CUNNINGHAMR%HAW.SDSCNET@LLL-MFE.ARPA.UUCP (08/02/86)
A few more notes... The .PXL files, as built by K&S, aren't directly compatible with Flavio Rose's LN03 driver supplied on the same tape. They require conversion (see section 9 of the LN03 driver .MEM file documentation), and the converted .PXL files must be combined into one directory with extensions like .1500PXL. As-is, the .PXL files (with the .PXL extension, divided up into directories by magnification like [...1500]) work with most laser printers, you'd only have to do this extra step if you're using LN03s. Curiously, there seems to be a noticeable difference in the characters produced on our LN03 printers vs. our Imagen 12/300 (I'm using the QMS_FONTS for both). To my (uneducated) eye, it's the Imagen 12/300 output that looks over-thin. That's strange because both types of laser printers seem to have essentially the same Ricoh engine. Possibly there's something subtle that Imagen has done to the 12/300? In my previous note, I claimed: >>The example installation keeps referring to SYS$SYSDISK. That may be a >>quasi-standard name for the system disk at some installations, but it's not a >>VMS standard, and many sites don't so define their system disk. Using >>SYS$SYSDEVICE instead should work nearly everywhere. Ed McGuire noted: >SYS$SYSDISK is defined by VMS on my cluster but not documented in DCL Concepts >table 4-3. It translates to to SYS$SYSROOT:. My guess is that VMS used to >use SYS$SYSDISK the way it now uses SYS$SYSROOT, prior to V3 when system roots >were added, as the logical name for the structure containing the system >directories. >Using SYS$SYSDEVICE instead of SYS$SYSDISK may work for TeX, but they're not >equivalent. For example, there is guaranteed to be a SYS$SYSDISK:[SYSLIB] on >every VMS system, but not a SYS$SYSDEVICE:[SYSLIB]. It looks like SYS$SYSDISK is defined by VMS for clusters only under VMS4.x. My non-clustered (VMS4.3) systems don't have SYS$SYSDISK defined. I guess the lesson is that when you go to install the K&S TeX2.0 distribution, don't follow the documentation blindly. Use whatever definition for you system disk (or whever else you want to put it) that makes sense at your own site. I'd also claimed: >>In ``Step 7.'', adding TEX.HLP to the system help library, there should be a >>caution that this should be done when there are no users on the system. If >>someone is accessing the system help library while the update occurs, it is >>possible that the system file can be scrambled (most VMS system administrators >>know this, but mentioning it never hurts). And Ed noted: >I didn't know this. I have been warned that LIBRARIAN can't add a .HLP file to >the library if someone has the library open, but I thought that was the only >bugaboo. Which is, I believe, correct. In any case, a bit of caution is indicated.