TeXhax@cs.washington.edu (TeXhax Digest) (12/11/89)
TeXhax Digest Sunday, December 10, 1989 Volume 89 : Issue 109
Moderators: Tiina Modisett and Pierre MacKay
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Today's Topics:
TeXhax Digest V89 #100 (Spell checkers for TeX)
Re: Getting VMS executables through FTP
Is there a PD QMS DVI Driver?
mf output to bdf
Calling Metafont programmers
Re: TeX 3, fonts
Re: secret.sty?
Possible bug in LaTeX 2.09 <8 Feb 1989>
LaTeX, \uppercase
Re: picture drawing (TeXhax Digest V89 #104)
Font substitution in old dvisun
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Date: Mon, 27 Nov 89 09:57:24 EST
From: ben@lamm.mth.msu.edu (Ben Lotto)
Reply-To: ben@nsf1.mth.msu.edu
Subject: TeXhax Digest V89 #100 (Spell checkers for TeX)
Keywords: spell checkers
The program ispell is a good spelling checker. I recommend it. It
comes with an interface to emacs that allows you to use it quite
efficiently with TeX files. I don't remember where I got my copy, but
it is in many of the standard unix archives.
-B. A. Lotto (ben@nsf1.mth.msu.edu)
Department of Mathematics/Michigan State University/East Lansing, MI 48824
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Date: Sun, 26 Nov 89 18:48 PST
From: "D.A. HOSEK" <DHOSEK@HMCVAX.CLAREMONT.EDU>
Subject: Re: Getting VMS executables through FTP
Keywords: VMS, ftp
A fairly complete and up-to-date TeX archive exists on the VMS
site YMIR.CLAREMONT.EDU (I don't know the IP number offhand).
Everything is kept in subdirectories of SOFTWARE:[TEX]. All
executables are up-to-date with the exceptions of TeX and MF
which will be updated soon. The contents of LABREA.STANFORD.EDU
and SUN.SOE.CLARKSON.EDU are duplicated here, albeit with a
slightly different organization.
-dh
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Date: Sat, 25 Nov 89 14:16 EST
From: Ted Nieland <@AAMRL.AF.MIL:TNIELAND@FALCON>
Subject: Is there a PD QMS DVI Driver?
Keywords: dviware
I have been getting some requests recently for a QMS driver for the DECUS TeX
Collection. I have seen some executable only drivers around, but I have not
seen any QMS drivers that are PD.
Does such a beast exist? And, if it does, where can I get a copy to add to
the DECUS TeX Collection (source and exe)?
Ted Nieland
DECUS TeX Collection Editor
TNIELAND@AAMRL.AF.MIL
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Date: Sat, 25 Nov 89 0:30:04 MST
From: Jacob Gore <jacob@blackbox.gore.com>
Subject: mf output to bdf
Keywords: METAFONT
Does anybody have a program that converts Metafont output (preferably PK
format files) into BDF files? (BDF is Adobe's Bitmap Description Format).
Jacob
Jacob Gore Jacob@Gore.Com boulder!gore!jacob
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Date: Sat, 25 Nov 89 21:06
From: Wujastyk (on GEC 4190 Rim-C at UCL) <UCGADKW%euclid.ucl.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK>
Subject: Calling Metafont programmers
Keywords: METAFONT
I am interested in exploring the possibility of commissioning someone
to create Metafont programs for a particular font. The font is a
calligraphic Oriental font which would be a pleasure to do with MF. It
might be necessary to write a preprocessor to allow input in a
reasonably comfortable roman transliteration; alternatively it
might be possible to accomplish all that is needed in this respect by
using ligtable commands, especially given their greatly expanded power
in TeX 3. This would have to be looked into.
A knowledge of the font is not a prerequisite; I can provide all
that is needed in the way of samples, advice, drawings, critique,
and so on. The font would be clearly specified. What is more important
is a good programming style and some familiarity with using MF for
original work. The person doing the work would have to have their own
workstation and printer (laser probably).
The idea I have is to arrange for my Institute to pay a fee for the
work to be done, and subsequently to release the product into the public
domain (or distribute it free). I might want to interest some other funding
agencies in helping to sponsor the project, especially if my Institute didn't
like the idea of paying. All financial matters remain to be explored. I
have not taken any steps in this regard yet, and will not do so
until I have discussed a particular project with a particular individual.
This notice is---as you will have picked up---very tentative. At present
I am simply exploring whether anyone is interested enough in
Metafont work to take up an interesting and challenging, though
well defined, project.
Please get in touch with me directly if you wish to discuss this
further.
Yours,
Dominik
Dominik Wujastyk, | Janet: wujastyk@uk.ac.ucl.euclid
Wellcome Institute for | Bitnet/Earn/Ean/Uucp: wujastyk@euclid.ucl.ac.uk
the History of Medicine, | Internet/Arpa/Csnet: dow@wjh12.harvard.edu
183 Euston Road, | or: wujastyk%euclid@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
London NW1 2BP, England. | Phone: London 387-4477 ext.3013
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Date: Fri, 24 Nov 89 18:37:39 +0200
From: Tor Lillqvist <tml@hemuli.atk.vtt.fi>
Subject: Re: TeX 3, fonts
Keywords: TeX 3.0, fonts
In TeXhax Digest V89 #103, Dominik Wujastyk comments on my suggestions
about new multilingual fonts:
Tor Lillqvist has suggested that with TeX 3 coming soon, we should
start thinking about extending the CM fonts to 256 characters.
Many people will be extremely grateful to you. But *don't* call
it CM! CM is what it is. Basta! (Unless Don decides to extend
Yes, that was precicely what I was thinking, perhaps I didn't make
myself clear: The CM* fonts should of course stay as they are for
compatibility's sake.
But rather than argue about it, why not simply use the
international country codes that are already in widespread use?
For example, the telephone system uses them. So does DOS, when
This is clearly inadequate for several reasons:
1 The language number in the new TeX is in the range 0..255,
while the telephone country codes range from 1 (North America) to
at least 977 (Nepal).
2 The telephone country codes are not contiguous (of course).
With 1 assigned to North America, there can't be any country codes
10..19, 100..199, etc.
3 Many (if not most) countries have several languages,
official or not, and most languages are spoken (written) in
several countries, with identical spelling and hyphenation rules
(German in Germany and Austria (?)), or different (British and
American English).
A scheme based on the telephone country codes would have so many
exceptions that there isn't any point in using it as a base.
Somebody suggested using the ISBN prefix as language number. This is
a bit better, but points 1 and 2 above apply here, too.
Tor Lillqvist, Technical Research Centre of Finland
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 89 13:44:13 EST
From: Denys Duchier <duchier-denys@YALE.ARPA>
Subject: Re: secret.sty?
Keywords: LaTeX, secret.sty
> Does anyone out there have an option file for report.sty (call
> it secret.sty?) which does the following (for use in LaTeXing
> classified reports):
>
> (1) all paragraphs must begin with a (U), (C), or (S) which
> denotes unclassified, confidential, and secret, respectively.
>
> (2) if a paragraph continues on the next page, the (U), (C),
> and (S) has to be inserted into the first line of the continuing
> paragraph on the next page.
I don't think requirement (2) can be satisfied as stated because when
TeX exercises its page breaking algorithm, paragraphs have already
been formatted and broken into individual lines, each one put in its
own box and appended to the vertical list: you can't insert (S) at the
top of the next page and have TeX reconsider line breaks.
However, it is possible to come close: instead of putting the labels
in the running text, we can let them hang out in the margin. The code
below appears to work on the example I tried; put it in file
secret.sty and use \documentstyle[secret]{article} or something like
it at the top of your document.
If you type \unclassified (resp. \confidential or \secret) the
subsequent paragraphs will begin with (U) (resp. (C) or (S)) hanging
out in the margin. \nosecret turns off this behaviour. You can also
use them as environments.
%--Denys
Organization: Computer Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-2158
%%% File: secret.sty
\def\@markright#1#2#3#4{\gdef\@themark{{#1}{#4}{#3}}}
\def\@markextra#1#2#3#4{\gdef\@themark{{#1}{#2}{#4}}}
\def\@markboth#1#2#3#4#5{\gdef\@themark{{#4}{#5}{#3}}}
\def\@leftmark#1#2#3{#1}
\def\@rightmark#1#2#3{#2}
\def\@extramark#1#2#3{#3}
\def\markboth#1#2{{\let\protect\noexpand
\let\label\relax \let\index\relax
\expandafter\@markboth\@themark
{#1}{#2}\mark{\@themark}}\if@nobreak\ifvmode\nobreak\fi\fi}
\def\markextra#1{{\let\protect\noexpand
\let\label\relax \let\index\relax
\expandafter\@markextra\@themark
{#1}\mark{\@themark}}\if@nobreak\ifvmode\nobreak\fi\fi}
\def\extrabotmark{\expandafter\@extramark\botmark}
\def\extrafirstmark{\expandafter\@extramark\firstmark}
\def\@themark{{}{}{}}
\newdimen\@tempdimc
\output{\@tempdimc = \dp255
\ifnum\outputpenalty <-\@M\@specialoutput\else
\@makecol\@opcol\@floatplacement\@startcolumn
\@whilesw\if@fcolmade \fi{\@opcol\@startcolumn}\fi
\global\vsize\ifnum\outputpenalty >-\@Miv \@colroom
\else \maxdimen\fi
\edef\@tempa{\extrabotmark}\ifx\@tempa\empty\else
\llap{\@tempa\hskip\labelsep}\advance\@tempdimc
-\prevdepth \advance\@tempdimc -\baselineskip
\kern\@tempdimc\fi}
\def\@secret#1{\everypar{\markextra{}\llap{#1\hskip\parindent\hskip\labelsep}\markextra{#1}}}
\def\unclassified{\@secret{(U)}}
\def\confidential{\@secret{(C)}}
\def\secret{\@secret{(S)}}
\def\nosecret{\markextra{}\everypar{}}
\let\@extraenddocument\enddocument
\def\enddocument{\nosecret\@extraenddocument}
%--Denys
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 25 Nov 89 09:54 GMT
From: Slaby <Slaby@urz.ku-eichstaett.dbp.de>
Subject: Possible bug in LaTeX 2.09 <8 Feb 1989>
Keywords: LaTeX 2.09
Problem with picture-environment; possible LaTeX bug ?!
Dear LaTeXnicians,
after upgrading to LaTeX 2.09 <8 Feb 89> I recently was confronted with
a problem that occurred with the picture-environment. The bottom line for
drawing an oval does not fit smoothly but is about 1mm to high.
this problem was not there with LaTeX 2.09 <25 Jan 88>.
%------------------------------- cut here ----------------------------------
\documentstyle[11pt]{article}
\begin{document}
\setlength{\unitlength}{1mm}
\begin{picture}(40,10)
\put(40,5){\vector(-1,0){9.7}}
\put(20,5){\makebox(0,0){{\bf BEGIN}}}
\put(20,5){\oval(20,5)}
\put(10,5){\line(-1,0){10}}
\end{picture}
\end{document}
%------------------------------- cut here ----------------------------------
Thanks to all experts in advance for any help.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. Wolfgang A. Slaby,
Cath. University of Eichstaett
E-Mail(X.400): C=de; A=dbp; P=ku-eichstaett; OU=urz; S=slaby;
slaby@urz.ku-eichstaett.dbp.de
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 25 Nov 89 11:50:18 EST
From: INHB000 <INHB%MUSICB.MCGILL.CA@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU>
Subject: LaTeX, \uppercase
Keywords: LaTeX, \uppercase
There have been a handful of queries in TeXhax over making \uppercase
work for foreign letters, including a recent one by Cornelia Heurich.
The following, which was constructed in response to a question by a pair
of Danes, would seem to give a general mechanism for doing this. I
expect this will all be fixed in version 3 anyway.
This is a LaTeX file, but no feature of LaTeX is used.
\documentstyle[12pt]{article}
\pagestyle{headings}
\headheight 12pt \headsep 20pt %\footskip 15pt
\oddsidemargin 0pt \evensidemargin 0pt
\topmargin 0 in
\textheight = 8.0in
\begin{document}
\let\uc=\uppercase
\newif\ifucase
\def\ss{\ifucase SS\else\char"19\fi}
\def\aa{\ifucase\AA\else\accent23a\fi}
\def\ae{\ifucase\AE\else\char"1A\fi}
\def\oe{\ifucase\OE\else\char"1B\fi}
\def\o{\ifucase\O\else\char"1C\fi}
\def\uppercase#1{\ucasetrue\uc{#1}\ucasefalse}
k\aa l, \ae rter og b\o nner.
\uppercase{k\aa l, \ae rter og b\o nner.}
k\aa l, \ae rter og b\o nner.
\end{document}
Michael Barr
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 25 Nov 89 14:06:57 GMT
From: Sebastian P Q Rahtz <spqr%ecs.southampton.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: picture drawing (TeXhax Digest V89 #104)
Keywords: pictures, graphics
> From: Clement Pellerin <clement@opus.cs.mcgill.ca>
> Can someone comment on the relative merit of tpic, epic, eepic, pictex,
> and fig, or give a pointer to where such a work can be found.
> Are there others that I missed (that do not require postscript)?
some idle thoughts in no special order:
- tpic requires you to have a Unix DWB license; it also requires a
driver that understands tpic \special (there are many around, but I
don't know of one, for instance, for HP LaserJet printers)
- eepic is a reworking of epic which allows for more flexibility by
replacing the core drawing primitives with tpic \specials
- fig only runs (so far as I know) on Suns or machines running X
Windows of some kind; the translators from fig code include ones to
pictex and LaTeX picture mode, so its quite portable
- how about gnutex for simple plotting? it has a LaTeX picture mode
output
- there have been several goes at plotting with Metafont - see the
recent Tugboat for an article describing this approach
you don't say what you want to use the things for, so there is no
`right' answer. pictex is in many ways a good, flexible, portable
solution, but its too big to live comfortably in standard-size TeX,
and its sloooow. if you draw up a list of 10 desiderata for a method
for graphics inclusion in TeX, all the approaches I know of fail one
or more tests. Even if you allow yourself PostScript, it actually gets
worse, as (for instance) pictures prepared on a Mac and included into
TeX often cannot have decently typeset text.
Sebastian Rahtz
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 26 Nov 89 11:34:29 -0800
From: mackay (Pierre MacKay)
Subject: Font substitution in old dvisun
Keywords: fonts, dvisun
In TeXhax89.76 Greg Johnstone offered a version of the old dvisun
which reads pk files. We use this on our antediluvian Sun 150U
---on occasion even in the oldest, unwindowed form. To be able at last
to remove pxl files altogether is very satisfactory. Johnstone's
program has some nice, though unexpected, touches, among them being
that fact that it is set up for 120 rather than 118dpi. That meant
that on the first compilation, I found myself up against the failure
to do rational font substitutions and decided it was time to take care
of that. It is also time to phase out the unfortunate 118dpi fonts
too, but that is another story.
A patch for the code offered by Johnstone on hercules.csl.sri.com is
available on june.cs.washington.edu in ~ftp/tex. Look for
dvisun patch.
Here is the rationale, which can be used anywhere where something
analogous to UNIX access(2) is available.
/* The great and unnecessary pain in using almost all the early viewers,
* and a good many recent ones has been their unfriendly habit of aborting
* when a font could not be found---even if the name was off by only a
* single DPI value (128 in place of 129, for instance.). With the patch
* added below, such failures will hardly ever happen, but you will be
* told of any font substitutions that were necessary. Any program that
* uses the access() routine can adapt this code quite easily.
*
* Strategy:
* If the font cannot be found as requested, a FUZZ amount ranging from
* LO_FONT_FUZZ to HI_FONT_FUZZ is added to the magnification and access()
* is tried on each resultant font filename. If that fails, and the
* DPI value is greater than the base resolution, the DPI value is
* divided by one magstep (1.2) and FUZZ is tried again, and again,
* until the resultant resolution is down at the base resolution given
* by the defined value of RESOLUTION in this program. Then, if the
* design size is > 10, another attempt is made at designsize 10
* (that is cmsy17 -> cmsy10). Smaller fonts are all converted to
* cmr7. (If you don't have cmr7 at the base resolution, you ARE in trouble.)
* One last desperate try is made if even designsize 10 cannot be
* made to work on one of the larger fonts. The brutal substition
* of cmr10 at the base resolution is used, no matter what the font
* may have been supposed to be. (By that time the document looks
* pretty strange in any case.)
* The FUZZ is set very large. 9 units on either side of the requested
* rasterization value. This is so that a directory full of *200pk and
* 240pk fonts can be used when the program asks for 207pk or 248pk.
* 300pk can be used as a substitute for 298pk in the same way. The
* possibilities are quite generous.
*/
Ideally, a font substitution scheme should provide for the replacement
of cm*12 scaled \magstep1 by cm*10 scaled \magstep2, but that seems
too complicated for a previewer.
Email: mackay@cs.washington.edu Pierre A. MacKay
Smail: Northwest Computing Support Center TUG Site Coordinator for
Thompson Hall, Mail Stop DR05 Unix-flavored TeX
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195
(206) 543-6259
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