milt@mist.CS.ORST.EDU (Milt Sagen) (02/15/90)
******************************************************************* * F O R A L L T H E I N T E R E S T E D P A R T I E S * ******************************************************************* * A Review of TeXtures 1.2 for Apple Macintosh * ******************************************************************* +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Portions of this article have been copied directly form the "TeXtures | | 1.2 Update" file, other portions parapharsed, and additional comments | | were added by this author. | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ This is a review of TeXtures version 1.2 by Blue Sky Research. Here are some of the features in the new version 1.2: 1. Hyphenation Patterns: TeXtures 1.2 allows the definition of new hyphenation patterns (the pattern-matching dictionaries that program the automatic hyphenation of words). 2. Support for ImageWriter printer: Allows printing of your document to the ImageWriter, even if it includes graphics (the graphics must be in pict, or bitmapped format and not PostScript). Although the quality may not be as good as a PostScript devices, the output is more than legible. 3. Import of Graphics: Import of Graphics supported via Clipboard or Scrapbook. There a special graphics notebook that one may pastes the illustrations in, which also gives the bounding box for the picture. TeXtures 1.2 allows a new pictfile keyword in special commands to specify the inclusion of an external PICT file produced by another Macintosh application such as MacDraw. The pictfile keyword is used in the same way as the picture keyword. Also, there are the graphic inclusion commands (picture, pictfile, illustration, and postscriptfile) that may now contain an optional scaled phrase to indicate magnification or reduction of the included graphic. The picture may be viewd in the preview window (typesett window) once the document has been typesett. 4. Fast Typeset View (TeX previewer): While typesetting a document, TeXtures 1.2 will display the first page as soon as it is completed. Additional typesett pages are made available as they are completed. The typesett document may be magnified with the magnify glass (a nice little tool). 5. Remember Format: Documents remembers their typeset format (for example, Plain or LaTeX), so that the current format will automatically track documents as they are opened or selected. Once a document format has been selected from the Typeset menu, it will automatically be reselected each time that document is used. 6. Typeset Export (Experimental): Two experimental features for export of typeset material in TeXturesJ1.2 which are an Adobe Illustrator 88 interface, and a clipboard (cut and paste) interface. The export features may be used whenever a typeset window is active. To copy a typeset page to the clipboard, select "Copy" from the Edit menu; the typeset page may then be pasted into the Scrapbook, or into any application that accepts picture material (including TeXtures itself). To export a typeset page to Adobe Illustrator 88, select "Save As" from the File menu, and then the filename to be created. The file may then be opened by Illustrator, and any Illustrator tools or transformations may be applied to the typeset material. A known limitation is that the typeset export facilities are practical only for PostScript fontsQthey will not work properly with Computer Modern fonts. (This will change with Version 1.0 of the CM/PostScript fonts.) Further, the clipboard export facility is of limited precision, so that character kerns, rule sizes and positions, and other graphic relations may be distorted in this format. TeXtures includes the Computer Modern Fonts (exculding the cminch and cmsa10), and LaTeX fonts (excluding icmex10, icmmi8, icmsy8, icmtt8, ilasy8, ilcmss8, ilcmssb8,and ilcmssi8). Also, the entire AmSTeX font families. Only the logo fonts are provided excluding flogo, logobase, nlogo, sklogo, and the rest of the utility fonts that are usually provided with the TeX package. Dummy font and its tfm is also excluded from this package (you will have a diffculty building AmsTeX format file, however there is way around this if you will take the time to read on). TeX metric fonts are give for Adobe ps fonts, namely Helvetica, Courier, Times, Symbol, Palatino, Zapf Chancery, Zapf Dingbats, Avant Garde, New Century School Book, and Narrow Helvetica (in Bold, Italic, Plain, and Bold-Italic.) I have contacted Blue Sky Research and most of these fonts which were excluded have not been ported to the Mac environment. Read on, since there is a time consuming yet free-of-charge way to build these fonts. The fonts that are not provided by TeXtures may be built using the following algorithm: 1. Download the all the required pk fonts from your installation. 2. Download the required .tfm files. Note: When downloadind tfm's and pk's put the kermit on the host in binary download, i.e., kermit -is filename. Put your Mac application in binary kermit download and not MacBinary kermit. 3. Run the pk files through a program call "pktor" to generate a .r Mac resource file. 4. Run the .r file through RMaker to generate a Mac font suitcase. 5. Copy all the font families into one suitcase. Note: Remeber that there is a limit to the number of suitcases you may have open under multifinder, so it is best to have fewer font suitcases if you are using cdevs and inits. 6. Change the file type of .tfm from ???? to text in ResEdit. 7. Go to your favorite editor and open .tfm and copy the contents to the clipboard. 8. Go to ResEdit open the TeXtures TeX Metrics suitcase. 9. Double click on *tfm and you will see all the tfm's along with their unique Id's. 10. Select "New" from the ResEdit's File menu and a new window will open. 11. "Paste" the contents of the clipboard in the ascii portion (not the hex portion) of the window. The hex code will be generated automatically when you paste the contents of clipboard into this ascii portion. Note: Remember you must click in the right most corner of this window in order to paste the contents of clipboard. If you try to paste into the leftmost corner you will get an error message complaining about the fact that data is not hex. 12. Close this window and then select "Get Info" from the File menu. 13. In the Info window change the id number if you so desire, but make sure it is a unique id. 14. In the info window enter the name of the font, i.e., cminch, cmsa10, ilcmss8, eurb14, mcyr10, etc. 15. Select purgeable option in Info window. 16. Close info window. 17. Close *tfm window. 18. Save this new TeX metric suitcase. 19. Remember steps 6-18 must be done for all tfm's that are not included in TeXtures font metric suitcase. 20. Similarly, all pk files that you wish to convert to Mac font suitcase must be processed through "pktor." The draw back of this package is that all the Computer Modern fonts and LaTeX fonts that are provided by Blue Sky Research as screen fonts, requires approximately 24 Megabytes of Hard disk space to install. By the time you are done installing all the fonts the required space on your hard for the fonts will exceed 32 Megabytes. I hope this review is of some help to the readers. I am using a friends account (Mr. Milt Sagen was generous enough to allow me to use his account to post this article). If additional info is required please email me a note at milt@mist.cs.orst.edu but address the letter to Robert Mahbod. ******************************************************** * If no one seems to understand, * * Start your own revolution, cut out the middle man. * ******************************************************** * -Waiting fo the Great Leap Forwards, Billy Bragg * ********************************************************