kevink@utcsstat.UUCP (01/01/87)
This is a follow-up article to one posted in late September regarding
the text processing problem (faced by statisticians primarily) of needing
to embed in text characters with accents such as
. ^ _ ~
W, X , Y , and Z .
When the original article was posted, I asked for readers to supply their
solution to the problem. I thank all those who replied to my query for
information and summarize below several reasonable solutions with my
comments.
Overs: A font developed in Oz that will permit overstriking of accents
inline. It is an 18 point font that works well with symbol and
latin character fonts of 12 point size.
Scientific: A font developed at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. It
too will overstrike accents and seems to work on both
Imagewriter and Laserwriter. It is actually three fonts in
one. It comes with its own subscript font and superscript
font. This keystroke-saving feature eliminates the need
to shift from plain to either subscipt or superscript in
Macwrite and then change the font size to obtain the required
result. Not yet available as a laser font so one has settle
for smoothing the font when using the Laserwriter. (I use
this font for short notes and manuscript reviews.)
TeXtures: This is Addison-Wesley's version of Donald Knuth's TeX for the
Macintosh. It has been developed for Addison-Wesley by
Kellerman and Smith. Do not confuse this version of TeX for the
Mac with MacTeX produced by FTL Systems of Toronto Canada.
It seems that FTL caught A-W sleeping and beat them in
obtaining the copyright. An excellent comparison of these two
products can be found in the October issue of "Notices of the
American Mathematical Society."
This software package will insert mathematical symbols in text
and forms equations in less time than MacEqn. But TeX
represents mathematical symbols in a typesetters' code much
like troff of unix fame. This turns many potential users away.
But to a troffer like myself, it just means learning a new set
of codes which fortunately are quite similar to the troff ones
for mathematical symbols. TeXtures is my preferred mathematical
typesetting tool and I have used it to write one manuscript
already. The major advantage of TeXtures over troff is the video
previewer which I can use at home on my Mac. I have yet to
see a previewer for troff, by the way.
For someone who hasn't used a typesetting language before, the
memorization required at the outset strikes some as being
immense. This is especially true if one reads Knuth's
"TeXbook." But only a fraction of this text is really essential
to typesetting manuscripts, the rest is devoted to the esoterics
of computer typesetting which most casual users can dismiss.
For most of us intent on producing manuscripts we only need know
a hundred or so basic commands, most of which are quite obvious
abbreviations. For typesetters of journals, the esoterics are
mandatory, however.
There are a few bugs with the pre-release v0.51 which I have. But
there seems little point in discussing them as I will be taking
delivery of v0.80 in 10 days, and the release v1.0 shortly
thereafter.
Editorial: I foresee the impact of TeXtures on desktop scientific
publishing as being immense. Any TeXpert is in the position
of being able to publish for himself and his students a
textbook with little capital investment and a reasonable
financial return without trying to interest a major publisher.
Moreover, the publication of learned journals can now become
a desktop enterprise with reduced overhead for the learned
societies. And these journals need never appear in hardcopy
form! (Sorry, but I'm in a Marshall McLuhan frame of mind:
"The medium is the message.") Small wonder Addison-Wesley is
investing in desktop publishing software.
Mail to: K. J. Keen
Dept. of Statistics
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario M5P 3H3
Canada, eh.
E-Mail to: {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!utcs!utcsstat!kevink