Douglas.Miller@viccol.edu.au (Douglas Miller) (01/11/91)
In article <D957A82E48DF20011F@FHCRCVAX.BITNET>, JOE@FHCRCVAX.BITNET (Joe Meadows) writes: > I'm trying to convince some of our staff that TeX (or VAX Document) would be > the way to go for our documentation, however I'm not knowledgable enough in > either to figure out something that sounds like it should be pretty trivial. > > I'm looking for a simple way to be able to create a wide_verbatim > environment, which would support 132 columns (perhaps more?). This sounds > trivial, but my first two days of learning TeX hasn't uncovered an obvious > way of doing it. Tomorrow I start glancing through the DOCUMENT manuals to > see what it offers.. You should use LaTeX or DOCUMENT, not TeX, as you then have access to predefined document formats and document structuring tags (but from your comments it seems you have been experimenting with LaTeX not TeX anyway). To get 132 columns you will need to reduce the character size and/or reduce the margins. For example, if you you are using LaTeX and you change to 8pt prior to starting the verbatim environment, I calculate you will need a text width of 7.8in. At this width it would be better to outdent the verbatim on the left and right, rather than making the rest of the text so wide. As you apparently have DOCUMENT already, I would strongly recommend you try it out first, as it is supposed to be a fully featured documentation system, with a wide range of document styles. LaTeX wins on price, but does have a sizable DIY component if you need something different to one of the small number of standard document styles (as you have probably just discovered)