klaus@cnix.uucp (klaus u schallhorn) (11/14/90)
Because of 8bit charset requirements I have finally decided to ditch a homegrown formatter and confront TeX head on. First thing I noticed is the [pardon me] awful chattyness of TeX. It reminds me a lot of messydos software where you have to read a screenful before you know if anything at all was relevant. Next thing I noticed, you can't ^C out of TeX, and I reckoned [and found it confirmed in an article just read] that pipes are probably out when TeX'ing. I would have loved to cat whatever | tex | lpr -dvi NOW people start talking about "common tex", that's supposed not to patronise you with error screens, faster and oriented more towards unix [even knows unix?]. Can someone tell me what "common tex" is, where is came from, how to get it, diff's compared to 3.?, suitability in 8bit char- set environments and compatibility with fonts && style files. Please note that I don't regard myself as being familiar with TeX. I've just compiled it yesterday, am still deciding whether I've passed trip&trap and that. I have, however, noticed TeX's "lust" to talk, and to talk, and to talk.... Reminds me of my mother-in-law, only that the formatting is different. Please mail, I'll summarise klaus -- George Orwell was an Optimist
marcel@cs.caltech.edu (Marcel van der Goot) (11/15/90)
In <1990Nov14.150714.15442@cnix.uucp> klaus u schallhorn (klaus@cnix.uucp) complains about the > awful chattyness of TeX. and > TeX's "lust" to talk, and to talk, and to talk.... However, klaus continues > Please note that I don't regard myself as being familiar with > TeX. I've just compiled it yesterday, [...] WOW! You must be a real genius! You just compiled the program, you aren't quite sure yet whether it compiled correctly, you haven't used TeX before, and already you know completely what's wrong with the program. Thank you so much for this insight, I'm sure all readers of this group have been waiting for it. > I would have loved to > cat whatever | tex | lpr -dvi > [...] > [...] even knows unix? Do you? Why do you prefer typing "cat whatever.tex | tex" instead of "tex whatever"? The desire to type 7 extra characters is very unlike UNIX. > Next thing I noticed, you can't ^C out of TeX, [...] Maybe you did not compile it correctly? The TeX versions I have seen (yes, under UNIX) all react to a ctrl-C with a prompt, at which you can, among other things, type an X to terminate the program. Have you considered that maybe the reason that TeX talks and talks and talks is that you make errors and errors and errors? And you would "love" to pipe your text with all those errors directly into lpr? I can assure you, if you write complicated macros, every bit of information you can get is welcome in case of errors. What do you suggest as alternative error messages? "memory fault", "bus error", "?" maybe? Anyway, enough flaming; to say something constructive: One way to get rid of error messages is to type Q at the first error prompt. A better way, in TeX 3.0, is to put \errorcontextlines=-1 (or =0, or =1, or...) in your input file. As for "Common TeX", as far as I can tell this is just Knuth's program rewritten for C/UNIX the hard way. The obvious disadvantage of that is that it's hard to stay up-to-date that way. The next version is supposedly going to be 2.95. Amazingly, according to Piercarlo Grandi (pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk) and Doug McDonald (mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu), Knuth's program is some terrible hack whereas Common TeX is a beauty. You would almost think it was rewritten from scratch. The main reason seems to be that the Common TeX program is more readable than Knuth's program. I feel I should point out, though, that most people just run TeX to typeset their papers, rather than read the program. But then, typesetting can be done with troff... Have a nice day. Marcel van der Goot marcel@vlsi.cs.caltech.edu
oc@vmp.com (Orlan Cannon) (11/20/90)
In article <1990Nov19.192320.25129@warwick.ac.uk> cudcv@warwick.ac.uk (Rob McMahon) writes, in a justifiably irritated tone: >In article <1990Nov15.085657.2589@nntp-server.caltech.edu> >marcel@cs.caltech.edu writes large chunks of gratuitous flaming in response to ><1990Nov14.150714.15442@cnix.uucp> klaus u schallhorn (klaus@cnix.uucp), the >first chunk of which has no information content, followed by > >>> I would have loved to >>> cat whatever | tex | lpr -dvi >> >>Do you? Why do you prefer typing "cat whatever.tex | tex" instead of "tex >>whatever"? The desire to type 7 extra characters is very unlike UNIX. > >I don't think he literally meant `cat'. I've often wanted to use TeX as a >filter, without having to create and tidy up unnecessary temporary files. Is this so hard? I do this all the time. Every night I dump data from a database into a parser, which passes it through a formatter to add LaTeX headers and formatting codes, which then passes it to LaTeX and on to the printer. It's all waiting in the morning when I come in. The main shell script I use for this and other similar jobs is called "printtex". I type "printtex abcdefg.tex" and it prints on the default output device. It has flags for using different output devices and different fonts (variations of latex.fmt). It looks after all the temporary files and creates them, scans them for errors that I might want to look at, and deletes them. TeX is verbose enough to let me create several of these kinds of scripts, for different purposes. My only regret is that it is not *more* verbose. For you non-programmers out there: it's *easy* to ignore output, just scan it and pipe it to /dev/null (or the equivalent). It's when you don't get enough output that there's a problem. Hey. I'm not a TeXpert. Get it straight. This is a trivial problem. It's not a TeX problem. It's a problem in how you deal with TeX. -- Orlan Cannon oc@vmp.com Video Marketing & Publications, Inc. (800) 627-4551 Oradell, NJ 07649
cudcv@warwick.ac.uk (Rob McMahon) (11/20/90)
In article <1990Nov19.192320.25129@warwick.ac.uk> cudcv@warwick.ac.uk (Rob McMahon) I compounded a crime by following up to a flame with another flame, making comments that would have been better made via email. This article is an attempt to correct that (if I can spell supersedes :-). Please accept my apologies. In article <1990Nov15.085657.2589@nntp-server.caltech.edu> marcel@cs.caltech.edu writes: >In article <1990Nov14.150714.15442@cnix.uucp> klaus u schallhorn >(klaus@cnix.uucp) writes: >> I would have loved to >> cat whatever | tex | lpr -dvi > >Do you? Why do you prefer typing "cat whatever.tex | tex" instead of "tex >whatever"? The desire to type 7 extra characters is very unlike UNIX. I don't think he literally meant `cat'. I've often wanted to use TeX as a filter, without having to create and tidy up unnecessary temporary files. >> Next thing I noticed, you can't ^C out of TeX, [...] >The TeX versions I have seen (yes, under UNIX) all react to a ctrl-C with a >prompt, at which you can, among other things, type an X to terminate the >program. Sometimes you just want it to die, sometimes you don't want a prompt. Why else did I type ^C if I didn't want you to go away ... this is all part of the same thing, trying to use TeX in a script when it expects to be run interactively. (Yes, I know about \batchmode.) >And you would "love" to pipe your text with all those errors directly into >lpr? Sometimes, yes, when the errors are along the lines of `underfull hbox'. >I can assure you, if you write complicated macros, every bit of information >you can get is welcome in case of errors. Great, for a `tex -i' when you're debugging, or a `tex -v' when you want to see verbose errors. Or it could even use `isatty(0)' to select between modes at a pinch. Normally all I want is a list of line numbers and what error occurred there. >One way to get rid of error messages is to type Q at the first error >prompt. *If there's someone there to type to it*. You're assuming a particular mode of use. This is not the Unix way. I ought to be able to do prog | tex 2>/dev/null | lpr -d say from a cron job. If I really want a log file, I'll redirect stderr to it thank you, I don't need TeX to do it for me automatically. A better answer at the moment is `tex \\batchmode\\input file', but you still have to provide the input in file.tex, get the logfile in file.log, and accept the output file.dvi. >Amazingly, according to Piercarlo Grandi (pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk) and Doug >McDonald (mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu), Knuth's program is some terrible hack >whereas Common TeX is a beauty. I think the comments were more along the lines of `it can be compiled to be more efficient, works on more systems, and can more easily be worked with'. I certainly always used to use Common TeX before web2c arrived. Trying to write change files is just a nightmare. Using C also allows the option of removing the fixed sized buffers, so that small jobs run small, and large jobs don't run out of space and advise to to recompile TeX (I don't know if this has been done in Common TeX yet, though, the last copy I used still used fixed sized buffers). Rob -- UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!warwick!cudcv PHONE: +44 203 523037 JANET: cudcv@uk.ac.warwick INET: cudcv@warwick.ac.uk Rob McMahon, Computing Services, Warwick University, Coventry CV4 7AL, England
steve@Advansoft.COM (Steve Savitzky) (11/21/90)
[large and occasionally heated discussion omitted, in which a desire is expressed to put tex in a pipeline.] Use make. More taste, less filling. Very unix. # tex to dvi: # the "echo q" bit quits out of the error dialog if necessary; # running latex twice makes sure the auxiliary files are up to date. .SUFFIXES: .tex .dvi .tex.dvi: echo q | latex $* if [ -f $*.aux ]; then echo q | latex $*; fi all: foo.dvi print: foo.dvi dvilp $? texclean: -rm *.aux *.log *.toc *.dvi clean: -rm *.CKP *.ln *.BAK *.bak *.o core errs ,* *~ *.a \ .emacs_* tags TAGS MakeOut *.odf *_ins.h \ *.aux *.log *.toc *.dvi -- \ --Steve Savitzky-- \ ADVANsoft Research Corp \ REAL hackers use an AXE! \ \ steve@advansoft.COM \ 4301 Great America Pkwy \ #include<disclaimer.h> \ \ arc!steve@apple.COM \ Santa Clara, CA 95954 \ 408-727-3357 \ \__ steve@arc.UUCP _________________________________________________________