saj@chinet.chi.il.us (Stephen Jacobs) (03/18/91)
The following replies to my request for help setting up TeX on the ST may be
of general interest. I'll add that the man pages on atari.archive are
extremely useful in configuring TeX.
From: Michal Jaegermann <gargoyle!ugw.utcs.utoronto.ca!NTOMCZAK%UALTAVM.bitnet>
As far as I know there is no book which entiltled "How to run TeX on ST",
but generic setup should work. There is a number of different TeX implementa-
tions for Atari, so it is hard to give a more concrete advice. Environement
variables should be good for a lot of things.
On the other hand your questions are easy.
As far as Metafont goes - you can try something on screen if you have program
version which supports that. So far I did not see one for ST although I heard
some rumours that they exist. All which I have just makes fonts from Metafont
programs. With just posted by Steve Grimm gawk 2.11 I included, as one of
examples, an awk program which generates gulam script for Metafont driving.
Adjust to your needs and have fun (you may need to create your own modes).
Differences between virtex and initex. You are using normally virtex which
is a real program. initex is a sort of formats compiler. You do not want to
load big macro packages everytime from scratch. With initex you may just
get macros and :dump, producing .fmt file to be read later by virtex.
I have aliases like 'alias tex virtex &plain', 'alias latex virtex &lplain'
and so on. initex has its own index entry in TeXbook. Check also page 343.
Cheers,
Michal
ntomczak@ualtavm.bitnet
From: Michal Jaegermann <gargoyle!ugw.utcs.utoronto.ca!NTOMCZAK%UALTAVM.bitnet>
Subject: handy TeX guru
Get yourself a book by Michael Dobb "A Gentle Introduction to TeX".
It is available from TUG (TeX Users Group), P.O.Box 9506, Providence,
RI 02940, phone (401)751-7760, fax (401)751-1071. 15 bucks (10 for TUG
members). You may want to contact TUG since they claim to have more
stuff for begining TeXers. You may even want to become a member.
If you are on usenet you may subscribe to comp.text.tex newsgroup.
On Internet there is TeXhax list. Subsbcribe at your nearest LISTSERV.
Michal
ntomczak@ualtavm.bitnet
From: Paul Purdom <gargoyle!iuvax.cs.indiana.edu!pwp>
To: saj@chinet.chi.il.us
Subject: Re: uploaded to atari.archive
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
References: <RALPH.90Dec14170435@orion.laas.fr> <RALPH.90Dec17153927@orion.laas.fr> <1990Dec18.144413.26174@chinet.chi.il.us>
Status: RO
If you are going to use METAFONT, you had better get the METAFONT book also.
If you have any specific questions, I know TeX pretty well, and I even have
it up on an Atari (although I don't use the Atari version much). I know very
little about LaTeX. I read the METAFONT book once, and I know it is not too
hard to use METAFONT to make new sizes of fonts that someone else already
designed.
If you have set up TeX from one of the public domain distributions, here is
roughly what you need to do.
1. Get everything dearced and put in the right places.
2. Try
tex filename.tex
on some test file that is real simple (tex filename when you have a file
named filename.tex should also work). If you don't have a test file, use
the next four lines:
This is a test.
\bye
3. The result of step 2 should be to produce the file filename.dvi
If that works, you have TeX working and (for producing dvi files) you are
limited only by the fonts for which you have .tfm files. The main other
possibility is that you get some message about it can not find the font
cmr10. I guess there is also a slight possibility that you are using a
version of TeX that does not have the plaintex macros built in. In that
case it probably wants to read the plaintex macros first. Let me know if
you should be having that difficulty and I will see what I can do to help.
4. If you have your dvi file, the next thing to try to get going is a dvi
previewer. This will display your document on the screen. I have one of
those going, but I don't remember which one (I can check if you wish). The
early dvi programs only worked on black and white monitors, but now some
work on color too (though not as well).
5. Lastly, you will want to be able to print. For this you need a print
driver. I don't have any working, but I am interested in what you get
going. I believe that there is a free driver for the Epson printer.
Your dvi previewer and your print driving program need not only tfm files
(which tell such things as how tall and wide each character is) but also some
font files (which tell where to put ink on the page). Different drivers use
different formats. The first file formats developed was the .pxl format,
which contains a bit map of each character. This format is big but fast to
work with. The .gf font files are more compact, but drivers that use them
must unpack them at some time or other. Anyway you need the type of font
files that your previewer and printing program expect. There are programs
with obvious names to convert from one format to an other.
Once you have TeX, the previewer, and the printing program going then you
will want to consider METAFONT. It takes definitions of fonts (in files whose
names end in .mf) and produces .gf files. The easiest thing to do with
METAFONT is to produce different magnifiactions of fonts. Once you have a
correct .mf file, you can change a few parameters (maybe just one) to get a
.gf file for letters of what ever size you want. Good font definitions also
have parameters to adjust for how black the dots on your printer are. See the
METAFONT book for details. If you want to really get fancy, you can use
METAFONT to design your own fonts.
Please keep me posted on your TeX effort and let me know if I can help. If
you want really complete information, join the TeX Users Group for $45. They
have complete back issues of their journal.
From: gargoyle!ihlpf.att.com!hofmann (James R Hofmann)
To: att-mt!chinet.chi.il.us!saj
Subject: Re: uploaded to atari.archive
Stephen,
I got Horace Mitchell's (sp?) set of disks from Current Notes. He has a set of
readme files that were very helpful.
Jim Hofmann
AT&T Bell Laboratories
Naperville, IL
(708)979-0590
From: gargoyle!calvin!stahl (Steve Stahl)
Message-Id: <9012182345.AA01897@calvin.fnal.gov>
Received: by zippy.fnal.gov (4.0/SMI-4.0)
id AA12383; Tue, 18 Dec 90 17:41:17 CST
To: saj@chinet.chi.il.us (Stephen Jacobs)
In-Reply-To: saj@chinet.chi.il.us's message of 18 Dec 90 14:44:13 GMT
Subject: Re: uploaded to atari.archive
Status: RO
Well, I've been looking a little lately at a copy of
"TeX for the Impatient" by Paul Abrahams, Karl Berry, and
Kathryn Hargreaves. Addison-Wesley publishes it.
You might want to try that.
Steve S, stahl@zippy.fnal.gov