TeXhax Digest Monday, November 9, 1987 Volume 87 : Issue 91 [SCORE.STANFORD.EDU]TEXHAX91.87 Editor: Malcolm Brown Today's Topics: Re: IMAGEN Re: Postscript to DVI filter Re: DVI2LN3, multi-column, 8 Bit characters, AMSTeX RE: myheadings HELP needed!! Bug report for DVI2LN3 V7.2/7.3 Sinhalese and Devanagari TeX availability. comparing different flavors of TeX dvi2ps with gf accepting Macintosh inserts Macros for programexample? (TeXhax Digest V87 #88) DVI Driver Family Version 2.10 released [01-Nov-87] V87 #85 LaTeX v. TeX; some thanks RE: Gnerating Font Tables ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1-Nov-87 17:48:29-PST,3037;000000000000 Date: Mon, 2 Nov 87 01:50 GMT From: Peter Flynn Hubert Partl (Z3000PA@AWITUW01.BITNET) asks about getting automatically scalable superior ordinals for UK dates. This practice died out (typographically) in the late 1950s. It is current practice to use the current text-size of type on the normal baseline (i.e. not superscripted at all). Obviously it *is* needed if you are trying to reproduce a piece of older printing, or create the flavour of that era, but my personal view is that it distracts the eye to have the ordinals in the superior position, even more so to have them in smaller type. In any case, 10:7 would be tough on TeX, which uses 1:1.2 scaling for delivered fonts. The actual code to do it would leave me sweating... Harald Hanche-Olsen (HANCHE@NORUNIT.BITNET) asks about the relative merits and demerits of TeX vs LaTeX vs AmSTeX. I cannot speak for AmSTeX as I have never used it. My own two cents' worth is that I never use LaTeX because I happen not to like its typography (sorry Leslie), but I am aware that others do (use it, not like its typo- graphy) because it is simpler to get started using it than plain TeX. LaTeX screams at you from the page "I am American", and as I am picky about my formatting, I prefer to design my own format for each style of document I produce. But LaTeX has a lot of nice features, particularly the ability to do simple graphics, and it frees the beginner from having to concern her/himself with the internals of typesetting. Use it by all means, but there is no substitute for *learning* raw TeX if you want to equip yourself for doing your own thing later. Peter Flynn Office: +353 21 276871 x2215..(9am--5pm European) Academic Advisory Manager Home: +353 21 546305..........(7pm--> European) Computer Bureau Fax: +353 21 277194 (G3).............(anytime) University College Telex: 75583 uncc ei........(if all else fails!) Cork, Ireland BITNET: CBTS8001 @ IRUCCVAX ....(preferred route) (=arpa cbts8001%iruccvax.bitnet@wiscvm.wisc.edu) "I couldn't have called him HEANET: cbts8001@irl.hea.ucc.vax1 (Irish network) an SOB: I didn't know he BIX: pflynn@bytecosy....(checked every 2 days) was one ... at the time." Kom: "Peter Flynn UCC" @ UCD.KOM .....EuroKom) (JFK about Diefenbaker) ------------------------------ Subject: Re: IMAGEN Date: Sun, 1 Nov 87 21:04:05 MET DST > Date: Fri, 23 Oct 87 15:41:42 EDT > From: Charlie Martin > To: texhax@score.stanford.edu > In-Reply-To: Jean-Francois Lamy's message of Mon, 19 Oct 87 07:20:26 -0400 > Subject: Postscript to Impress conversion program needed > > I've heard the rumor that a postScript upgrade (they probably don't > call it that) for the imagen will be available around the first of the > year. Hello, I have been on the SYSTEMS in Munich (one of the greatest computer fairs in Europe) last month and talked to someone of IMAGEN Germany and he told me, that this upgrade will only be available for the Imagen Laser printer with a Floppy-Drive or a hard disk. There will be no upgrade possibility for Laserprinters such as the Image-Station, which is what we have. Hope this helps a bit more. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dieter Woerz Fraunhofer Institut fuer Arbeitswirtschaft und Organisation Abt. 453 Holzgartenstrasse 17 D-7000 Stuttgart 1 W-Germany BITNET: iaoobel.uucp!woerz@unido.bitnet UUCP: ...{uunet!unido, pyramid}!iaoobel!woerz ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Postscript to DVI filter Date: Sun, 1 Nov 87 20:48:25 MET DST > Date: Fri, 23 Oct 87 10:46 PDT > From: (NAME NIK ZAPANTIS) > Subject: Postscript to DVI filter > To: texhax@score.stanford.edu > > I need a postscript to DVI filter (or Postscript to IMPRESS). Any info on > the existence of such a program will be appreciated. The filter should run > either on an ATARI ST, or VAX/VMS system. I have Fortran,C,and Assembler for > both systems, I also have Modula-II for the ST and VMS Pascal. > > Thank you in advance, > > Nik Zapantis > UVIC, PHYSICS > Victoria, BC > V8W 2Y2 > (604) 721-7729 > > system@uvphys.bitnet Hello Nik, We are looking for a postscript to impress converter for some time, but haven't found any information on such a beast. So if you get any information about such a thing, can you please send this information to me. Thanks in advance ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dieter Woerz Institut fuer industrielle Fertigung und Fabrikbetriebslehre Universitaet Stuttgart Abt. 453 Holzgartenstrasse 17 D-7000 Stuttgart 1 W-Germany BITNET: iaoobel.uucp!woerz@unido.bitnet UUCP: ...{uunet!unido, pyramid}!iaoobel!woerz ------------------------------ Date: Sun 1 Nov 87 19:28:08-PST From: Barbara Beeton Subject: Re: DVI2LN3, multi-column, 8 Bit characters, AMSTeX regarding problems with scaled fonts within a magnified document, this is a well-known problem of long standing, and is a result of roundoff error. "standard" values for magsteps 1-5 are defined in plain.tex (see p 349 of the texbook). magnifying these by additional powers of 1.2 does not necessarily yield comparable values, although the new values are at most a hundredth of a unit different. a really thorough device driver should accommodate such tiny variations, but many do not. some device drivers permit apparently different font size values to be equated through a table; for others, it may be possible to copy a particular size font to another name (say .249 to .248). there is a committee in the tex users group now investigating the various features that should be present in a competent tex output driver, and i know that this particular "feature" is on their list. i also hope to be able to publish an item in tugboat on the subject sometime next year; i've had the detailed source material available for quite a while, and lack only the time to write the article. regarding the problem with trying to produce the amstex manual, i must tell you that any file that purports to be the amstex manual is not the current version. the only copy of the current version is in mike spivak's possession, and in fact that version is not based on the current authoritative version of amstex (1.1c). so i would advise you to obtain a published copy and spare yourself a lot of effort and confusion. -- barbara beeton editor, tugboat ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 Nov 87 08:52 N From: Subject: RE: myheadings HELP needed!! Jackie Damrau asked for an example of the use of myheadings (TeXhax V87 issue 86). This example works perfect within report-style. --------------------cut here----------------------------------------- % \markboth defines the header texts, in this case flushed towards % the automatically generated pagenumber, in a distance % of appr. 1 cm. Here only the left-page header is defined, the % other one will be defined in each chapter with a % \markright{\hfill{Chapter name}\hskip1cm}-command % \markboth{\hskip1cm{Publiceren met \LaTeX}\hfill} % left-page header {\hfill{dummy header}\hskip1cm} % the right-page header is defined % separately in each chapter \pagestyle{myheadings} % -------------------and here------------------------------------------ Good luck Herman F. Vogt Computing Centre Univ of Groningen The Netherlands Earn/Bitnet: VOGT@HGRRUG5 ------------------------------ Date: Mon 2 Nov 87 06:52:49-PDT From: BELL%KUPHSX.SPAN@STAR.STANFORD.EDU Subject: Bug report for DVI2LN3 V7.2/7.3 Oops! I'm sorry that I have taken so long to report this bug, but time always seems to go so fast. I have discovered a bug in the modified DVI2LN3 driver (V7.2 or 7.3, VMS) that I made. One of the routines I wrote doesn't behave correctly if the user enters a page number beginning with 9 (either the /S or /N qualifiers)...the program comes back with a "missing keyword" error. As it turns out, I simply zoned out the day I wrote the routine, as the fix was simple. This error is in only in the main module and requires only the change of all occurrences of \9 --> \t. You can do this yourself, or (if it's really necessary) I can send you a copy of the altered file. Sorry for the insect and for any loss of hair it may have caused you. Ed Bell Department of Physics \& Astronomy The University of Kansas Lawrence, KS 66045-2151 AT\&T: (913) 864-3610 E-Mail Address: BITnet: Bell%Bell@UKANVAX SPAN: KUPHSX::Bell (7.220) ARPANET: Bell%KUPHSX.SPAN@STAR.STANFORD.EDU ------------------------------ Date: Mon 2 Nov 87 09:03:16-PST From: Emma Pease Subject: Sinhalese and Devanagari Has anyone done any work with new metafont (or TeX) for Sinhalese or Devanagari? Emma Pease ps. I am aware of the work done at Stanford on creating Tamil characters using metafont. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 Nov 87 12:21:16 EST From: tynor@pyr.gatech.edu (Steve Tynor) Subject: TeX availability. Can someone tell me what it takes to get TeX running on our VAX/VMS and MSDOS systems? Are there PD implementations? I'll be printing on a Apple Laserwriter. Are there PD device drivers for Postscript? =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether. Steve Tynor Georgia Instutute of Technology ...{akgua, allegra, amd, harpo, hplabs, ihnp4, masscomp, ut-ngp, rlgvax, sb1, uf-cgrl, unmvax, ut-sally} !gatech!gitpyr!tynor ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 1 Nov 87 21:08:48 PST From: Jonathan_Thornburg%UBC.MAILNET@MIT-Multics.ARPA Subject: comparing different flavors of TeX In TeXhax 87.88, Harald Hanche-Olsen asks for user's comparisons of the different flavors of TeX (plain TeX, AMS-TeX, LaTeX, ...). Herewith mine: I started off using a homebrew plain TeX macro package to write a thesis and a couple of papers. I then discovered LaTeX and now use it for everything. I find it has enough flexibility to do it all: reports, camera ready copy for papers, another thesis, ... To use Leslie Lamport's analogy, I find this particular "family sedan" to have excellent drivability *and* plenty of performance. That said, if something comes up which I can't seem to fit into LaTeX, I find it works much better to write my own style file modifying one of the existing ones, than to try and cook up something completely original. It's easier, and retains at least some of the typographical expertise built in to the existing LaTeX styles. My experience with sending TeX code directly to a journal was that they were going to diddle the formatting anyway, so it didn't really matter what flavor I used (in fact, they didn't even use TeX). From their point of view, just capturing the running text of a paper in machine readable form takes care of a big chunk of their workload. However, I'd certainly ask them if they had a "house" LaTeX document style file that I should use. -- Jonathan Thornburg userbkis@ubcmtsg.bitnet thornburg%ubcmtsg.bitnet%ubc@relay.cs.net thornburg%ubc@um.cc.umich.edu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 Nov 87 11:37 MST From: John Saba - CCIT Instructional Computing In TeXhax Digest #79, Phil Windley asked for a preprocessor for TeX files that filters out TeX commands before sending the files to spell. Why not use a dictionary of TeX commands, instead? I have created a dictionary of all relevant TeX commands, many am fonts, many cm fonts, etc. This dictionary was checked by running the index from the TeXbook through spell. I'd be happy to supply this to anyone who could use it. John Saba Center for Computing and Information Technology University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 1 Nov 87 17:17:54 PST From: mackay@june.cs.washington.edu (Pierre MacKay) Subject: dvi2ps with gf accepting Macintosh inserts The following, quoted in its entirety, indicates the kind of work dvi2ps still needs. Anyone game to try? I have no present knowledge of any available improvements. Date: Tue, 27 Oct 87 08:59:51 +0100 From: mcvax!imag!pierre@uunet.UU.NET (Pierre LAFORGUE) To: mackay@june.cs.washington.edu Subject: Re: dvi2ps with gf accepting Macintosh inserts >From mackay@june.cs.washington.edu Mon Oct 26 20:48:48 1987 >I don't see >why the change to gf fonts should have destroyed other good parts of >the old dvips, but as I say, I keep my hands off the actual program. It is a consequence of the tree structure of the dvi2ps development. The patch for including Macintosh postscript was not applied inside the same branch as the patch for the gf fonts (and of course not by the same people); each one lives its own life ... Nevertheless, dvi2ps is a really good thing, and I am gratefull about the various authors. Having ONE standard for everything was my goal : TeX, DWB, Macintosh, TeX+Macintosh, DWB+Macintosh --> postscript --> AGFA P400PS (central service : 18 p/mn are more than the 26 p/mn of others because of the 68020 processor, 6MO memory, 20 MO disk; better quality : 406 p/i -but I have no interest in the Agfa society), and LaserWriters as a proximity service. If somebody is willing to upgrade dvi2ps to include all the anarchic good- nesses, he or she merits an award ! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 1 Nov 87 10:22:19 PST From: mackay@june.cs.washington.edu (Pierre MacKay) Subject: Macros for programexample? (TeXhax Digest V87 #88) The macros used to publish the TeXbook do most of what you want. You can find them on p. 421. One of the reasons for making the source of the TeXbook available is to make it easy to get these macros directly from Donald Knuth's source. You still have to take care of tabs, and whether that is easy or hard depends on how they are used. Since you are already in an interior group, you can change the catcode for the tab character to active and define it as eight spaces (you are already in TeX's gullet, so the spaces will not disappear), but that will only work for tabs in from the beginning of the line. You could possibly work out some arithmetic for internal tabs, but a simpler way would be to untabify the source file before submitting it to TeX. Unless you are using a very unusual character set the tab is the worst problem. The other one is possibly the | if you are trying to record C probram fragments. The only way around that is to choose another character for the internal escape character. The requirements are discussed on p 421. You may also want to change the position on the page. The version shown on p.421 indents all the lines and you may not want that. Pierre A. MacKay TUG Site Coordinator for Unix-flavored TeX ------------------------------ Date: Mon 2 Nov 87 13:11:06-MST From: "Nelson H.F. Beebe" Subject: DVI Driver Family Version 2.10 released [01-Nov-87] Version 2.10 of my DVI driver family was released 01-Nov-87. Users who are on the DVI mailing list have already been sent Newsletter #14 with details. The most significant changes are substantial enhancements to the drivers for the HP LaserJet Plus (and compatibles) and PostScript printers, and the addition of two experimental drivers for Epson 9-pin printers. If you read this, and have the driver software, but are not on the DVI mailing list, please send a request to BEEBE@Science.Utah.Edu to be added. We now have a European Bitnet redistribution site at the University of Heidelburg, a British Janet redistribution site at Aston University, and are setting up a European DECNET redistribution site at the University of Padova in Italy. I expect soon that a Japanese site will be added. ************************************************************ ** My request to this net is for someone to offer Bitnet ** ** server support for the US and Canada, in order that ** ** Bitnet sites can obtain the drivers electronically. ** ************************************************************ The master distribution directories, APS:, at Science.Utah.Edu provide for Arpanet access, but provide no access for people on other popular nets. About 3.6Mb of disk space is required for the approximately 210 files in the distribution (no binary files are stored). For the convenience of Unix Arpanet sites, I also maintai ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 02 Nov 87 12:31:15 PLT From: Dean Guenther Subject: V87 #85 Gregory Simpson asks: > 2) I am specifically interested in whether TeX is up and running on > any "IBM - 4381-1" 's... There are distributions for VM/CMS and MVS. > 3) Also, is there a "standard" procedure/location that one would send a tape and handling fee to in order to obtain the latest and greatest TeX Distribution for a particular machine? The MVS distribution is ordered from Craig Platt (University of Manitoba) at the moment. The VM/CMS tape (and before long the MVS tape) can be ordered from Maria Code: Maria Code Data Processing Services 1371 Sydney Drive Sunnyvale, CA 94087 (408) 735-8006 Holler if you have any other questions. Dean Guenther TeX IBM VM/CMS Site Coordinator Washington State University Pullman, Wa. 99164-1220 phone: 509-335-0411 BITnet: GUENTHER@WSUVM1 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 02 Nov 87 17:11:06 PDT From: BOYLAN@suWatson.Stanford.edu Subject: LaTeX v. TeX; some thanks Someone asked about the different flavors or TeX. Here's my 2 cents: I've used TeX and LaTeX, and recommend LaTeX. It provides a nice, complete environment, and saves you the time and trouble of trying to reinvent the wheel. There is a depository of styles available via ftp from rochester.arpa in directory public/latex-style. These include some AMS stuff. Now for the thanks: about a week ago I posted a question about what was, in retrospect, an obvious goof on my part with LaTeX. I received quite a few replies and wanted to thank not only the people who helped out, but Malcolm for providing this service. I think this spirit of cooperation is wonderful. So, thanks, TeXhax community. ------------------------------ Date: 2 Nov 87 22:37:00 EST From: "DARREN STALDER" Subject: RE: Gnerating Font Tables John Delgado (acsjld@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu) asked for a TeX program that would generate the font tables found in Appendix F of the TeXbook. I have something that does that. As a matter of fact, I think it IS the program that generated those tables. I needed to get some font display sheets for our installation and I found a program called testfont. This program is mentioned in the Metafont manual and therefore is probably written by Knuth. I chopped and modified testfont and renamed it tablefont. It now will read from a file {\tt fontlist.tex} and will generate a page for each font in fontlist.tex. I had it put a heading at the top with the name of the font in 24.9 pt. I didn't make any major mods to it since I have been using the TeXsystem for about 2.5 weeks now. Well here it is: % This file is only slightly modified from testfont.tex. % This program owes quite a bit to Donald Knuth, since I think that % he wrote testfont.tex and of course for the rest of the TeXsystem. \raggedbottom \nopagenumbers \tracinglostchars=0 \newcount\m \newcount\n \newcount\p \newdimen\dim \newcount\beof \newcount\eof \chardef\other=12 \font\bigrm=cmr10 scaled 2490 \def\setbaselineskip{\setbox0=\hbox{\n=0 \loop\char\n \ifnum \n<255 \advance\n 1 \repeat} \baselineskip=6pt \advance\baselineskip\ht0 \advance\baselineskip\dp0 } \def\setchar#1{{\escapechar-1\message{\string#1 character = }% \def\do##1{\catcode`##1=\other}\dospecials \read-1 to\next \expandafter\finsetchar\next\next#1}} \def\finsetchar#1#2\next#3{\global\chardef#3=`#1 \ifnum #3=`\# \global\chardef#3=#2 \fi} \def\promptthree{\setchar\background \setchar\starting \setchar\ending} \def\init{\font\testfont=\fontname {\bigrm\hfill\uppercase\expandafter{\fontname}\hfill} \medskip \testfont \setbaselineskip \ifdim\fontdimen6\testfont<10pt \rightskip=0pt plus 20pt \else\rightskip=0pt plus 2em \fi \spaceskip=\fontdimen2\testfont % space between words (\raggedright) \xspaceskip=\fontdimen2\testfont \advance\xspaceskip by\fontdimen7\testfont} \def\oct#1{\hbox{\rm\'{}\kern-.2em\it#1\/\kern.05em}} % octal constant \def\hex#1{\hbox{\rm\H{}\tt#1}} % hexadecimal constant \def\setdigs#1"#2{\gdef\h{#2}% \h=hex prefix; \0\1=corresponding octal \m=\n \divide\m by 64 \xdef\0{\the\m}% \multiply\m by-64 \advance\m by\n \divide\m by 8 \xdef\1{\the\m}} \def\testrow{\setbox0=\hbox{\penalty 1\def\\{\char"\h}% \\0\\1\\2\\3\\4\\5\\6\\7\\8\\9\\A\\B\\C\\D\\E\\F% \global\p=\lastpenalty}} % \p=1 if none of the characters exist \def\oddline{\cr \noalign{\nointerlineskip} \multispan{19}\hrulefill& \setbox0=\hbox{\lower 2.3pt\hbox{\hex{\h x}}}\smash{\box0}\cr \noalign{\nointerlineskip}} \newif\ifskipping \def\evenline{\loop\skippingfalse \ifnum\n<256 \m=\n \divide\m 16 \chardef\next=\m \expandafter\setdigs\meaning\next \testrow \ifnum\p=1 \skippingtrue \fi\fi \ifskipping \global\advance\n 16 \repeat \ifnum\n=256 \let\next=\endchart\else\let\next=\morechart\fi \next} \def\morechart{\cr\noalign{\hrule\penalty5000} \chartline \oddline \m=\1 \advance\m 1 \xdef\1{\the\m} \chartline \evenline} \def\chartline{&\oct{\0\1x}&&\:&&\:&&\:&&\:&&\:&&\:&&\:&&\:&&} \def\chartstrut{\lower4.5pt\vbox to14pt{}} \def\table{$$\global\n=0 \halign to\hsize\bgroup \chartstrut##\tabskip0pt plus10pt& &\hfil##\hfil&\vrule##\cr \lower6.5pt\null &&&\oct0&&\oct1&&\oct2&&\oct3&&\oct4&&\oct5&&\oct6&&\oct7&\evenline} \def\endchart{\cr\noalign{\hrule} \raise11.5pt\null&&&\hex 8&&\hex 9&&\hex A&&\hex B& &\hex C&&\hex D&&\hex E&&\hex F&\cr\egroup$$\par} \def\:{\setbox0=\hbox{\char\n}% \ifdim\ht0>7.5pt\reposition \else\ifdim\dp0>2.5pt\reposition\fi\fi \box0\global\advance\n 1 } \def\reposition{\setbox0=\vbox{\kern2pt\box0}\dim=\dp0 \advance\dim 2pt \dp0=\dim} \def\centerlargechars{ \def\reposition{\setbox0=\hbox{$\vcenter{\kern2pt\box0\kern2pt}$}}} \def\doit{\loop \read1 to\fontname \ifeof1 \closein1 \global\eof=1 \fi \ifnum \eof=0 \init \table \vfill \eject \repeat \ifnum \eof=0 \doit \fi} \beof=0 \openin1=fontlist.tex \ifeof1 \write16{ } \write16{Fontlist.TeX not found on default directory} \write16{Aborting Tablefont} \write16{ } \beof=1 \fi \ifnum \beof=0 \eof=0 \doit \fi \end This is it folks. Could those people that think of improvements to this file please send me mail as to what they are? Torin/Wolf/Darren Stalder Internet: DSTALDER@GMUVAX.EDU Bitnet: DSTALDER@GMUVAX ATTNet: 1-703-323-3569 UUCP: (dolqci | uunet!pyrdc)!gmu90x!dstalder SNAIL: 15713 Edgewood Dr./Dumfries, VA 22026/USA ------------------------------ %%% %%% subscriptions, address changes to: texhax-request@score.stanford.edu %%% please send a valid arpanet address!! %%% %%% submissions to: texhax@score.stanford.edu %%% %%% BITNET redistribution: TEX-L@TAMVM1.BITNET (list server) %%% %%%\bye %%% ------------------------------ End of TeXhax Digest ************************** -------