TeXhax@cs.washington.edu (TeXhax Digest) (05/18/89)
TeXhax Digest Tuesday, May 2, 1989 Volume 89 : Issue 42
Moderators: Tiina Modisett and Pierre MacKay
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Today's Topics:
TeX and LaTeX for DG AOS/VS
Needed: Letterhead and "minutes" style files
Problem with makeindex.tar.Z?
Submission for TeXHax in TeX Source code
Re: Suggestion: Submissions to TeXHax in TeX source code
Hooking into TPU from TeX
Re: Integrating the VAX EDT or EVE editor with TeX or LaTeX?
Re: problem with LaTeX \Box
Problem with code
Re: Obtaining a funny paragraph shape in TeX
How do you get that funny paragraph shape?
Re: PS and TeX
Graphic extensions of Tex
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 3 May 89 12:44+0500
From: <zifrony%TAURUS.BITNET@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU>
Subject: TeX and LaTeX for DG AOS/VS
Comments: If you have trouble reaching this host as MATH.Tau.Ac.IL
Please use the old address: user@taurus.BITNET
Keywords: TeX, LaTeX
Hi to you all, I am interested in getting TeX and LaTeX for AOS/VS on
a Data General MV-20000 computer.
Does it exist? Is there a public domain version? Where can I get it from?
Please mail me directly, as I am not a reader of "comp.text".
Thank you very much for your trouble.
Doron Zifrony E-mail: BITNET: zifrony@taurus.bitnet
Msc. Student INTERNET: zifrony@Math.Tau.Ac.IL
Dept. of CS ARPA: zifrony%taurus.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu
Tel Aviv Univ. UUCP: ...!uunet!mcvax!humus!taurus!zifrony
Israel CSNET: zifrony%taurus.bitnet%cunyvm.cuny.edu@
csnet-relay
Disclaimer: I DON'T represent Tel Aviv University. The opinions hereby
expressed are solely my own.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 89 12:40:59 +1000
From: munnari!goanna.oz.au!isaac@uunet.UU.NET (Isaac Balbin)
Subject: Needed: Letterhead and "minutes" style files
Keywords: TeX, LaTeX
Sorry if these have been answered before:
(1) Has somebody modified the standard letter style to include a letter
head for their institution. If so, would you be willing to share your
experience and style files?
(2) For our departmental secretary: has anyone constructed a style file to
format `minutes' of a meeting?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 89 00:55:16 EDT
From: Steve_Tinney@um.cc.umich.edu
Subject: Problem with makeindex.tar.Z?
Keywords: makeindex.tar.Z
I hate to send this to the digest, but I tried a few half-guessed addresses
for Chen, and all my mail got bounced. The problem is that
ucbarpa.berkeley.edu:~ftp/pub/Makeindex.tar.Z seems to be bad. I tried
twice, but despite exactly matching byte counts the tar file obtained after
uncompressing is corrupt, tar gives up during one of the makeindex/paper
files with a `Strange...' message. Is it the tar.Z or me? Are there any
other sources for the new version? Utah's is 13 months older than the file
date on ucbarpa's.
Steve Tinney.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 89 17:57:41 CDT
From: svb@cssun.tamu.edu (Stephan v. Bechtolsheim)
Subject: Submission for TeXHax in TeX Source code
Keywords: TeX source code
I think my last message was somehow missunderstood (judgeing
from the moderator's comment): the mail header etc. should
be left alone. The text of the message itself should be Tex
source code.
So beginning text like
\BeginTeXHax
\From{Stephan v. Bechtolsheim}
Email{svb@cssun.tamu.edu}
\MessageText
...
EndTeXHax
would have to be inserted by everybody. But it doesn't seem to be
such big deal, because you would enter such template once into your
machine and that should do it.
Stephan Bechtolsheim
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 89 07:59:37 PDT
From: Joe Weening <weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: Suggestion: Submissions to TeXHax in TeX source code
Keywords: TeX source code
Requests that everyone use a standard format to submit messages are
almost always ignored by enough people to make it worthless. Unless
it is enforced by software (or in our case, maybe the moderators), I
don't think this proposal has any chance of working.
(A version of this that I have seen many times is a request for people
to use meaningful keywords in their "Subject" lines. It never works.)
Joe
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 89 11:34 EST
From: <RICH%SUHEP.BITNET@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU> (Richard S. Holmes)
Subject: Hooking into TPU from TeX
Keywords: TeX, LaTeX, VAX EDT or EVE
Josephine Colmenares asks:
>> Is there a way to integrate the VAX EDT or EVE editor with TeX and LaTeX?
I've never tried hacking TeX, so I'm not sure about that end of it, but getting
into TPU from another program is not hard. Here's about the simplest example
possible, in FORTRAN (sorry, but I'm a physicist...):
program fortpu
integer*4 tpu$tpu
external tpu$tpu
C
istatus = tpu$tpu ('tpu test.tex/command=test.tpu')
write (*, '('' Returned status is '', Z10)') istatus
stop
C
end
An appropriate way to link this program after compiling is (put this in a
command file. If you do it interactively, you need a control_z after the
second line):
$ link fortpu,sys$input:/option
sys$library:tpushr.exe/shareable
The TPU command file test.tpu contains:
eve_line(3,"");
(and I assume EVE is the TPU application you're using). Running this program
causes EVE to come up with the cursor on line 3 of the file test.tex. At least
it does on our VAX. The manual says the argument to tpu$tpu should be
'edit/tpu test.tex...' but that fails on our VAX.
You can get a lot fancier calling TPU from your program, in order to gain more
flexibility and control, if you want. Insufficient details may be found in the
VAX/VMS Utility Routines Reference Manual.
To do this from TeX, presumably you should add the TPU interface to the VAX/VMS
change file and recompile TeX. It looks as though it should be an easy enough
thing to do, for anyone with some familiarity with the TeX code -- obviously
the hooks are there, since the help message assumes the link to the editor
exists. How come it hasn't been done?
Rich Holmes
Richard S. Holmes Phone: (315)443-3891 or
Physics Department -2701
Syracuse University BITNET: Rich@SUHEP
Syracuse, NY 13244
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 89 09:44:08 BST
From: alien%VULCAN.ESE.ESSEX.AC.UK@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU (Adrian F. Clark)
Subject: Re: Integrating the VAX EDT or EVE editor with TeX or LaTeX?
Keywords: VAX EDT, EVE, TeX, LaTeX
In TeXhax Digest V89 #27, there was a query regarding integrating
editors with TeX under VMS. Indeed, this is possible, and there is a
change file to TeX 2.96 (soon to be 2.98) and associated bits and
pieces which runs under versions of VMS from 4.4 up to 5.0. You can
get this by contacting me directly. However, since transatlantic
messages tend to suffer from character code conversion problems, Jerry
Leichter (leichter@venus.ycc.yale.edu) is/has also made it available.
Adrian F. Clark
JANET: alien@uk.ac.essex.ese
ARPA: alien%uk.ac.essex.ese@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk
BITNET: alien%uk.ac.essex.ese@ac.uk
Smail: Dept. of Electronic Systems Engineering, Essex University,
Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex C04 3SQ, U. K.
Phone: (+44) 206-872432 (direct)
"The great tragedy of Science--the slaying of a beautiful
hypothesis by an ugly fact." -- T H Huxley (1825-95)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 89 13:30:21 EDT
From: mroth@afit-ab.arpa (Mark A. Roth)
Subject: Re: problem with LaTeX \Box
Keywords: LaTeX, \box
We had the same problem with the \Box command shortening the line.
The problem was a bad lasyXX.tfm file and consequently a bad lplain.fmt
that was created using those tfms. Once we replaced the bad tfms with
good ones, the problem went away.
Mark Roth
mroth@afit.af.mil
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: THU 27 APR 1989 08:55:00 EST
From: INHB000 <INHB%MCGILLC.BITNET@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU>
Subject: Problem with code
Keywords: error message
Can anyone tell me why the code:
\twocolumn[
\begin{center}
{\LARGE\bf Fuzzy Sets and Toposes}\\[3ex]
Michael Barr\\
Department of Mathematics and Statistics\\
McGill University\\
805 Sherbrooke St., W.\\
Montr\'eal, Qu\'ebec \\
Canada H3A 2K6
\end{center}
]
results in the following error message?:
Runaway argument?
3ex
! Paragraph ended before \@icentercr was complete.
<to be read again>
\par
\@topnewpage ...\textwidth \@parboxrestore #1\par
\vskip -\dbltextfloatsep }...
l.25 {\LARGE\bf Fuzzy Sets and Toposes}\\[3ex]
It disappear when the [3ex] is removed. From section C.1.6 of the LaTeX
book, it appears to be perfectly correct. It also disappears if the
centering environment is not an argument of \twocolumn as well as if the
top line is replaced by:
{\LARGE\bf Fuzzy Sets and Toposes}\vrule width0pt depth3.5ex height 0pt\\
As I later discovered \maketitle has the same effect, but I somehow
thought it do it over one column in twocolumn format.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 89 12:02:39 EDT
From: Anne Brueggemann-Klein <abrueggemann@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Subject: Re: Obtaining a funny paragraph shape in TeX
Keywords: TeX, paragraph
In reply to:
> From: Nico (Poppelier%Hutruu51.Bitnet@Cunyvm.Cuny.Edu)
> Subject: Obtaining a funny paragraph shape in TeX
> Keywords: TeX, paragraph
>
> A matter of `house style' -- a few scientific journals published by a
> publishing company in The Netherlands use a paragraph shape that I've
> been trying to simulate in TeX, so far without success. Instead of
> (underscores stand for white space):
>
> aaaaaaaaaabbbbbbbbbbcccccccccc
> ddddddddddeeeeeeeeeeffffffffff
> gggggggggghhhhhhhh.___________
>
> the paragraphs look like:
>
> aaaaaaaaaabbbbbbbbbbcccccccccc
> ddddddddddeeeeeeeeeeffffffffff
> ______ggggggggghhhhhhhh.______
>
Have you ever wondered what negative stretch terms in glue are good for?
Here is how you can use them to center the last line of a paragraph.
\leftskip=0pt plus 1fill
\rightskip=0pt plus-1fill
\parfillskip=0pt plus 2fill
All lines of a paragraph except the last one have \leftskip glue
at the left end and \rightskip glue at the right end. With the setting
above these two sum up to zero, passing the job of line stretching or
line shrinking to the normal interword spaces. The last line,
however, has \rightskip + \parfillskip = 0pt plus 1fill at the right end,
matched by \leftskip = 0pt plus 1fill at the left end. Hence, the last
line is centered, overriding stretch and shrink terms of normal interword
spaces.
Tinkering with TeX's parameters for line breaking is
real fun. Anyone with a real world application for negative
shrink terms?
Anne Brueggemann-Klein
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 89 12:32:40 CDT
From: Don Hosek <U33297%UICVM.UIC.EDU@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU>
Subject: How do you get that funny paragraph shape?
Keywords: TeX, paragraph
I asked the same question a while ago for the first installment of TeX
mysteries and puzzles in TeXMaG V2N1. Here is the entire article from
TeXMaG V2N2 with the solution:
10
**********************************************************************
* TeX Mysteries and Puzzles *
**********************************************************************
In TeXhax V88 #14, I put forth the following puzzle:
In _Tom Jones_, (Penguin Classics, Middlesex England. 1987.), each
chapter has a long title (up to six lines) that is typeset with
all but the last line being set flush right and flush left, and
the last line centered. Viz,
A Dialogue between the Landlady, and Susan the Chambermaid,
proper to be read by all Innkeepers, and their Servants;
with the Arrival, and affable Behaviour of a beautiful
young Lady; which may teach Persons of Condition how they
may acquire the Love of the whole World.
Can these chapter headings be typeset using TeX's line breaking
algorithm, and if so how?
I received several (five) solutions to my query (to give credit where
credit is due, the respondants were David G. Cantor
<dgc@math.ucla.edu>, Frank Holzwarth <A64@Dhdurz1.Bitnet>, Jerry
Leichter <Leichter@YaLevms.Bitnet>, Jim Walker
<N410109@Univscvm.BITNET> and an unnamed person from Arbortext
<Gpg@Arbortext.Com>.
The general solution was to box the paragraph and split off the
last line, unbox that and center it. Frank Holzwarth recognized that
the problem was similar to one that he encountered when he attempted
to get lengthy table of contents lines. He was getting something
like:
%values between ">" and "<" give the columnwidth
>myindent<> hsize - myindent - 3 true cm <> 3cm <
1.1 NORMAL HEADING ....................... 77
1.2 ABNORMAL HEADING, BECAUSE IT WRAPS
AROUND SOME LINES; SO THE LEADERS
COME MISPLACED .... 88
I wanted to get *leaders above here* impossible.
His solution was: "the text of the heading goes inside a scratch-box,
which can be deleted line by line with \lastbox and be measured to
overlay at last a leaderfilled box with the right dimension. And it
works fine. I didn't test it at page breaks, so it may work wrong in
that case."
The original macro looked like:
%%%------------- tear neatly -------------------------------------%%%%
\def\leaderfill{\kern0.5em\leaders\hbox to 0.5em{\hss.\hss}\hfill\kern
0.5em}% right out of the 'bible'
\newcount\nmbroflines \newbox\scratch \newbox\rule \newdimen\myindent
%caution! \myindent needs to be set first, say e.g.
\myindent=1.5true cm
\def\hugeheader#1#2#3{\bgroup\parskip=0pt
\setbox\scratch=\vbox{{\advance\hsize by-\myindent
\advance\hsize by-3true cm\noindent#2\par}% to prevent blanks
\global\nmbroflines=\prevgraf}% 'you never know'
\unvbox\scratch \setbox\rule=\lastbox
\loop\ifnum\nmbroflines>1
\unskip\unpenalty\setbox\scratch=\lastbox
\advance\nmbroflines by-1\repeat
\setbox\scratch=\hbox{\unhbox\rule\unskip\unskip\unpenalty}%
{\par\advance\hsize by-3true cm\hangindent\myindent
\noindent\hbox to\myindent{#1\hss}#2\par}%
\vskip-\baselineskip
\line{\kern\myindent\kern\wd\scratch\leaderfill#3}\egroup}
% usage:
\line{\hbox to\myindent{1.0\hfil}Normal Heading\leaderfill 66}
\hugeheader{1.1}{Abnormal heading of a chapter about giant holes all
over Australia caused by elephants interbreeded with local kangaroos}%
{77}
%%%------------- cut along this line ----------------------------%%%%%
He continued, "To solve your puzzle now one only has to do a
\centerline with the last line thus the first that is removed by
\lastbox as follows"
%%%--- cut it, tex it and wonder ---------------------------------%%%%
\newbox\all \newbox\part
\def\puzzletitle#1{\bigskip\bgroup\parskip=0pt
\setbox\all=\vbox{\noindent #1\par}% prevent blanks 'you never know'
\setbox\all=\vbox{\unvbox\all \global\setbox\part=\lastbox
\unskip\unpenalty\unskip}% 'yes I do!'
\setbox\part=\hbox{\unhbox\part\unskip\unskip\unpenalty}% again
\box\all\par\centerline{\box\part}\egroup\medskip\noindent}% and again...
last words of the previous paragraph.
\puzzletitle{A Dialogue between the Landlady, and Susan the
Chambermaid, proper to be read by all Innkeepers, and their
Servants; with the Arrival, and affable Behaviour of a beautiful
young Lady; which may teach Persons of Condition how they may
acquire the Love of the whole World.}
Normal beginning of this thrilling paragraph.
\bye
%%%------------- finished ----------------------------------------%%%%
David Cantor's solution was a bit simpler.
%%%------------- Cut with care ---------------------------------------
% Here is the desired macro. It is called with one argument,
% the text that is to be the heading. It assumes Plain TeX.
% The argument of \hsize can be whatever is desired, of course.
\newbox\jx\newbox\jy
\def\jones#1{\hsize3.75in\par\setbox\jx\vbox{\noindent\strut
\ignorespaces#1\par\global\setbox\jy\lastbox}%
\vbox{\unvbox\jx\par \line{\hfill\unhbox\jy\hfill}}}
% Here is an example of its use.
\jones{
A Dialogue between the Landlady, and Susan the Chambermaid, proper to be
read by all Innkeepers, and their Servants; with the Arrival, and
affable Behaviour of a beautiful young Lady; which may teach Persons of
Condition how they may acquire the Love of the whole World.}
%%%-------------------------------------------Guess what to do here---
However, the most elegant solution was courtesy of Jim Walker who
came up with the following:
%%%----------Remove and admire----------------------------------------
\def\weirdtitle#1{%
\setbox0=\vbox{\noindent #1}%
\setbox1=\vbox{%
\unvbox0
\setbox2=\lastbox
\line{\hfill\unhbox2 \hfill}%
}%
\unvbox1
}%
%%%---------Neat, isn't it?-------------------------------------------
I had so much fun with this, I've decided to make it a regular
feature in TeXMaG. Readers are welcome to send me their
puzzles/curiosities for this column. By the way here's the next
puzzle:
The Singapore tourism board (or some such entity) has ads in the
Los Angeles Times in which two or three paragraphs are typeset with
the typeface alternating between roman and italics with every
character (spaces don't count). To illustrate, let's pretend that an
uppercase letter represents italic type and lowercase represents
roman. Then the phrase "come to Singapore" would be typeset as: "cOmE
tO sInGaPoRe". All punctuation is typeset in roman. The text typeset
in this manner may span several paragraphs and could conceivably
include TeX control sequences. The goal is to find an elegant way to
typeset text in the style of this ad. [[Disclaimer: The editor has no
association with the Singapore tourism board. In fact, he's never
been further west than Santa Monica]]
Don Hosek Internet: U33297@UICVM.UIC.EDU
3916 Elmwood Bitnet: U33297@UICVM.BITNET
Stickney, IL 60402 DHOSEK@YMIR.BITNET
Work: 312-996-2981 UUNet: dhosek@jarthur.claremont.edu
JANET: U33297%UICVM.UIC.EDU@UK.AC.EARN-RELAY
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 89 00:10:18 +0200
From: crapo@inria.fr (Henry Crapo)
Subject: Re: PS and TeX
Keywords: PostScript, TeX
Dommage que les definitions en PS ne sont pas
gardes par TeX d`une page a une autre. Il me semble
qu`on ne peut pas declarer les sous-programmes PS
une fois pour tout au debut de l`article, comme on fait
pour les macros en TeX. Est-ce vrai? Il y a une
astuce pour eviter ce probleme?
Too bad that the definitions in Postscript aren`t kept
from one page to the next in a TeX document. It seems
that one cannot simply declare PS subroutines once
and for all at the beginning of an article, like one
does with TeX macros. Is this true? Does TeX issue
a save/restore bracketing each output page? Is
there any clever way around this problem? Like
defining the contents of a PS dictionary before TeX
gets a chance to issue its first ``save``?
Merci/thanks
Henry Crapo
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 89 17:57:40 CDT
From: svb@cssun.tamu.edu (Stephan v. Bechtolsheim)
Subject: Graphic extensions of Tex
Keywords: TeX, graphics
I tend to object all proposed graphics extensions of TeX.
Remember, there is PostScript and the PostScript and TeX combination
is hard to beat (this has nothing to do with the fact that better
solutions can be found).
TeX was designed to do text, tables and math. That it does well.
I think we should not try to make it solve things it was never
intended to solve.
Stephan Bechtolsheim
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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