scott@tg.UUCP (02/02/87)
As I remember writting the ditroff output driver for a VideoComp 500
typesetter, I remember some inadequacies that I would like to know if
they exist under TeX.
1) (This may not be in TeX) But in the more highly distributed WWB (and I
think fixed in the bsd version), the ability to define a character as
slanted does not exist! This problem only occurs on phototypesetters
(not lasers) that sell Italic fonts not slanted and allows the users to
slant these characters to meet their needs. It is impractical to put
the \S command for all italicied fonts and there is noway to control
this when jumping in and out of math. The solution we came up with is a
bit of a kludge, but works. I wonder if I can specify a 15-degree slant
on all Italic charaters in my tfm.
2) Not all characters on a phototypesetter exist on a single physical
font. For example, the VideoComp typesetter has subsets of a physical
font (e.g. the Times Roman is font 2 with subsets 0-2) and things like
ligatures and some necessary special characters (question marks, etc)
appear in these subsets. How does one specify these subsets without
specifying these characters as specials (imagine the search of special
fonts for all the periods) and not breaking ditroff. This again was a
bit of a kludge (but could have been done better--always known after the
fact :-}). Can a "forwarding" of fonts be specified in TeX's tfm files
to point to these subsets as being part of the Roman but on a
"different" font?
3) This one has not be figured out (read I am not working on this
anymore :-}) but needs to addressed by people using phototypesetters.
How can different ranges of a font be defined. On a phototypesetter, a
character is designed to be printed on a certain range of point sizes.
Printed on a smaller or larger ps can cause the character to not be
printed properly. This is controlled by having different font ranges.
Now if your "normal" Roman font prints in range 4-28, how can you ask
for a different range of the roman font if you are, say, doing book
covers in point size 48 in the roman font? Defining it as a different
font is a solution (not the optimal), but I would like to be able to use
the full range of point sizes without having to have the keyboarders
have to enter different things during text entry? Any thoughts?
My only other question has to do with usage of troff or TeX. Is there
anyone in netland using TeX or troff in publishing--either comercial
book/magazine publishing or the publishing of journals for non-profit
organizations? I have said in the past that the Americal Physical
Society publishes 45,000+ pages per year in many journals using the old
C/A/T troff (being phased out) and ditroff. So if you know of any
others, I would like to know!
Thanks!
Scott Barman
{philabs, pyrnj}!tg!scottroot@hobbes.UUCP (02/04/87)
+--- In article <117@tg.UUCP> scott@tg.UUCP (Scott Barman) writes: | My only other question has to do with usage of troff or TeX. Is there | anyone in netland using TeX or troff in publishing--either comercial | book/magazine publishing or the publishing of journals for non-profit | organizations? I have said in the past that the Americal Physical | Society publishes 45,000+ pages per year in many journals using the old | C/A/T troff (being phased out) and ditroff. So if you know of any | others, I would like to know! +--- The HSMS here in Madison, WI, USA is a non-profit publishing concern which publishes about 10,000 pages a year in the field of (suprise) old Spanish literature. We have been using many different systems, the strangest being text entry with WordStar on CP/M micros, mechanical translation to a commercial markup language (with minor human intervention), and shipment to a 3d party publisher for typesetting. Uuuuugh! We now use an IBM AT with TeX driving an Apple LaserWriter which produces camera ready copy. (Concordences, dictionaries... don't need more than 300 dpi resolution :-) We are producing a large (~ 2M words) dictionary of the Old Spanish Language which will use TeX as it's markup style. We also have a Prof in the dept who publishes about 1000 pages per year, exclusively with troff and a laserwriter. After dealing with both, I find myself drawn to troff simply because the 'source' file contains a higher text to formatter command ratio. ie, the TeX source files seem to have much more stuff like \whatever\this\means{to TeX Hackers} than the similar .troff "command" macro stuff. I may (might,am?) wrong, though. No flames, please. Look at this month's Dr. Dobbs, the article about favorite editors: "Like ducklings that adopt the first moving object they see as mother, programmers often adopt the first editor they learn as the model of what an editor is and should be." I know I still am trying to forget ed command sequences! John