right idea, of separating form from content, of specifying things intensionally and not extensionally, the styles available do not suit everyone's needs, and are certainly not useful for typesetting custom-designed books. I just don't know where this so-common idea comes from; WHY is it regarded as difficult to customize LaTeX? The sample style files are exhaustively commented and somewhere in them you can find examples of how to achieve the right effect. I just did a book for OUP, and their typographer sent me a detailed scheme for how she wanted the pages done (she neither knew nor cared that I was using TeX); translating these into LaTeXery took me a day or so, with a second iteration when she complained about hyphenation, but the result was LaTeX producing pages that met her specification with a minimum of trouble. Now if Leslie Lamport had thought to ask for royalties on every LaTeXed book... Sebastian Rahtz --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 12 Sep 89 10:00:33 BST From: Sebastian Rahtz Subject: A time to troff, a time to die Keywords: troff Stephan von Bechtolsheim says: It's my opining that is's time to retire troff. Manual pages and the unix documentation should be translated into TeX or LaTeX and troff should be retired. The output just looks awful. I'm not a great troff user, but I think Stephan is going way over the top; troff is a formatting engine like TeX, and the look of the output results from the troff macros which someone wrote, not the troff itself. I think the TeXbook looks horrible, but I don't blame TeX. To my mind, the problem with troff is that no-one writes new macro packages for it anymore, so we all use mm or ms, and few people hack them - its as if we all used LaTeX's preprovided styles to the exclusion of all else. The HUGE advantage of troff is that it has a compatible product, nroff, designed to produce output for screens and lineprinters; I know there are all sorts of addons to TeX to produce screen versions, but they just aren't the same Sebastian Rahtz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 12 Sep 89 9:52:49 CDT From: phil@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: Re: TeX, troff, man pages Keywords: TeX, troff, nroff, man pages > It's my opining that is's time to retire troff. > > Manual pages and the unix documentation should be translated > into TeX or LaTeX and troff should be retired. The output just > looks awful. I agree! But there's one small problem: nroff. One "feature" of the man pages is that you can read nroff-ed versions on-line (actually, it is a mis-feature that Unix has no form of help that is more interactive than "man", but that's a different story). I've often thought of implementing the troff man macros in TeX. If that were done, then one could just TeX-off the printed form whenever desired but still have "nroff -man" for the man command. So what's needed? First, we need to define "(newline)." as the equivalent of an escape character. Any takers? William LeFebvre Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Northwestern University --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 12 Sep 89 15:00:50 +0200 From: fj@iesd.auc.dk (Frank Jensen) Subject: Re: Needed: a way to display the sign for per thousand Keywords: METAFONT, percent sign In TeXhax V89 #74, Werner Heinrich asked for a way to display a per thousand sign. I have created a Metafont program (based on DEK's program for the per cent sign) for such a sign. Here it is: cmchar "Per thousand sign"; beginchar(oct"201",12u#+max(9u#,3fudge*(hair#+stem#)), body_height#,body_height#-asc_height#); italcorr .4asc_height#*slant-.5u#; adjust_fit(0,0); pickup fine.nib; numeric left_curve,right_curve; left_curve=hround 5/6[fudged.hair,fudged.stem]; right_curve=max(fine.breadth,hround(fudged.hair if hefty:-2stem_corr fi)); pos1(vair,90); pos2(left_curve,180); pos3(vair,270); pos4(right_curve,360); top y1r=h; lft x2r=hround u; rt x4r=hround(w/3-u); bot y3r=floor(if monospace: .7 else: .5 fi\\ asc_height); x1=x3=.5[x2,x4]; y2=y4=.5[y1,y3]; filldraw stroke pulled_super_arc.e(1,2)(superpull) & pulled_super_arc.e(2,3)(superpull); % left half of upper bowl filldraw stroke super_arc.e(3,4) & super_arc.e(4,1); % right half of upper bowl pos5(vair,90); pos6(left_curve,180); pos7(vair,270); pos8(right_curve,360); bot y7r=-d; rt x8r=hround(2/3w-.5u); lft x6r=hround(w/3+1.5u); top y5r=vround(if monospace: .3 else: .5 fi\\ asc_height); x5=x7=.5[x6,x8]; y6=y8=.5[y5,y7]; filldraw stroke pulled_super_arc.e(5,6)(superpull) & pulled_super_arc.e(6,7)(superpull); % left half of lower left bowl filldraw stroke super_arc.e(7,8) & super_arc.e(8,5); % right half of lower left bowl pos13(vair,90); pos14(left_curve,180); pos15(vair,270); pos16(right_curve,360); rt x16r=hround(w-u); lft x14r=hround(2/3w+u); x13=x15=.5[x14,x16]; y13=y5; y14=y16=y6; y15=y7; filldraw stroke pulled_super_arc.e(13,14)(superpull) & pulled_super_arc.e(14,15)(superpull); % left half of lower right bowl filldraw stroke super_arc.e(15,16) & super_arc.e(16,13); % right half of lower right bowl pickup rule.nib; top y9=h; bot y10=-d; if hefty: x9=good.x(x5-eps); x10=good.x(x1+eps); draw z9--z10; % diagonal else: rt x9=hround(2/3w-2u); lft x10=hround 2.5u; draw z9--z10; % diagonal pickup fine.nib; pos9(rule_thickness,angle(z9-z10)+90); pos11(vair,angle(z1r-z4r)-90); pos12(vair,angle(z9-z10)+90); path p; p=super_arc.r(1,4); z11r=point 2/3 of p; z12r=z9r; filldraw stroke z11e{direction 2/3 of p}...{z9-z10}z12e; % upper link pos17(vair,angle(z5r-z8r)-90); pos18(vair,angle(z13r-z14r)+90); path pp; pp=super_arc.r(5,8); z17r=point 2/3 of pp; path qq; qq=pulled_super_arc.r(13,14)(superpull); z18r=point 2/3 of qq; filldraw stroke z17e{direction 2/3 of pp}...{-direction 2/3 of qq}z18e; % lower link fi penlabels(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18); endchar; [ I have tried to preserve DEK's coding style :-) ] There are (at least) two ways to use this sign in a TeX/LaTeX document: (1) Add the above program to the file `punct.mf' and generate new versions of all the fonts that use `punct.mf'. The sign can now be accessed as \char'201 (e.g., via a macro), or as \%\% if the following statement is added to the relevant driver files: ligtable "%": "%" =: oct"201"; (2) Save the above program in a separate file and generate one or more fonts containing the per thousand sign in various sizes and styles. In this way, the sign is more difficult to use, because the user must make sure that (s)he's getting the right variant. A macro could be defined (and redefined whenever a size/style change occurs) to relieve the user from the details, though. Comparing this per thousand sign with the PostScript variants (the standard fonts: Times, Helvetica, etc.), we observe the following: (a) The bowls in the per thousand sign generated by the above program have the same size as the bowls in the per cent sign. In PostScript they are smaller. (b) I decided to put a link between the two lower bowls in roman and italic (but not in sans serifs and typewriter) fonts. I liked the sign better with the link than without it. (This decision was taken before I looked at the PostScript variants.) These decisions are perhaps questionable, but I'm always open to (constructive) criticism! Frank Jensen, fj@iesd.auc.dk Department of Mathematics and Computer Science Aalborg University DENMARK ----------------------------------------------------------------------- %%% Further information about the TeXhax Digest, the TeX %%% Users Group, and the latest software versions is available %%% in every tenth issue of the TeXhax Digest. %%% %%% Concerning subscriptions, address changes, unsubscribing: %%% %%% BITNET: send a one-line mail message to LISTSERV@xxx %%% SUBSCRIBE TEX-L % to subscribe %%% or UNSUBSCRIBE TEX-L %%% %%% Internet: send a similar one line mail message to %%% TeXhax-request@cs.washington.edu %%% JANET users may choose to use %%% texhax-request@uk.ac.nsf %%% 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 ************************** -------