TeXhax@cs.washington.edu (TeXhax Digest) (09/12/89)
TeXhax Digest Monday, September 11, 1989 Volume 89 : Issue 81
Moderators: Tiina Modisett and Pierre MacKay
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Today's Topics:
BibTeX for Macintosh
How to get rid of `Device not ready' on MS-DOS machines
Request for Driver for HP Deskjet *Plus*
Dvi files to Macs
Announcing DVItoLN03 V3.1-1
Re: Chapters beginning on odd pages only
Problems including Mac figures in LaTeX with psfig
Re: Easy questions
Re: Organizing a volunteer corps (Vol 89, Issue 72)
Re: Organizing a volunteer corps (Vol 89, Issue 72)-response
Re: TeX vs troff
\TeX{} at the end of a sentence
Marginal hacks
A question about line number
\jobname etc...
Extending plain.tex
TeX for PRIME
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu 7 Sep 89 16:52:53-MDT
From: "Nelson H.F. Beebe" <Beebe@SCIENCE.UTAH.EDU>
Subject: BibTeX for Macintosh
Keywords: BibTeX, Macintosh
BibTeX is available for the Macintosh on science.utah.edu in
the files
APS:<TEX.BIBTEX.MAC>00README.TXT.1
APS:<TEX.BIBTEX.MAC>MACBIBTEXSIT.HQX.1
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Sep 89 10:11:32 EDT
From: Hal_Varian@um.cc.umich.edu
Subject: How to get rid of `Device not ready' on MS-DOS machines
Keywords: "Device not ready", MS-DOS
In TeXhax #79.89 John Warbrick writes:
"It works for me, except that I get a 'Device not ready' error just at
the end of the document, which I ignore!..."
If you put the following line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, the
`Device not ready' message should go away:
mode lpt1: ,,P
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 89 17:05 CDT
From: U2804AA@VMS.UCC.OKSTATE.EDU
Subject: Request for Driver for HP Deskjet *Plus*
Keywords: driver, HP DeskJet+
It is my understanding that the new HP Deskjet Plus printer can be
equipped with 512 K or RAM. Has anyone written a driver to take
advantage of this, thus making the Deskjet Plus as useful as the
Laserjet in the context of printing TeX documents? Despite the
existence of a driver for the plain Deskjet, that device seems to be
constrained to a life of long output times due to its lack of
on-board RAM.
Mark Petrovic
Oklahoma State University Physics Dept.
(405) 744-6742
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 01 Sep 89 12:01:08 EST
From: Alan Stein <STEIN%UCONNVM.BITNET@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU>
Subject: Dvi files to Macs
Keywords: dviware, SUN, Mac
Is it possible to transfer a dvi file from a Sun to a Mac so that it
will be recognized as a dvi file by the Mac. I transferred a dvi file as
a text file, but cannot get it printed off the Mac.
Alan H. Stein | stein@uconnvm.bitnet
Department of Mathematics | stein%uconnvm.bitnet@mitvma.mit.edu
University of Connecticut | ...psuvax1!UCONNVM.BITNET!STEIN
32 Hillside Avenue |
Waterbury, CT 06710 | Compu$erve 71545,1500
(203) 757-1231 | GEnie ah.stein
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 AUG 89 15:09:49 BST
From: TEX%rmcs.cranfield.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK
Subject: Announcing DVItoLN03 V3.1-1
Keywords: dviware
Thanks to the good offices of Sankara Rao, a new version of my DVItoLN03
program (V3.1-1) has been installed on his machine and is available for
anonymous FTP.
Details are as follows:
Host : power.eee.ndsu.nodak.edu (134.129.123.1)
Username : anonymous
Password : anything you like
Directory: disk$ftp:[dviln03]
The above directory contains the following files:
AAAREADME.TXT - the file an extract from which you are reading
CHANGEBAR.STY - for those without this: style file for marking changes
DVILN03.HLP - on-line (DCL) help for DVItoLN03
DVILN03.LN3 - file ready to be COPYed to your LN03
DVILN03.TEX - the RMCS ``local guide'' for DVItoLN03
DVITOLN03.CH - a change file for DVItoLN03, currently V3.0 -> V3.1-1
DVITOLN03.CLD - VMS command language definition for the DVILN03 command
DVITOLN03.EXE - a ``load-and-go'' executable, for VMS V5.1
DVITOLN03.UUE - UU-encoded version of the above
DVITOLN03.WEB - the WEB source of DVItoLN03 V3.0
LOCAL.MF - our local parameters for METAFONTing for LN03
LOCAL_GUIDES.BIB - a BibTeX database used by RMCS --- needs BibTeX V0.99c
GRAPHICS.STY - a local LaTeX style file for graphics inserts
OPENCLOSE.SIX - a Sixel dump of the screen of a terminal, scaled 2:1
OPENCLOSE.SMALL - the same dump, but scaled 1:1
Version 3.1 introduced the /OUTPUT qualifier, which may be used to route
the .LN3 file directly to the LN03 printer. It also reports the names of all
source (.DVI and \special{ln03:plotfile xxx}) files read, and correctly reports
the magnifications of fonts on the terminal and in the log file.
Version 3.1-1 adds support for the Flavio Rose specials used for changebar
drawing, and also therefore supports that syntax for \special graphics
inclusions. At some future date, the old-style syntax (\special{SX filename})
may be eliminated.
Possible future work:
Suggestions???
Getting hold of the files
%=========================
As a first step, retrieve AAAREADME.TXT to determine which files are required.
For those sites already using DVItoLN03 V3.0, the following files are unchanged
since the earlier (V3.0) release, and need not be fetched again:
DVITOLN03.WEB - the WEB source of DVItoLN03
LOCAL_GUIDES.BIB - a BibTeX database used by RMCS - needs BibTeX V0.99c
OPENCLOSE.SIX - a Sixel dump of the screen of a terminal, scaled 2:1
OPENCLOSE.SMALL - the same dump, but scaled 1:1
All other files have had revisions.
Contact
%=======
If anyone is experiencing difficulty in installing DVItoLN03, they are
welcome to contact the author
B Hamilton Kelly
Royal Military College of Science
Shrivenham
SWINDON
UK SN6 8LA
Swindon (+44 793) 785252 [Direct line]
or via JANET: tex@uk.ac.cranfield.rmcs
INTERNET: tex%uk.ac.cranfield.rmcs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Bitnet: tex@rmcs.cranfield.ac.uk
Good Luck!
Brian HAMILTON KELLY
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Sep 89 9:51:22 EDT
From: "Benjamin J. Woznick" <bjw@BBN.COM>
Subject: Re: Chapters beginning on odd pages only
Keywords: LaTeX, chapters
In TeXhax 89.79, lang@caesar writes
... in all "real" publications that I've ever seen ..
chapters start on *odd* pages only.
I don't know where this idea came from, but it is simply not true.
The practice of including a blank page when a chapter ends on an odd
page, forcing the next chapter to begin on a even page is a matter of
taste, and not a widely practiced one. You can, of course, get the effect
you want in LaTeX by using \cleardoublepage.
For the unbelievers among you, I happened to have exactly four
books lying on my table when I read this message:
Software Engineeering with Ada(R), by Grady Booch,
published by Benjamin-Cummings
Designing Large Real-Time Systems with Ada, by
Nielsen and Shumate, published by McGraw Hill
Software Engineering Economics, by Barry Boehm,
published by Prentice Hall
Internetworking Computer Systems, by McConnell,
published by Prentice Hall
All of them have chapters that start on even pages.
I doubt that 20% of the "real" publications in my office follow the
suggested style standard. Among the other publishers represented in
my office that violate this standard are: Berkeley Books (the paper
edition of Clancy's ``Red Storm Rising''), Penguin (Andrew's ``Her
Magesty's Secret Service''), and Springer-Verlag (Allworth and
Zobel's ``Introduction to Real Time Software''). Following
lang@ceasar's style practice are Addison-Wesley and Van Nostrand
Reinhold (Sewell's ``Weaving a Program'').
Ben Woznick
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 89 15:35 EST
From: Steve Bradtke <BRADTKE@cs.umass.EDU>
Subject: Problems including Mac figures in LaTeX with psfig
Keywords: Mac, LaTeX, psfig
I've installed the latest version of Trevor Darrell's psfig
package for including PostScript images in a LaTeX document. All of
the examples Trevor gives seem to work just fine, including the
figures he generated from Macintosh pictures. However, I am unable to
use any of my own Mac-generated PostScript images. The specific error
I get is that the operator ``waittimeout'' is undefined. But removing
all reference to ``waittimeout'' just results in a message informing
me that the operator ``and'' has been applied to the wrong type
argument!!
The two printers that I've tried this on are DEC's LPS40 and
LN03R ScriptPrinter.
I'm using dvi2ps-li as obtained via ftp from
linc.cis.upenn.edu.
I've tried Mac-generated PostScript from MacDraw II, MacDraft
1.2a, Cricket Draw 1.1, Canvas 1.01, and Canvas 2.0. I notice that
the examples Trevor gives of Mac-generated PostScript include the line
%%IncludeProcSet: "(AppleDict md)" 68 0
while all of mine include the line
%%IncludeProcSet: "(AppleDict md)" 65 0
It seems likely that we don't have the right system software on our
Macs.
Please let me know if you've had any (positive) experience in
porting psfig to work on a DEC environment, or if you have any
suggestions on how to configure our Macs so that they'll work with
psfig.
Thanks,
Steve
Steven Bradtke
Computer and Information Science Department
Lederle Graduate Research Center
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Amherst, MA 01003
bradtke@cs.umass.edu
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 89 19:59:29 EDT
From: INHB000 <INHB%MCGILLC.BITNET@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU>
Subject: Re: Easy questions
Keywords: suggestions
Let me second the comments of Walt Conley regarding the ``easy''
questions that many people ask. I don't mind them and I often send
along an answer to the questioner. I have also asked ``easy''
questions, even ones that are answered in some footnote in the TeXbook
or such. Until someones (actually severalones) on TeXhax answered me, I
wasn't aware that expressions inside math mode that are enclosed in
braces are put into an unbreakable box. There it is right in the
TeXbook and I whould have known it. I also got trapped by an optional
parameter in LaTeX that I should have known about (I did know about it,
but I didn't see that it applied).
Michael Barr
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 89 02:08:11 -0400
From: Ken Yap <ken@cs.rochester.edu>
Subject: Re: Organizing a volunteer corps (Vol 89, Issue 72)
Keywords: volunteer corps, easy questions
> Lastly, I like Max Hailperin's suggestion of a organized corp of
> TeXperts answering the questions on this list, but has anyone
> considered splitting this list into one for experts and one for
> "just started" users? Another possible suggestion is to post a
> monthly "commonly asked questions... and their answers" message. This
> works in many Usenet newsgroups to clear up common questions.
I think it should be sufficient to group novice questions and replies
into special issues of TeXHaX. TeXperts can then just skip these
issues if they wish.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1989 8:34:40 PDT
From: Max Hailperin <mxh@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
Subject: Re: Organizing a volunteer corps (Vol 89, Issue 72)-response
Keywords: volunteer corps
> > Lastly, I like Max Hailperin's suggestion of a organized corp of
> > TeXperts answering the questions on this list, but has anyone
> > considered splitting this list into one for experts and one for
> > "just started" users? Another possible suggestion is to post a
> > monthly "commonly asked questions... and their answers" message. This
> > works in many Usenet newsgroups to clear up common questions.
>
> I think it should be sufficient to group novice questions and replies
> into special issues of TeXHaX. TeXperts can then just skip these
> issue if they wish.
The purpose of the LaTeX-help system is *not* simply to allow
LaTeXperts to avoid looking at lots of novice questions. Rather, it
is to provide a more appropriate medium for the novices to get help.
The problem with a long-latency broadcast system, like TeXHaX, is that
you get no response for a long time, and then you get many redundant
responses (because the various helpers don't realize until too late
that others have already responded). By contrast, with LaTeX-help
still in it's first days of activity, approximately one novice a day
has gotten a question that was holding them up answered quickly and
uniquely.
Special issues of TeXHaX devoted to questions with answers to those same
questions would be fine. (The LaTeX-help log could be one source of such
answered questions.) Special issues devoted to questions with answers
to the previous batch of questions would be an even worse version of the
long-latency-broadcast problem.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 89 08:45:31 -0500
From: svb@cs.purdue.edu (Stephan Bechtolsheim)
Subject: Re: TeX vs troff
Keywords: TeX, troff
It's my opining that is's time to retire troff.
Manual pages and the unix documentation should be translated
into TeX or LaTeX and troff should be retired. The output just
looks awful.
This all doesn't mean that it was not a very useful product.
Stephan Bechtolsheim
svb@cs.purdue.edu
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Sep 89 10:31 EDT
From: Robert Messer <RAM%ALBION.BITNET@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU>
Subject: \TeX{} at the end of a sentence
Keywords: TeX
In TeXhax v89 #79, Chris Torek suggests using \TeX{} everywhere in
place of \TeX. However, the expansion of the macro \TeX ends in an
uppercase letter. Hence if it appears at the end of sentence, TeX
will interpret the "X." as an abbreviation, and insert interword glue
rather than the glue between sentences. As indicated in the answer to
Exercise 12.6 of the TeXbook, an easy way around this is to end
such sentences with \TeX\null.
Robert Messer
Department of Mathematics
Albion College
BITnet: RAM@ALBION
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Sep 89 13:57 GMT
From: Peter Flynn UCC <CBTS8001%IRUCCVAX.UCC.IE@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU>
Subject: Marginal hacks
Keywords: marginal, hacks, manmac
I need to use marginal hacks (\`a la p.415 of the \TeX book) to put
explanations of jargon into the margin (sort of sidenotes instead of
footnotes).
I have borrowed the \output code of manmac.tex, modified so it places the notes
right and left on righthand and lefthand pages, and I also defined:
\def\mnote#1{\insert\margin{\vbox{\hsize=1in\parindent=0pt
\spaceskip=3pt plus3pt minus2pt\baselineskip=9pt{\smaller#1}}}}
The problem is, the \mnotes go into the margin OK, but always starting at the
top of the page, even if the reference to them is further down. I can see why
this should be, of course, as \insert\margin just adds another \vbox to
\margin. What I can't figure out is how to pass across the vertical
displacement down the page so that the \mnote comes out opposite where the
reference is made.
I'm going to have a try at (a) calculating the \dp of the note text and (b) the
\dp255 at the time of reference, and accumulating them so that an \mnote will
first add some \vskip to \margin before adding in the \vbox, but this seems
kludgy, so any help from a \TeX hacker would be warmly appreciated.
Needless to say, the user needs this doing yesterday :-)
Peter Flynn
Cork U Comp Cent
<cbts8001@iruccvax.bitnet>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 89 10:13:02 EDT
From: w25@riemann.psu.edu (Shann Wei-Chang)
Subject: A question about line number
Keywords: TeX, macro
I am communicating with my thesis advisor with plain TeX files. It would
be convenient for us if the printout has line number to the left of each
line of text. Although we can use \eqno for displayed math, it is still
better if a line number could be generated automatically also for each
displayed math. Would someone spend a little time to write the macro for me.
Thank you in advance.
Wei-Chang Shann
w25@euler.psu.edu
P.O. Box 10037
State College, PA 16805
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 89 12:36:20 EDT
From: arie@theory.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: \jobname etc...
Keywords: TeX, \jobname, \filename
Hi,
I have a couple of questions, and hope you could help me.
I have already figured out that \jobname answers q. 1)
1) I would like to have a \filename command so that I
could include the .tex file name in my draft headers.
2) a similar \filetime returning the last modified time
would be great.
3) an alternative, or a good feature by itself, would be
a \argument command, returning a string from the command line
such as in : latex -arg "@$#@%$#^%" a.tex
Thanks,
Arie
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Sep 89 14:46:15 EDT
From: "Karl Berry." <karl@mote.umb.edu>
Subject: Extending plain.tex
Keywords: plain.tex
I have often found myself wishing that plain.tex provided a few more
features than it does, but I have no wish at all to become involved in
LaTeX. I am involved in a book project, and part of the project is to
extend plain.tex in this way.
Although I believe that LaTeX has the right idea, of separating form
from content, of specifying things intensionally and not extensionally,
the styles available do not suit everyone's needs, and are certainly not
useful for typesetting custom-designed books. On the other hand,
anybody could use certain features, like symbolic cross-references.
I could give the list of things I have already thought of, but I would
rather not constrain anybody's ideas. Please send mail to me if you
have any such wishes!
By the way, I should be clear: the macros that I write, while they will
be part of this book, will also be available publically, and will be
freely redistributable. So do not fear that you are contributing to a
proprietary project.
Thanks.
Karl Berry karl@umb.edu (CSNET) ...!harvard!umb!karl (UUCP)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 89 17:36 EDT
From: MGTSHUK@ubvmsc.cc.buffalo.edu
Subject: TeX for PRIME
Keywords: TeX, PRIME, Primos
I would like to know if there are any versions of TeX for PRIME and how to
obtain them. We are talking about a PRIME 6350 running Primos Rev. 22.0.2.
It also has a Primix Rev 3.3 (guest UNIX system under Primos).
Thank you.
Ravi Shukla
MGTSHUK@BROCK1P
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