TeXhax@cs.washington.edu (TeXhax Digest) (08/31/89)
TeXhax Digest Tuesday, August 29, 1989 Volume 89 : Issue 78
Moderators: Tiina Modisett and Pierre MacKay
%%% The TeXhax digest is brought to you as a service of the TeX Users Group %%%
%%% in cooperation with the UnixTeX distribution service at the %%%
%%% University of Washington %%%
Today's Topics:
Re: Organizing a volunteer corps (Vol 89, Issue 72)
Pronunciation of TeX
Re: clarkson address
Workshops, European TeX Conference
LaTeX style for abstracts for APS meetings
Japanese TeX
Large fonts -- cmr & cmbx
LaTeX-XeT anywhere?
BIGTEX, ctex
Source of "nabla" in TeXbook?
TeX performance
Re: Re: TeX vs troff
DVI-to-Imagen software
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 89 22:33 EDT
From: tlimonc@drew.bitnet
Subject: Re: Organizing a volunteer corps (Vol 89, Issue 72)
Keywords: suggestions
First, I'd like to thank the people that suggested that once
DVI->whatever and download it to my PClone, that I use COPY/B file prn.
It works great!
Secondly, we have installed the DECUS TeX collection and it works
fine, but the example TEX$EXAMPLES:comp_manual.tex (which incompasses
many \input files) compiles with many errors. The printout looks ok,
but I wonder if some other file is the main document to pass through
LaTEX. Or, is it not a complete example?
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.
Tom
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 89 13:33:16 MET
From: Victor Eijkhout <U641000%HNYKUN11.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Pronunciation of TeX
Keywords: TeX, pronunciation
Someone remarked that the sound of the 'X' in TeX seems to
exist in Dutch. This is true globally speaking, but the
exact pronunciation of this 'g' is subject to regional variations.
It ranges from almost the mere sound of breathing
(south-east part of the Netherlands)
to a gutteral sound (west part) that inspired an Englishman
to remark 'Dutch is such a charming language, and so useful
for clearing the throat'.
By the way, this whole discussion is typical for what the
Dutch call 'the cucumber season'. Meaning the low-tide in
real news this time of year.
Victor Eijkhout Department of Mathematics
University of Nijmegen
Toernooiveld 5
"Far out in the uncharted 6525 ED Nijmegen, the Netherlands
backwaters of the unfash-
ionable end of the 080-613169
western spiral arm
of the galaxy" u641000@HNYKUN11.BITNET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 89 14:49:06 -0400
From: mrd@sun.soe.clarkson.edu
Subject: Re: clarkson address
Keywords: clarkson, archive-server
>Both "clarkson.edu" and "sun.soe.clarkson.edu" are listed in TUGBoat
>and I have for a long time tried both addresses in numerous attempts
>to get some .bst files. I have been able to contact
>postmaster@sun.soe.clarkson.edu so now I have proof that
I am very sorry that you are having troubles with the archive-server.
In the future please mail to archive-managment@sun.soe.clarkson.edu.
I will always respond to query sent to that address (if possible - if
I can't get mail to you after 3 tries then I give up. This is
normally only a problem with uucp sites)
I don't get mail sent to postmaster. I suspect Rob Logan gave you a
suitable path because you seem to be requesting more files.
Just in case, the following path should work
path bt%irfu.se@uunet.uu.net
Our mailer sometimes gets confused by unusual mail addresses (read
those that don't end in .edu .com .gov and .bitnet). The service of
that mailer is out of my control and I have found that uunet.uu.net is
very stable and complete.
We have added another service to help peole who are having troubles
with mail. To obtain archives on tape via US-mail then mail to
Rob Logan
ERC
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13676
a self addressed stamped tape (8mm, 1/4 inch, 1/2 inch) with a check
for $20 made to Clarkson University and a list of the archives that
you want (eg latex-style and texhax). You can ask for as many
archives as will fit on the tape but you can not ask for individual
files. The tape will be written in Unix tar format. Unless you
specify otherwise the tape will be written at the highest possible
density.
NOTE: if the tape is not self addressed and stamped we will keep that
tape and use it for backups.
For your information that money is used to pay a student to copy the
tapes and any money left over is put into an account to be used to
eventually buy a disk drive dedicated to the archive server.
Contributions are strongly encouraged.
Michael DeCorte // H215-546-0497 W386-8164 Fax386-8252 // mrd@clutx.bitnet
2300 Naudain St. "H", Phil, PA 19146 // mrd@sun.soe.clarkson.edu
Clarkson Archive Server // commands = help, index, send, path
archive-server@sun.soe.clarkson.edu
archive-server%sun.soe.clarkson.edu@omnigate.bitnet
dumb1!dumb2!dumb3!smart!sun.soe.clarkson.edu!archive-server
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 28 Aug 89 13:39 GMT+0200
From: anne.brueggemann-klein@sun1.ruf.uni-freiburg.dbp.de
Subject: Workshops, European TeX Conference
Keywords: Workshops, European TeX Conference
There are still some places available in the workshops
"Introduction to METAFONT" and "Advanced macro writing
and developing LaTeX styles" before and after the
European TeX Conference 1989 in Karlsruhe, West Germany.
The fee for the workshops is DM 200,-- (no meals,
accomodation etc. included). If you want to register,
please contact
Rainer Rupprecht
Rechenzentrum
Universitaet Karlsruhe
Postfach 6800
7500 Karlsruhe 1, FRG
Telephone: (0721) 608-4031
e-mail: RZ32 at DKAUNI2 (bitnet)
or send a note to me at
abk@sun1.ruf.uni-freiburg.dbp.de
(Anne Brueggemann-Klein)
immediately. Please find enclosed the
description of the workshops copied from the previous
announcement.
--> Advanced macro writing and developing LaTeX styles
--> Joachim Schrod, Detig Schrod TeXsys and TH Darmstadt
--> September 14th/15th, 10--15 participants
Joachim Schrod is both an experienced programmer and TeX macro
specialist, working on TeX portations, new members of the WEB
language family and macro development since 1981. He is contributing
frequently to TeXhax and tugboat. He is the author of a highly
portable driver family, YADD (Yet Another DVI Driver family) and
participant of the DVI driver standards committee.
His course addresses people having some experience with TeX and in
writing simple macros, probably often struggling with the unexpected
side effects caused by the non-modular structure of LaTeX. As
LaTeX style development is always (Plain) TeX macro development,
the course will first introduce you to the principles of the
programming language Plain TeX, namely dynamic/static binding,
expansion, and interrupt handling (output routines). Then the
LaTeX programming interface is presented, not formally specified,
but as an informal description of the most important macros for style
development.
The workshop is a mixture of lectures and hands-on practical sessions.
Prerequisites: A good working knowledge of TeX and LaTeX is
assumed. Bring your own \TeX{}book.
--> Introduction to METAFONT
--> Don Hosek, Pitzer College
--> September 9th/10th, 10--15 participants
Don Hosek of TeXmag fame is an active member of the TeX
Users Group, TUG, participating in the TUGboat editorial committee
and the DVI driver standards committee. In addition, he has been
teaching courses for TUG for some time now.
The workshop will cover the basic concepts of METAFONT, beginning with
what it does and what good it is. Participants will become familiar with
using METAFONT to generate characters from existing METAFONT programs
and to develop characters and logos on their own. Topics will include
an explanation of METAFONT's mode_def's, drawing shapes using METAFONT's
capabilities, an introduction to METAFONT's mathematical abilities,
and macros and variables in METAFONT.
Prerequisites: No METAFONT knowledge is assumed. Experience with
TeX is recommended. Bring your own METAFONTbook.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 89 04:43:58 PDT
From: KARNEY%PPC.MFENET@CCC.MFECC.LLNL.GOV
Subject: LaTeX style for abstracts for APS meetings
Keywords: LaTeX, abstracts, APS
I have written a LaTeX style, apsabstract.sty, for formatting abstracts for
meetings of the American Physical Society. I have submitted it to the
LaTeX style collection at Clarkson. If you have problems getting it from
that source, I can mail you a copy.
Charles Karney
Plasma Physics Laboratory Phone: +1 609 243 2607
Princeton University MFEnet: Karney@PPC.MFEnet
PO Box 451 Internet: Karney%PPC.MFEnet@NMFECC.LLNL.GOV
Princeton, NJ 08543-0451 Bitnet: Karney%PPC.MFEnet@LBL.Bitnet
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 89 22:00:32 CST
From: Tsong-Min Wu <NTUT019%TWNMOE10.BITNET@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU>
Subject: Japanese TeX
Keywords: TeX, fonts, Japanese
In his report on JTeX (Japanese TeX), in TUGBoat vol. 8, NO. 2,
Yasuki Saito, the designer of JTeX, says that the whole Kanji
Characters are divided into 33 subfonts. Since most of these
subfonts have identical TFM file (except, of course, the fontname),
"The control sequence jfont is introduced to save JTeX's memory
space for font information." For example,
jfontfontname=fontfile1 fontfile2
enables to load fontfile1 as fontname using the already loaded
font information for fontfile2. Thus it does not consume any
font space at all.
I am doing an application which requires this technique.
Can anyone tell me how this can be done? Since I don't think
this is of general interest, I would appreciate you send me
your hints or solution to me directly.
I would really appreciate any help on this!
ntut019@twnmoe10.BITNET
Tsong-Min Wu
Dept of Econ, National Taiwan Univ.
Taipei, Taiwan
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 89 21:47:01 EDT
From: "David F. Rogers" <dfr@cad.usna.mil>
Subject: Large fonts -- cmr & cmbx
Keywords: fonts, cmr, cmbx
G'day,
I am looking for the cmr and cmbx fonts in approximate points sizes of
24, 28, 32, 36, 40 for 300 dpi write-black (Canon Engine) laser printers
and at 118 dpi for crt screens.
Does anyone have these fonts, preferably in .pk format or less desirably
the Metafont files to generate them or know from whence they can be ftp'd.
Thanks
Dave Rogers
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 89 20:26:31 EET DST
From: steed%TECHUNIX.BITNET@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU (Ze'ev Shtadler)
Subject: LaTeX-XeT anywhere?
Keywords: LaTeX-XeT, Hebrew
I have been using LaTeX for about a year, and I cannot think of
going back to troff. However, I am required to print my M.Sc.
thesis in Hebrew. I would like to do it in LaTeX-XeT, but I cannot
figure out how. We have created INITeX-XeT, VIRTeX-XeT and even
(plain) TeX-XeT. However, creating a usable LaTeX-XeT seems to be
more complicated: the \everypar construct copied form the TeX-XeT
article in TUGBoat:
\def\RLtext{\everypar{\kern-\parindent\beginR\indent}}
that forces every paragraph into a right-to-left direction, does
not work within LaTeX. I hnly get the section header in right-to-left
direction. The section itself is set in the usual left-to-right
direction. I'm not a TeXpert, so I have to guess LaTeX makes use
of the \everypar construct to do it's own work.
Has anyone modified the LaTeX package to handle a right to left
language as a (possible) main language? If not, how complicated
should that change be? Any hints concerning the change?
I'd appreciate any response, since my deadline is nearing :-).
Thanks in advance,
Ze'ev.
Ze'ev Shtadler. ARPANET: steed%techunix.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu
Computer Science Faculty, UUCP: ...!psuvax1!techunix.bitnet!steed
Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, BITNET: steed@techunix Haifa
Israel Domain: steed@techunix.technion.ac.il Phone (work): (+972)
4-294304 CSNET: steed%techunix.bitnet@csnet-relay.csnet
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 89 18:08 EST
From: Henning Schulzrinne <HGSCHULZ@cs.umass.EDU>
Subject: BIGTEX, ctex
Keywords: VMS TeX, BIGTeX, ctex
The current capacity of our VMS TeX version (65000 words) seems
insufficient for many of our more complicated documents. I would like to
hear from fellow Texers about the ease and feasibility of doing one
of the following:
1) get ctex (where? how? - FTP preferable) and compile it with the
VMS C compiler, hoping that it is compatible enough.
2) use BIGTEX.PATCH from june.cs.washington.edu to fix the WEB files
and then reWEB. The details and steps, however, are less than clear
to me. Is there a reference that actually ``explains'' the necessary
procedures or is this part of the oral tradition of TeX?
3) any other suggestions
Thanks in advance for any advice.
Henning Schulzrinne (HGSCHULZ@CS.UMASS.EDU)
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Amherst, MA 01003 - USA
phone: (413) 545-3179 (EST) FAX: (413) 545-0724
------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 89 23:27:05 -0400
From: amgreene@athena.mit.edu
Subject: Source of "nabla" in TeXbook?
Keywords: nabla
%% Moderator`s note: Solutions to the nabla mystery were also
%% offered by Bernie Cosell, Doug MacMartin, Wilhelm Mueller
%% and Fritz Keinert.
I believe "nabla" was an ancient Hebrew lyre shaped like a gradient symbol.
My Bantam-Megiddo Hebrew/English dictioary has an entry for `nevel' as
`harp,' so this is not unlikely.
(My calc teacher told us this, in any case)
Andrew Marc Greene
<amgreene@athena.mit.edu>
SIPB Secretary and
MIT Project Athena Watchmaker
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 89 14:25:22 EDT
From: "David F. Rogers" <dfr@cad.usna.mil>
Subject: TeX performance
Keywords: TeX, performance
G'day
Here is an interesting statistic on TeX performance.
On a Silicon Graphics Iris 4D/70GT (10 mips MIPS RISC processor)
running the recently reported TeX installation for the SGI,
234 pages comprising Chapters 5 & 6 of Mathematical Elements
for Computer Graphics, 2nd Edition was TeX'd in 153.8 sec.
This is about .66 sec/page. The figplace macros previously
reported here and in TUGboat were used for automatic figure
placement.
This is about 5 times faster than either a Sun 3/50 or an
IBM 386 (16.67 Mhz) machine.
With this kind of performance, interactive TeX can only be
just around the corner.
Dave Rogers
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 89 13:49:14 PDT
From: stan@ana.com (Stan Osborne)
Subject: Re: Re: TeX vs troff
Keywords: TeX, troff, Unix
In TeXhax Digest V89 #77, Gary S. Wagman gives an excellent comparison
of troff and TeX. I found nothing with which I could disagree.
(I have worked with both products extensively over the past five years.)
I would like to add a bit on the history of troff, as I know it, to give
some insight into why troff has not changed much in over 10 years.
AT&T and Unix became dependent on troff. The Unix "man" pages are all
formatted with troff (nroff to the screen). This linked Unix and its
documentation tightly with troff from the earliest years of Unix.
When cheaper raster printers arrived (1980-85), AT&T was not yet a
computer manufacturer. (Unix used to be something that ran mostly on
computers made by Digital Equipment Co.) AT&T was planning to be
broken into the Regional Bell Operating Companies. If it was a
computer company during this time, it might have realized the
importance of troff and done more to support its competitiveness.
Only in the last five years have AT&T and Unix become significant in
the computer industry. Its tight link with Unix and AT&T has kept
troff alive long after its author's premature death.
The significant improvements made to troff since its inventor died, that I
can recall, have been supporting a troff device independent output,
making its source code more portable, adding line/circle/spline drawing
commands, and making execution performance improvements.
Typesetting tools are complex in their internal structure.
troff is not a formalized computer language. This makes it hard to write
troff macros. Its existing functionality is intertwined with Unix. Adding
or changing how it works usually results in something else no longer working
correctly. For these reasons no one dared to rewrite or redesign it. Its
author did not live long enough to evolve his prototype into a product along
with the rest of Unix.
(At one point Don Knuth completely rewrote TeX and he is still around to fix
the remaining bugs as they are discovered.)
troff has never been an example of good software engineering nor has it
had the opportunity to become a good example. It works, it is useful, people
use it and rely on it, so it survives.
Stan Osborne, ana-systems, Foster City, California
internet: stan@ana.com Fax: (415) 341-1784
uucp: uunet!ana.com!stan Phone: (415) 341-1768
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 89 13:02:54 EDT
From: todd@narnia.ecs.rpi.edu
Subject: DVI-to-Imagen software
Keywords: dviware, Imagen, TeX
I am doing my first-ever installation of TeX. I have succeeded in getting
TeX, LaTeX, dvi2ps, etc. running, but I also need a DVI-to-Imagen driver.
Looking through DVIware, I see the DVIIMP and the Imagen1 drivers. Is there
reasons to choose one over the other? One problem is that this system (an
Ultrix RISC) system) does not have Pascal installed, so if I used DVIIMP,
I would need to figure out WEB-to-C. On the other hand, it is not clear
to me what fonts Imagen1 is looking for.
Any help is appreciated!
R. Lindsay Todd
Systems Programmer
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
%%% Further information about the TeXhax Digest, the TeX
%%% Users Group, and the latest software versions is available
%%% in every tenth issue of the TeXhax Digest.
%%%
%%% Concerning subscriptions, address changes, unsubscribing:
%%%
%%% BITNET: send a one-line mail message to LISTSERV@xxx
%%% SUBSCRIBE TEX-L <your name> % to subscribe
%%% or UNSUBSCRIBE TEX-L
%%%
%%% Internet: send a similar one line mail message to
%%% TeXhax-request@cs.washington.edu
%%% JANET users may choose to use
%%% texhax-request@uk.ac.nsf
%%% All submissions to: TeXhax@cs.washington.edu
%%%
%%% Back issues available for FTPing as:
%%% machine: directory: filename:
%%% JUNE.CS.WASHINGTON.EDU TeXhax/TeXhaxyy.nn
%%% yy = last two digits of current year
%%% nn = issue number
%%%
%%%\bye
%%%
End of TeXhax Digest
**************************
-------