bts@sas.UUCP (Brian T. Schellenberger) (04/24/88)
TeXhax Digest Saturday, April 23, 1988 Volume 88 : Issue 39
[SCORE.STANFORD.EDU]<TEX.TEXHAX>TEXHAX39.88
Editor: Malcolm Brown
Today's Topics:
Immoderate notes: Score had some disk problems
PiCTeX Bug
(Unix-) TeX redistribution
Page numbering question
Re: WARNING: Unix TeX in C writes to file descriptors > 2
Last Message Concerning Cross-Referencing
PKtoGF
dvi-to-text and printers
high-speed Postscript printers
Re: /magsteps allowed
WARNING: Unix TeX in C writes to file descriptors > 2
female and male
FTP'ing DVI files to VAXen
hello!
Re: easter
AAAI-88 styles
Plain TeX vs LaTeX
TeXtoC - checksun problem
Two BibTex questions/requests
DVItoVDU terminal drivers
Your questions about TeX versions.
Re: \obeylines and MPSX input files
SchemeTeX---Simple support for literate programming in Lisp.
v88#36 (answer macro)
tex driver for xerox 3700 in vms
RE: Computing Sines in TeX
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 23 April 88
From: Malcolm
Subject: Immoderate notes: Score had some disk problems
%%% The reason why this digest is only being sent out now is that
%%% Score suffered a failed disk drive. I fear that some submissions
%%% made to TeXhax over the past few days may have been lost.
%%% I will try to crank out some digests in rapid succession over
%%% the next few days, in an attempt to catch up. Keep on the
%%% lookout for your submissions. If you don't see them by
%%% the end of week, I'm afraid you'll have to re-submit them.
%%% Malcolm
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 88 14:07:59 PST
From: Peter Scott <PJS@grouch.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Subject: PiCTeX Bug
I have discovered a minuscule, and easily correctable bug in PiCTeX:
Line 2717 of PICTEX.TEX reads
\!dimenA=#1\relax \edef\!xmidpt{\the\!dimenA}%
which is a copy of the preceding line; it should read:
\!dimenA=#2\relax \edef\!ymidpt{\the\!dimenA}%
Peter Scott (pjs%grouch@jpl-mil.jpl.nasa.gov)
------------------------------
Subject: (Unix-) TeX redistribution
From: David Chase <chase@orc.olivetti.com>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 88 14:31:06 -0700
I am forwarding to TeXhax a question that was forwarded to me. In
this letter, "we" is Olivetti Research Center. These tapes will be
sent to other parts of Olivetti.
From: Mike Kupfer <kupfer@ivrea.orc.olivetti.com>
Do you know if there are any licensing restrictions on TeX? That
is, if I include /usr/local/tex in the .... tapes that we send out,
would we be in any sort of legal trouble?
mike
David Chase
Olivetti Research Center, Menlo Park
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 88 15:05:49 PDT
From: darrell%cs@ucsd.edu (Darrell Long)
Subject: Page numbering question
Hi. I need to number pages for my dissertation according to this rule: the
first page of a chapter will have the number centered at the bottom, subsequent
pages will have the number in the upper right-hand corner.
I am using plain, and I have a simple macro for beginning a chapter. I had
tried modifying \advancepageno but it seemed to have no effect.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Darrell Long
Department of Computer Science & Engineering
University of California, San Diego
La Jolla, CA 92093
------------------------------
Subject: Re: WARNING: Unix TeX in C writes to file descriptors > 2
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 88 14:29:08 -0700
From: Tim Morgan <morgan%ruby-falls.ics.uci.edu@ROME.ICS.UCI.EDU>
I'm unable to test an undump'ed C TeX on other than Sun-3's. Under
both SunOS 3.2 and 3.5, an undumped TeX behaves exactly as Phil
describes, while a non-undumped TeX does not exhibit the problem.
I've concluded that it's a bad interaction between the standard I/O
system and undump, because, if you use the commands in the Makefile
C TeX which does NOT have the problem (again, under both 3.2 and 3.5).
I would therefore encourage people to upgrade to this release, which
will be available from Pierre within a few days of the date of this
message.
Briefly, the commands in the make file to create the core file do
it all from the command line, so the stdio system doesn't get started
up. Apparently that avoids the bug.
Tim
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 88 18:22 CDT
From: <WORK%TAMGEOP.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: Last Message Concerning Cross-Referencing
Dear Mr. Brown,
Please delete my last message concerning "Cross-referencing of
figures and tables". I have come in contact with someone who has
a solution and there is no impending need to include it in TeXHax.
Thanks
Tom
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 88 16:42:37 PDT
From: rokicki@polya.stanford.edu (Tomas G. Rokicki)
Subject: PKtoGF
Is available on SCORE.STANFORD.EDU in <TEX.MF>PKTOGF.WEB.
Enjoy!
-tom
------------------------------
From: lantz@orc.olivetti.com
Subject: dvi-to-text and printers
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 88 16:55:17 -0700
1. Are there any (preferably good) "dvi2ps"-like converters out there for
converting dvi to formatted text -- similar to using device:file or
device:pagedfile in Scribe? If not, one wonders how you TeXophiles include
readable documents in e-mail messages.
2. I've sent the following request to laser-lovers, news-makers, and
info-postscript. Perhaps some of you who haven't already received it have
something to add?
------------------------------
Subject: high-speed Postscript printers
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 88 17:39:32 -0700
From: lantz@tuscany.orc.olivetti.com
Several months ago I posted a request for information about high-speed
Postscript printers. I received some input about the following:
Diconix Dijit 1/PS: processor couldn't keep up with print engine;
could print double-sided; 68020-based version rumored
Dataproducts LZR-2665: lots of people have these; some favorable
remarks, but a fair number of complaints about speed (the
BEST reports said 12 ppm with simple pages, whereas MacWEEK
reported a 190% DEGRADATION compared to the LaserWriter Plus
on complicated graphics images... this for a print engine
rated at 26 ppm); several people had problems replacing the
toner
QMS PS2400: "really bad Xerox engine... it gave us constant trouble ...
Avoid if you can"
TI Omnilaser: write-black yields some print-quality problems, but not
overwhelming; prints Scribe "articles" (mostly Roman with some
bold or italic) at 15 ppm, TeX output somewhat slower, complex
graphics a lot slower (but faster than a Laserwriter)
DEC LPS-40: widely acclaimed; Scribe and TeX text output at 30-40 ppm;
complex graphics 2.5 times a LaserWriter; but rather painful
operating environment, networking wise
Based on this information, the TI OmniLaser looked like the best bet at the
time, with the LPS-40 for those to whom price and DECNET expertise are no
object.
However, we've been off fighting other fires and are just getting back to
this one. So I'd appreciate any additional input -- on the above or new
machines. Note that the principal use of this machine will be as a
"lineprinter" (i.e. simple, fixed-width font, for code, mail messages,
etc.), with "technical documents" coming in second, and truly complex
graphics (of the sort typically tested in the trade rags) rather rare.
Thanks in advance, Keith
Keith A. Lantz Phone: (415) 496-6235
Olivetti Research Center Internet: lantz@orc.olivetti.com, or
2882 Sand Hill Road, Suite 210 lantz%orc.uucp@unix.sri.com
Menlo Park, CA 94025 UUCP: {acornrc,oliveb,sri-unix}!orc!lantz
------------------------------
Date: Thu 14 Apr 88 22:14:51-PDT
From: Barbara Beeton <BEETON@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Re: /magsteps allowed
only magsteps 0-5 and magstephalf are defined in plain.tex
(texbook, p. 349). it wouldn't be hard to extend the definition; knuth
just didn't, apparently, see the need for larger sizes.
-- barbara beeton
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 88 23:08:46 PDT
From: Pierre MacKay <mackay%june.cs.washington.edu@ROME.ICS.UCI.EDU>
Subject: WARNING: Unix TeX in C writes to file descriptors > 2
Incidentally, I have already suppressed all reference to the old
\read to \blort method in the UnixTeX instructions.
virtex '&plain' some_silly_file_name
on the command line works better, and if I understood the last message
correctly, also bypasses the open descriptor problem.
Email: mackay@june.cs.washington.edu Pierre A. MacKay
Smail: Northwest Computing Support Group TUG Site Coordinator for
Lewis Hall, Mail Stop DW10 Unix-flavored TeX
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195
(206) 543-6259
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 88 15:00 GMT
From: <BIOMED%CZHETH5A.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: female and male
Has anybody ever used the 'female' and 'male' symbols (see below) in TeX ?
***
* *
***** *****
* * * *
* * * *
***** *****
*
***
*
Can anybody tell me how to generate these ?
Stephan Maier PhD
BIOMED@CZHETH5A
Zurich, Switzerland
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 88 09:29:23 PST
From: Peter Scott <PJS@naif.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Subject: FTP'ing DVI files to VAXen
I remember a discussion a while back on how to FTP DVI files onto a VAX
which expected them to be in fixed-block format; didn't pay much attention
to it until I had to do it myself yesterday and discovered the problem;
you can't use CONVERT because it won't write the last block unless it
happens to end on a block boundary. However, we do have a C program here
that local support people wrote for people FTP'ing .EXE files that works
just fine; anyone who needs it please contact me.
Peter Scott (pjs%grouch@jpl-mil.jpl.nasa.gov)
------------------------------
From: <krishna@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 88 15:48:55 EST
Subject: hello!
I'm new to this list, but I have been looking for this specific item for a
while now. Does anybody have a TeX or LaTeX generated for cassette tape
labels?
Krishna Sethuraman
krishna@athena.mit.edu
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 88 15:36:37 +0200
From: mcvax!diku.dk!seindal@uunet.UU.NET (Rene' Seindal)
Subject: Re: easter
From: cja@crim.eecs.umich.edu (Charles J. Antonelli)
Date: 1 Apr 1988 1904-EST (Friday)
Subject: Re: easter
i couldn't get Theo Jurriens' "easter" program to work, so i rewrote the
part that deals with the columnar output to use the macros given in the
texbook. it works much better now. my version is available via anonymous
ftp from crim.eecs.umich.edu:pub/easter.tex.
The version of "easter" I received had some lines broken in column 79,
apparently by some mailer. It had caused two "\fi" to become "\
fi" and "\f
i", which naturally didn't work. Reassembly of those lines fixed
everything (at least it worked for me).
Rene' Seindal, DIKU, U. of Copenhagen. (seindal@diku.dk)
------------------------------
Subject: AAAI-88 styles
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 88 22:08:21 -0400
From: Ken Yap <ken@cs.rochester.edu>
The LaTeX and BibTeX style files for AAAI 88 conference proceedings
have just been released. The files are:
aaai-instructions.tex (instructions to authors)
aaai-named-0.98.bst (BibTeX style file)
aaai-named-0.99.bst (")
aaai.sty (LaTeX style file)
and can be retrieved from the archive server in the usual way. The
version numbers 0.98 and 0.99 are the BibTeX versions required.
(BibTeX style files must match the BibTeX release version - 0.99
is not backward compatible with 0.98.)
Ken
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 16 Apr 88 16:20:37 PDT
From: KARNEY%PPC.MFENET@NMFECC.ARPA
Subject: Plain TeX vs LaTeX
This is in response to comments by Daniel M. Zirin in TEXHAX V88 #33.
My recommendation to beginning TeX users is "Use LaTeX". Here are my
reasons:
(1) LaTeX encourages a "logical" approach to document preparation (see
Lamport's article in the latest TUGboat). Plain TeX beginners tend to
sprinkle their papers with lots of \vskips, etc., because they haven't
learned how to write macros. This leads to a messy paper, inconsistencies
in style etc.
(2) It is easy to switch formats (e.g., your institution may put out a
preprint of a journal article which needs to be in a different format from
what's submitted to the journal).
(3) The ability to cross-reference equations, citations, etc. is
indispensible if you're writing a long paper. (Of course this is possible
with Plain TeX, but you have to write the macros.)
(4) The user can start writing his document right away without having to
bother with writing umpteen macros. Most users don't want to become TeX
programmers. LaTeX users don't have to. (Many "Plain TeX" sites have a
home-brewed set of macros, which alleviates this problem for Plain TeX
users. Of course this introduces a portability problem. And some poor
soul has to maintain them.)
(5) The manual is shorter than the TeXbook, since it's geared towards the
user of LaTeX rather than the programmer.
(6) BibTeX and makeindex work well with LaTeX.
To answer some Zirin's points:
1) If a site has the TeX WP System installed, plain TeX is the
first thing to work. LaTeX requires system types to fixup
style files...
At my site, we use all the LaTeX files without modifications. I have
provided some additional style files (e.g., to produce a letterhead with
letters).
... (in some earlier versions, the LaTeX .EXE for
VMS didn't even work on some local systems so LaTeX was run
by constantly loading the LPLAIN format (.FMT) file with a
command like "TEX &LPLAIN inputfile").
I'm know of two major VMS implementations:
(a) Stanford's (Maria Code). This requires the loading of a format file
BOTH for Plain TeX and for LaTeX. The need to specify the format is
removed by symbol definitions
$ tex :== $tex_exe:tex
$ latex :== $tex_exe:tex &lplain
(b) Kellerman and Smith's. This allows the format file to be preloaded.
2) LaTeX is a completely separate environment and once you start
to want "extras" plain TeX starts to shine.
Extras for LaTeX are quite easy to provide with style files.
4) Portability. LaTeX users may have to carry around style files
to make sure it will work the same on another system (this
may have changed recently, but I started with pre-TeX80). Plain
TeX users have *nothing* to worry about with this regard.
I would turn this around. A LaTeX user can E-mail his document to another
site and not worry about anything as long as he's using one of the standard
styles. A Plain TeX user will usually have to send of his site's macro
package in addition. (Or else, the first 10 pages of his document will
consist of TeX macros.)
Charles Karney
Plasma Physics Laboratory Phone: +1 609 243 2607
Princeton University MFEnet: Karney@PPC.MFEnet
PO Box 451 ARPAnet: Karney%PPC.MFEnet@NMFECC.ARPA
Princeton, NJ 08543-0451 Bitnet: Karney%PPC.MFEnet@ANLVMS.Bitnet
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 88 11:30:58 BST
From: stoy%prg.oxford.ac.uk@NSS.Cs.Ucl.AC.UK
Subject: TeXtoC - checksun problem
We have encountered a problem with our LaTeX system produced with the
aid of Tim Morgan's TeXtoC (TeX version 2.7 on a Sun 3/50 (SunOS 3.2)).
After making initex and virtex we went through the usual business of
producing LaTeX (i.e. the \read 0 to \blort stuff, undump etc.). Our
problem is that for the pre-loaded fonts (e.g. cmr10), but not for the
others (e.g. cmcsc10), our more fussy device drivers produce reports
such as:
Requires: cmr12.1500pxl
Checksums Wrong
DVI: 0
PXL: 1487622411
The same system produced by compiling the Pascal source does not exhibit
this problem. Apart from this (e.g. using a driver that does not do
this check), everything seems to work properly.
Have we done something wrong? Is this a known bug? Any advice would be
gratefully received.
joe stoy
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 88 18:04:40 EDT
From: "Don N. Kleinmuntz" <DKLEIN%SLOAN.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: Two BibTex questions/requests
1. Does anyone have a convenient method for generating a LaTeX document that
consists of a bibliography containing "^em all" the entries in a bib file,
along with the key for each entry (preferably as the label)?
Example:
[label1] Author1 name. Title1. Other stuff1. 1985, and so on.
[label2] Author2 name. {^it Booktitle}. And so on.
. .
. .
. .
(This is useful for reference purposes when the bib file gets too large
to remember all the labels.)
2. Does anyone have a bibliography style file for American Pscyh. Association
style (or reasonable approximation) that works with version 0.98i of
BibTex? I looked at the apalike files on the Rochester collection and
they look pretty good, but I don't have access to BibTeX 0.99, which apalike
requires.
OR:
Can anyone advise me on the availability of BibTeX 0.99 for either CMS or
MS-DOS machines? We recently received an update of the CMS TeX distribution
(TeX version 2.9, I believe), but the LaTeX files and BibTeX files seemed
to be unchanged from our previous versions.
Thanks.
|-----------------------------------------------------------|
| Don Kleinmuntz |
| high tech: dklein@sloan.bitnet or dklein@sloan.mit.edu |
| medium tech: (617) 253-2430 |
| low tech: Sloan School of Management |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| 50 Memorial Drive, E52-568 |
| Cambridge, MA 02139 |
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 88 14:31 PDT
From: Don Hosek <DHOSEK%YMIR.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: DVItoVDU terminal drivers
If you have anything beyond the standard group, I would like to hear about it,
and possibly get a copy of the .mod file.
To refresh you memory, the currently available VDUs are:
AED483 (AED 512 with 512 by 483 screen)
AED512 (AED 512 with 512 by 512 screen)
ANSI (any ANSI compatible VDU; synonym = VT100)
ENVISION (ENVISION 230 and Lear-Siegler 7107 terminal; synonym = LS7105)
REGIS (any ReGIS compatible VDU; synonyms = GIGI, VK100, VT125, VT240)
VIS240 (VISUAL 240; synonym = VIS241)
VIS500 (VISUAL 500)
VIS550 (VISUAL 550; synonym = VISUAL)
VT100132 (any VT100 compatible VDU in 132 column mode)
VT220 (VT220 using down-loaded chunky graphics; synonym = VT200)
VT640 (VT100 with Retro-Graphics)
(Note that ENVISION is not a standard terminal, but an additional one written
by Ed Bell at U Kansas)
Thanks, -dh
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 88 10:33:52 IST
From: "Jacques J. Goldberg" <PHR00JG%TECHNION.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: Your questions about TeX versions.
Coban,
We will never know if it's me now, you, or the TeXhax editor when he got
your mail and placed it in the last issue, that fell into the 1st of April
trap.
If you were kidding, then at least I'll say for my own pride that I write this,
being aware of the possibility.
But just in case you had taken that bulletin seriously, do not worry, your
version is Ok, and the rest is cryptic funny history for those who were
already TeX addicts back in 1982...
Jacques
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 88 13:44:57 BST
From: CET1%phoenix.cambridge.ac.uk@NSS.Cs.Ucl.AC.UK
Subject: Re: \obeylines and MPSX input files
In TeXhax #36, Gus Gassmann asks why he gets strange effects from TeX
input of the form
{\tt\obeylines
COLUMNS
~~~~COL1~~~~~~ROW1~~~~~~~~~~~1.0
~~~~COL2~~~~~~ROW1~~~~~~~~~~~2.0
}
(By the time TeXhax got to me, those characters were all lower case Cs,
but they were clearly meant to be tildes.)
I thought I had seen all the forms of trouble (many, many of them) that
TeX users could get into with \obeylines, but this is a new one on me!
The problem is that the definition of the active character ~ in Plain
TeX is
\def~{\penalty\@M \ } % \@M is 10000
The control space is "innately horizontal" (i.e. will cause a switch
from vertical to horizontal mode), but the \penalty *isn't*. Thus if
~ is used in vertical mode (as it is for those lines above beginning
with ~) then the penalty generated goes in the *vertical* list, and
inhibits page breaking rather than line breaking!
This is arguably a bug in plain.tex: probably there should be a
\leavevmode before the \penalty in the definition. Still, beginning
a paragraph with a tie is rather unusual.
Gus Grassman continues
> I understand that \obeylines explicitly starts a new paragraph at a
> line break, ...
No, it doesn't---although that is a common misapprehension. It
*terminates* the current paragraph (if any) at the line break, but
it doesn't start a new one. You must understand this to see why, for
example, empty input lines do not generate extra vertical space.
Local users often try to use both \obeylines and \obeyspaces, and then
wonder why leading spaces on input lines get ignored. The awnser, of
course, is that space tokens (which active space characters generate
by default) are no-ops in vertical mode. The circumvention I normally
recommend is the type used on p.421 of the TeXbook:
{\obeyspaces\global\let =\ }
so that active space characters generate a control space. (This also
sorts out \spacefactor problems.) I would suggest you use this style.
However, if you want to continue using ~ characters, you could use
{\tt\obeylines\let~=\ % redefine ~ locally
COLUMNS
~~~~COL1~~~~~~ROW1~~~~~~~~~~~1.0
~~~~COL2~~~~~~ROW1~~~~~~~~~~~2.0
}
Chris Thompson
Cambridge University Computing Service
JANET: cet1@uk.ac.cam.phx
ARPA: cet1%phx.cam.ac.uk@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk
------------------------------
From: John D. Ramsdell <ramsdell%linus@mitre-bedford.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 88 09:22:39 EDT
Subject: SchemeTeX---Simple support for literate programming in Lisp.
SchemeTeX provides simple support for literate programming in any
dialect of Lisp on Unix. Originally created for use with Scheme, it
defines a new source file format which may be used to produce LaTeX
code or Lisp code. Roughly speaking, LaTeX formats Lisp code in a
verbatum-like environment, and it formats Lisp comments in an ordinary
environment.
SchemeTeX is available via anonymous FTP from linus (192.12.120.51) in
the shar file named "pub/schemeTeX.sh". Included is an operating
system independent version for the T dialect of Lisp.
John
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 88 10:17:09 PLT
From: Dean Guenther <GUENTHER%WSUVM1.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: v88#36 (answer macro)
Hal Varian writes about an \Answer macro:
>This works fine unless I use mathematics. A question like "$(x+1)^2$ equals
>\Ans{$x^2 + 2x + 1$}" generates an error message about a missing dollar
>sign. I think that the problem has something to do with the difference
Hal, the problem probably occurs because you used \underline. The
following \answer macro works equally fine in math mode:
-------------------- answer.macro ----------------------------------
\newbox\answerbox
\newif\ifgiveanswers
\def\answer#1{\setbox\answerbox=\hbox{#1}
\vrule width 3.0\wd\answerbox height -.6pt depth 1pt
\hskip-3.0\wd\answerbox\ignorespaces
\raise1pt\hbox to 3.0\wd\answerbox{\vrule width 0pt
height 11.0pt depth 1pt
{\hfill\tenit\it\ifgiveanswers#1\else\phantom{#1}\fi\hfill}}\ }
\let\ans=\answer
This is an \ans{answer} or math \ans{$x\over y_2$}.
\bye
Dean Guenther
TeX IBM VM/CMS Site Coordinator
Washington State University
Pullman, Wa.
99164-1220
phone: 509-335-0411
BITnet: GUENTHER@WSUVM1
------------------------------
Date: 18 Apr 88 11:35:00 EST
From: "SYSTEM MANAGER" <system@westpoint.arpa>
Subject: tex driver for xerox 3700 in vms
Peter Scott (PJS@NAIF.JPL.NASA.GOV) suggested that you might be able to
assist me with finding a driver for TEX which will support the XEROX
3700 laser printer on a VAX/VMS system. Any information on where we could
get such a driver would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Barbara Mellon
Systems Manager, CGL
United States Military Academy
MELLON@WESTPOINT.ARPA
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 1988 14:44 EDT
From: Jim Walker <N410109%univscvm.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: RE: Computing Sines in TeX
In TeXhax v.88 #36, Sebastian Rahtz asks how to compute sines in TeX.
If you can do arithmetic, then you can estimate the sine function using, say,
the Maclaurin series expansion. In the macros below, I use the formula
x-(x~3)/6+(x~5)/120, which is decent when x is between -90 degrees and +90
degrees. The tricky part is persuading TeX to do floating-point
multiplication.
-- Jim Walker, Department of Mathematics,
University of South Carolina
%------------------- Cut Here -------------------------
\newdimen\x
\newdimen\y
\newdimen\xsquare
\newdimen\xfourth
{%
\catcode`\p=12
\catcode`\t=12
\gdef\numonly#1pt{%
\def\xx{#1}%
}%
}%
\def\MULTyBYx{%
\expandafter\numonly\the\x
\edef\b{\y=\xx\y}%
\b
}%
\def\calcsin{% Find sin(\x) and put it in \y. Say \x is in degrees.
\x=0.0174533\x % Convert to radians.
\y=\x
\MULTyBYx
\xsquare=\y
\MULTyBYx
\MULTyBYx
\xfourth=\y
\y=1pt
\advance\y by -0.1666666\xsquare
\advance\y by 0.008333333\xfourth
\MULTyBYx
}%
% Example of use:
\x=23pt \calcsin \expandafter\numonly\the\y
% Now \xx should contain the sine of 23 degrees.
------------------------------
%%%
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%%%
------------------------------
End of TeXhax Digest
**************************
-------
--
--Brian.
(Brian T. Schellenberger) ...!mcnc!rti!sas!bts
. . . now at 2400 baud, so maybe I'll stop bothering to flame long includes.