TeXhax@cs.washington.edu (TeXhax Digest) (10/03/89)
TeXhax Digest Monday, October 2, 1989 Volume 89 : Issue 88
Moderators: Tiina Modisett and Pierre MacKay
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Today's Topics:
Announcing BibTeX V0.99c for the Atari-ST !!!
TUG '89 Meeting at Stanford -- questionnaires, please
Switching between one and two columns on the same page
More about \hanging
\immediate\write of a character
Active characters make reasonable command terminators
Re: Squeezing spaces from write token list
OzTeX fits on two floppies
TeX on an ATT PC
Round-off errors when processing \oval from LaTeX
Unix man pages
Help with blackboard bold and cyrillic fonts ...
Where to get dvipage? and article writer needed
Change files for TeX and METAFONT
Re: TeX, troff, man pages
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Date: Wed, 20 Sep 89 22:48:37 EDT
From: jlong@afit-ab.arpa (Jeffrey K. Long)
Subject: Announcing BibTeX V0.99c for the Atari-ST !!!
Keywords: BibTeX V0.99c, Atari-ST
BibTeX v0.99c is avialable for the Atari-ST!
It should soon be available from the terminator archive server for
anonymous ftp (35.1.33.8) or from the panarthea mail server.
It will run on any ST, although I will assume that you have a hard-drive
as it is really needed to run LaTeX on the ST to begin with!
I ported this version of BibTeX over from the excellent MS-DOS
implementation by Niel Kempson (of the UK). He took the WEB code and hand
translated it into Turbo-C V2.0 code. I have the Prospero-C, ANSI
compatible compiler on my 1040ST, and the changes were minimal to get it
ported over!
I have also submitted the program to the comp.binaries.atari.st moderator,
so keep an eye open for it there in a few weeks (I understand he has a
huge backlog of submissons :-) ). If you really need it badly, try and
reach me via E-Mail, and I can send a uuencoded copy to you via E-mail.
| Jeff Long jlong@blackbird.afit.af.mil (ARPA net) |
| |
| humble (and getting humbler by the day) graduate student; |
| The Air Force Institute of Technology (what a great way of life??) |
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Date: Wed, 20 Sep 89 16:03:45 EST
From: Christina_Thiele%CARLETON.CA@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU
Subject: TUG '89 Meeting at Stanford -- questionnaires, please
Keywords: general, TUG meeting
This is a short reminder to all those who attended the recent TUG meeting
at Stanford, and who picked up a Questionnaire on the last day.
Out of 170 questionaires picked up, already some 70 have been returned to
me. I would really love to have a lot more! I'm going to be program
co-ordinator at next year's meeting at Texas A&M (in June), so I would
be very interested in comments and suggestions... uh, not that every
single one of them will be implemented, but it would be very helpful
to hear what attendees thought about various aspects of the meeting.
And of course, you don't hve to hold back, just 'cause you didn't pick
up a for! Send your comments and suggestions -- and complaints -- about
this year's meeting, and we'll see what can be done to address them.
And to all those you did fill out the form -- Many thanks for your
comments and suggestions. Oh, if sending e-mail correspondence, it
would help me if the subject line were: TUG '89 -- Questionnaire.
See you in Texas... how many of you write TeXas? ;-)
Christina Thiele <WSSCAT@CARLETON.BITNET>
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Date: Fri, 22 Sep 89 07:22:26 CDT
From: "Lee Schneider" <MATHPG2%UMCVMB.MISSOURI.EDU@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU>
Subject: Switching between one and two columns on the same page
Keywords: TeX, LaTeX, columns
Does anyone out there have ready-to-run macros for plain TeX or LaTeX
that allow switching between one and two columns in the middle of the
page? There are some macros on P. 417 in the TeXbook that are supposed
to do this, but I cannot get them to run (there seems to be some problem
with the variable dimen@), and I don't know enough TeX to figure what is
wrong. (My apologies for bothering all of you with what is probably
a very elementary problem, but I know of no TeX guru here.)
If anyone can provide me with an equivalent set of macros, or
explain to me how I can get Knuth's example to work, I would be most
appreciative. I probably need to mention that I am trying to get this
to work under TeXtures on the Macintosh. Apparently the standard
"plain" format is supposed to have this variable "dimen@," but from
what I understand about TeXtures, the version of "plain" it uses is
not entirely standard, and that may be the cause of my troubles.
Thanks,
Lee Schneider
Department of Mathematics
University of Missouri-Columbia
MATHPG2@UMCVMB.BITNET or MATHPG2@UMCVMB.MISSOURI.EDU
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Date: Thu, 21 Sep 89 10:04:37 PDT
From: S John Banner <CCSJB%UVVM.BITNET@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU>
Subject: More about \hanging
Keywords: TeX, macro, \hanging
In response to my message in TeXhax V89, I84, it was suggested that
I check out the \hang macro (or the \hangindent paramter in general), and
after playing with it for a while, I remembered why I havn't been using
it...
\hang
This is a bunch......
gives:
This is a bunch
of text, ...
\hang\hangafter=2
This is a bunch ...
gives:
This is a bunch
of text ...
and this is some more...
\hang\hangafter = -2
This is a bunch ...
gives:
This is a bunch
of test ...
and this is some more...
none of which are what I want, hence the definition of \hang that I
came up with that does basicly what the regular \hang does, but it also
clears \parindent. Up to there, all is pretty much fine. The problem
comes when we get to blocks of paragraphs that are all to be hung. I
want to be able to say something like:
{\hanging
This is some text ...
{\hanging
And this is some more text ...
}
{\narrower
And this is still more text ...
}
And finally, a bit more.
}
and have it give me:
This is some text
with a hang...
And this is some
more text ...
And This is still
more text ...
And finally, a bit
more.
Perhaps this explains the problem a bit better. I have played with
all the parameters mentioned in the section on hanging indents, and
parshapes, and I am not happy with the results that I got...
Thanks again,
S. John Banner
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Date: Wed, 20 Sep 89 15:56:00 PST
From: Peter Scott <PJS@grouch.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Subject: \immediate\write of a character
Keywords: ASCII, \immediate\write
Okay, this is one I've banged my head against for a few hours:
ASCII character code in \charcount; how to \immediate\write the
character corresponding to that code? \immediate skips the
usual digestion process, so
\chardef\cc=\charcount
\immediate\write16{\cc}
doesn't work. Tried all sorts of variations of the form
\chardef\cc=\charcount
\xdef\aa{\cc}
\immediate\write16{\aa}
or
\chardef\cc=\charcount
\toks255={\cc}
\immediate\write16{\the\toks255}
and no luck. Tried perusing source code that does table-of-contents
without success. [In case it ain't obvious, if \charcount is 65, the
output should be a record consisting of the character "A".]
Any takers?
Peter Scott (pjs@grouch.jpl.nasa.gov)
P.S. "Ask your local TeXpert won't do in this case - I *am* the local
TeXpert.
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Date: Wed, 20 Sep 89 16:52:43 edt
From: Dan Bernstein <bernstei@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu>
Subject: Active characters make reasonable command terminators
Keywords: TeX, control sequence parsing, inconsistency
To respond to the complaint that TeX's control sequence parsing
engenders inconsistency before spaces, one must present a solution
that is easy to type and, if possible, looks reasonable.
Define an active character, possibly followed by a sequence of several
characters, as \relax. The character will not munch spaces after it
and hence can be used as a consistent separator or terminator. One
need not redefine every control sequence in the format.
The difficult decision is what sequence of characters to use. I always
use editors that take advantage of special characters available, so I
have both a filled-above-diagonal triangle (to match the backslash) and
a gray box; but I suspect few other users can easily type or display
those symbols. The best solution I can figure out in standard ASCII
is a sequence of two or three double quotes, since such a sequence is
very easy to type, doesn't interfere with \", and looks reasonable.
Dan Bernstein, brnstnd@acf10.nyu.edu, bernstei@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 89 17:59 CST
From: <KOSLOWJ%MACALSTR.BITNET@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU>
Subject: Re: Squeezing spaces from write token list
Keywords: macros, TeX write command, token list expansion
In texhax.89.075 Carlos A. Felippa writes:
>>Consider the macro definition
>>
>> \def\writedef#1#2{\immediate\write16{\def\ #1{#2}}}
>>
>>[This is a simplified form of a more complicated macro I am
>>using to prepare an indexed database.] Then
>>
>> \writedef{macroname}{macrodefinition}
>>
>>writes the line
>>
>> \def \ macroname{macrodefinition}
>>
>>What is the simplest way to get rid of the blanks before
>>and after \ in the output line?
The following example provides a solution. Run "write.tex" through TeX.
You'll get a "undefinded control sequence" errormessage when TeX encounters
\abc. Respond by typing "i\relax", and then run TeX again {\bf WITHOUT}
changing "write.tex". This time TeX will successfully produce one page of
output. [Notice that input stream numbers can only take values between 0 and
15, cf. The TeXbook, p. 216.]
%=================== CUT HERE ==============================================
%%% file "write.tex"
{\catcode`\*=0 *catcode`*\=12 *xdef*DEF{\def\}}
\def\writedef#1#2{\immediate\write15{\DEF#1{#2}}}
\openin15=\jobname.lab \ifeof15 \else \closein15 \input \jobname.lab \fi
\immediate\openout15=\jobname.lab
\writedef{abc}{123}
\abc
\bye
%================== CUT AGAIN ===============================================
In order to be able to use the command "\abc" during the first
pass, you could use the following definition of "\writedef":
\def\writedef#1#2{\expandafter\xdef\csname #1\endcsname{#2}%
\immediate\write15{\DEF#1{#2}}}
I have a working cross-referencing system based on this approach.
J\"urgen Koslowski
Dept. of Math. & Comp. Sci.
Macalester College
St. Paul, MN 55105-1899
612-696-6041
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Date: Wed, 20 Sep 89 21:07:25 edt
From: Dan Bernstein <bernstei@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu>
Subject: OzTeX fits on two floppies
Keywords: OzTeX
To those who, like me, have a Mac with two floppy drives and no hard
disk: Don't be deterred from getting OzTeX. With a lot of paring it
will fit on two disks, leaving 150-200K available on the second disk
for files. I have almost all the tfms and pk-300s and have well over
100K free.
To squeeze as much as possible onto the disks I set OzTeX to be the
startup program and removed the Finder; for file manipulations I use
a DA. Two notes about this procedure: (1) When OzTeX quits, it appears
to ignore Apple guidelines---it transfers to the Finder. So rename
OzTeX as Finder. (2) Without the Finder, you should shut down by
quitting OzTeX; it will restart itself, and you can safely eject the
disks and turn off the machine.
Other setup procedures should be reasonably obvious to any TeXnician;
I'll refrain from listing here my entire directory structure.
I hope this attracts more people to an excellent TeX implementation.
Dan Bernstein, brnstnd@acf10.nyu.edu, bernstei@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue 19 Sep 89 18:19:11-EST
From: Jeffrey S. Joel <JSJ@VAX01.AMS.COM>
Subject: TeX on an ATT PC
Keywords: TeX, ATT PC
I was recedntly gifted with an AT&T PC, running UNIX, but without the optional
DOS card. Does anyone out there know of an implementation of TeX for this
machine? (There are no further identifying model numbers.)
Please send replies directly to me as I do not always read the bulletin
board. Thanks very much.
Jeff Joel
Math. Reviews
P. O. Box 8604
Ann Arbor, MI 48107-8604
Internet: jsj@seed.ams.com OR jsj@vax01.ams.com
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Date: Tue, 19 Sep 89 18:16:37 -0700
From: karger@ultra.enet.dec.com (Paul A. Karger 19-Sep-1989 1817)
Subject: Round-off errors when processing \oval from LaTeX
Keywords: LaTeX, round-off errors
I have had a great deal of trouble getting the following simple LaTeX document
to print correctly:
\documentstyle[11pt]{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{figure}[htb]
\begin{center}
{\thicklines\small\sf
\begin{picture}(349.6,209.1)(20,8)
\put(194.6,35.4){\oval(90.5,54.0)}
\end{picture}
}
\end{center}
\caption{oval problem}
\end{figure}
\end{document}
The problem is that the vertical sides of the oval do not quite
match-up with the rounded corners, due to a round-off error in the
DVItoXXX programs. (The problem does not come from the odd sizes in
the example. I can get it to fail with integer sizes.)
The problem seems to be a round-off error that originates in DVITYPE,
as every DVItoXXX converter that I have tried exhibits the same
problem. The University of Cambridge in England has an excellent DVI
to PostScript converter that was written from scratch that does not
exhibit that behavior, but unfortunately their converter is not
generally available. Jerry Leichter has looked at the problem for me
(thank you Jerry), and it is his belief that the problem originates in
DVITYPE, and most DVI converters are based on DVITYPE.
Does there exist any generally available DVI to PostScript converter
that CAN handle \oval properly?
- Paul Karger
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Date: Wed, 20 Sep 89 14:15:33 EDT
From: sinha@caen.engin.umich.edu (SARVAJIT S SINHA)
Subject: Unix man pages
Keywords: LaTeX, UNIX, man pages
Is there a style file for formatting Unix man pages
using LateX ? I am sure someone has already written this,
so could you please send me the address of the location
where I could ftp it from.
Thanks in advance,
Sarvajit Sinha
Sarvajit Sinha sinha@caen.engin.umich.edu
157, ATL Bldg,University of Michigan 313-764-2138
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Date: Wed, 20 Sep 89 19:38:25 PDT
From: desouza%bosco.Berkeley.EDU@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU
Subject: Help with blackboard bold and cyrillic fonts ...
Keywords: fonts, blackboard bold, cyrillic
I am trying to use the AMS Fonts inside LaTeX, in special the BlackBoard
Bold and the Cyrillic fonts. I put the line
\input mssymb
but when I use it, it comes all right on the text, but when we need it a
little bit bigger (let's say in a Chapter name, or section heading) it
does NOT increase the size as normally does the other fonts. The question
is them: What can I do so it will follow whatever size is being used for
thatparticular moment.
To translate between english and cyrillic I use a table passed on to me by a
systems manager over here, but the table has a couple of bugs that I cannot
decipher. How can one find the exactly relation between the two alphabets ?
Thanks in advance for any help,
Paulo Ney de Souza |Internet: desouza@math.berkeley.edu
Dept. of Mathematics | BITNET: desouza%math.berkeley.edu@ucbjade.bitnet
Univ. of California | UUCP: {harvard,rutgers,...}!ucbvax!math!desouza
Berkeley CA 94720 | Work: 643-8638 Home: 524-5734
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Date: Thu, 21 Sep 89 11:01:33 EDT
From: HOOVER <anita@vax1.acs.udel.edu>
Subject: Where to get dvipage? and article writer needed
Keywords: dvipage
Where can I ftp dvipage from and is anyone interested in
providing an article in TUGboat about previewers available
for different devices?
anita
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Date: Thu, 21 Sep 89 15:21 ADT
From: Gus Gassmann <GASSMANN%EARTH.SBA.DAL.CA@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU>
Subject: Change files for TeX and METAFONT
Keywords: TeX, METAFONT, change files
We are currently running TeX version 2.93 and METAFONT 1.4.
Is there a kind soul out in TeXland who could supply us with change
files to update to the current versions? (There is no FTP at this site.)
Many thanks.
gus gassmann
GASSMANN @ dalac.bitnet % old bitnet address
gassmann @ earth.sba.dal.ca % new domain style address (may not work!)
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Date: Fri, 22 Sep 89 12:30:59 PDT
From: Phil Farrell <farrell@erebus.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: TeX, troff, man pages
Keywords: TeX, troff, man pages
In TeXhax vol 89, issue 85, William LeFebvre says:
> I've often thought of implementing the troff man macros in TeX. If
> that were done, then one could just TeX-off the printed form whenever
> desired but still have "nroff -man" for the man command. So what's
> needed? First, we need to define "(newline)." as the equivalent of an
> escape character. Any takers?
There is another existing way to do this. The UNIX TeX distribution includes
a contributed program tr2tex from a former student here at Stanford that
can convert troff manuscripts that use either -ms or -man macros to LaTeX
documents. It doesn't do a perfect job for complicated troff constructions,
but the simple macros normally used in man pages come through just fine.
This isn't the real answer for replacing troff with TeX on UNIX systems
because it still requires that you keep nroff around and it still requires
that you know the -man macros for writing man pages. What I think is
needed is a combination of a LaTeX style option that forces the output
to use a constant-width font and constant line spacing, etc; plus a
dvi interpreter that can reproduce such a restricted output on a normal
terminal screen. For the fairly simple documents that are used as on-line
documentation (no math and only simple tables that can be done with tabs)
this would allow regular typesetting via LaTeX for printed copies, but
also permit viewing on a normal dumb terminal by including the special
style option and processing through the special dvi interpreter. I am
afraid, however, that this would be a rather large project to undertake
and unfortunately can never imagine having the time to do it myself.
Phil Farrell, Computer Systems Manager
Stanford University School of Earth Sciences
farrell@erebus.stanford.edu
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