Subject: TeXhax Digest V89 #75 From: TeXhax Digest Errors-To: TeXhax-request@cs.washington.edu Maint-Path: TeXhax-request@cs.washington.edu To: TeXhax-Distribution-List:; Reply-To: TeXhax@cs.washington.edu TeXhax Digest Monday, August 14, 1989 Volume 89 : Issue 75 Moderators: Tiina Modisett and Pierre MacKay %%% The TeXhax digest is brought to you as a service of the TeX Users Group %%% %%% in cooperation with the UnixTeX distribution service at the %%% %%% University of Washington %%% Today's Topics: Announcing LaTeX-help@sumex-aim.stanford.edu Simple LaTeX Questions and Etc. AMS-TeX + LaTeX Squeezing spaces from write token list Special purpose tabular Problem with TeX and LaTeX on SUN Re: TeXhax Digest V89 # 71 (LaTeX environment) Why the kludge in lfonts.tex? MILSTD font usage Explicitly terminating control string names Problem with BibTeX... \narrower does not work (p. 100 of the TeXbook) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1989 8:54:41 PDT From: Max Hailperin Subject: Announcing LaTeX-help@sumex-aim.stanford.edu Keywords: LaTeX, help I've succesfully organized the volunteer corps of LaTeX question answerers suggested in TeXhax volume 89 number 63, thanks to the benificence of 16 (so far) like-minded other TeXhaxers [more are welcome] and of our local system administrators. I enclose below the "Users' Guide to LaTeX-help" which announces our service. Unfortunately, while the target audience posts their questions to TeXhax, many of them don't read it. Therefore, I'm a bit at a loss for how to reach them. I am submitting this to TeXmag and TUGboat as well. Any of you who knows of additional good means for further distributing this "Users' Guide" is encouraged to do so. Some people have worried that hiding these questions and answers from the public eye will destroy a valuable source of information. To help avert this problem, we are taking the following steps: 1) Routine questions and answers will be collected for publication as a "Common LaTeX Questions with Answers" document, which will be announced in TeXhax. 2) Especially interesting questions will be posted to TeXhax together with their answers. 3) Questions which the volunteer can't answer will be forwarded to TeXhax. Users' Guide to LaTeX-help %------ ----- -- ---------- All sites with LaTeX should have one or more LaTeX experts to help users. Those experts communicate with each other about difficult problems through various forums, including the TeXhax mailing list. Lately, many sites have installed LaTeX without having, acquiring, or developing a LaTeX expert. Many simple LaTeX questions from those sites have been posted directly to TeXhax. Unfortunately, the publication schedule of TeXhax is such that there are no replies for a long time, and then many redundant replies. Additionally, the situation is self-worsening as the redundant questions and answers further clog TeXhax. Therefore, a number of TeXhax subscribers have formed a volunteer LaTeX question answering corps. LaTeX users with questions should take the following steps: 1) Read the manual very carefully, including a careful check of the index. Most questions are answered there. 2) Check whether anyone locally can answer your question. Consider not only paid systems staff but also more experienced users. Similarly, if you paid a commercial company good money for LaTeX, you should demand customer support from them--after all LaTeX is available for free. 3) See if you can work it out yourself, and in the process build LaTeX expertise, by use of careful test cases, tracing mode, examining the LaTeX source files, etc. Don't go crazy if you're a non-programmer, but give it a shot. 4) If all of the above fail, *don't* send mail to TeXhax. Instead, send mail to LaTeX-help@sumex-aim.Stanford.EDU . Your mail will automatically be forwarded to a member of the volunteer corps, in a round-robin rotation. You should hear back shortly, either with a solution to your problem, a request for additional information, or the remark that it exceeded the volunteer's abilities and has been forwarded to other experts, including further volunteers and the TeXhax mailing list. If you don't hear anything after waiting a reasonable period, write to LaTeX-help-coordinator@sumex-aim.Stanford.EDU with as much information about your original mailing as you have, and I'll try to track down how it got lost. Please do not abuse this service. We volunteers have lots of work of our own to do, and will not continue volunteering if the burden is excessive. Make sure you try steps 1-3 before step 4, and always be eager to help others locally who are a step behind you. Also, join TUG (the TeX Users' Group) if you haven't and avail yourself of their classes and publications to develop in-house LaTeX expertise. If you have any questions or comments on this, please write to LaTeX-help-coordinator@sumex-aim.Stanford.EDU -- not directly to the current person holding that position, as it may change. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Aug 89 08.55 EDT From: wconley@nmsu.edu Subject: Simple LaTeX Questions and Etc. Keywords: LaTeX, questions, helping, courtesy I have been tracking the comments regarding the "too simple" questions being submitted to TeXhax, and am concerned about the level of ego and snobbery involved. I have been using LaTeX since the beginning, and have taught a couple of hundred people how it works. I have also found the TeX Users Group and most of the practitioners helpful and congenial. This includes a pre-book call to a helpful LL who answered my question with grace and ease. Lighten up you folks who know it all. A few "easy" questions from people trying to get along with LaTeX are not going to break your disk. Keep in mind that while the LaTeX book does describe the system, not everyone understands what is being said at the first or second (...) reading. If you don't like simple questions then don't read them. Or better yet, if you have the time to complain you have the time to be useful. Take the few seconds to answer the question. Walt Conley wconley@nmsu.edu wconley@nmsuvm1 (BITNET) Biology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu 10 Aug 89 14:38:34-EST From: bbeeton Subject: AMS-TeX + LaTeX Keywords: AmSTeX, LaTeX Some time ago, an inquiry was posted regarding combined versions of AMSTeX and LaTeX, as mentioned in the March Notices of the American Mathematical Society. Here are more details, including the present status of those projects. The American Math Society has commissioned the preparation of an AMS-TeX-like sub-style to be used with LaTeX. This will permit authors to take advantage of such LaTeX features as automatic numbering of sections and equations, symbolic cross-references, and many others, while at the same time having available the special mathematical formatting of AMS-TeX. Testing is underway now, and we expect it to be ready for distribution in early fall. For compatibility with LaTeX, there will be a few differences in syntax between the new LaTeX AMS-TeX style file and the original AMS-TeX; although the syntax will be different from that of AMS-TeX, it should look familiar to current users of LaTeX. The general principle has been adopted that LaTeX usage will be employed in cases of syntax conflict between AMS-TeX and LaTeX; style conflicts will be resolved on the basis of editorial acceptability. There will also be style files suitable for formatting journal articles and books using the AMS-TeX sub-style; these will be based on the AMS' "house style", although, for technical reasons, the style files to be distributed will not include all the fine details necessary to generate a paper or book in one of the Society's own publications. At present, AMS will accept only electronic manuscripts prepared with AMS-TeX. After release of the LaTeX style files, manuscripts prepared using one of these styles will also be accepted for publication by the Society, subject to the usual technical acceptance and referee procedures. A formal announcement will be made when the project is nearer completion. Mike Spivak is separately preparing an expanded version of AMS-TeX with LaTeX-like features, which he is calling LAMS-TeX. The syntax will be different from that of LaTeX, but it should look familiar to present users of AMS-TeX. Some of the new features are automatic numbering of sections and equations, and symbolic references to any numbered feature or to items in a bibliography. Spivak has released a beta test version of this package, and full release is probable sometime in the fall. When the Math Society's production procedures can be expanded and modified to accommodate LAMS-TeX papers, these will also be accepted; an announcement will be made at an appropriate time. Barbara Beeton ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 10 Aug 89 23:37:35 MDT From: carlos@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Carlos A. Felippa) Subject: Squeezing spaces from write token list Keywords: macros, TeX write command, token list expansion Consider the macro definition \def\writedef#1#2{\immediate\write16{\def\ #1{#2}}} [This is a simplified form of a more complicated macro I am using to prepare an indexed database.] Then \writedef{macroname}{macrodefinition} writes the line \def \ macroname{macrodefinition} What is the simplest way to get rid of the blanks before and after \ in the output line? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 10 Aug 89 11:43:55 EDT From: Sean Boisen Subject: Special purpose tabular Keywords: tabular, environment I'm trying to define an environment for writing BNF-type grammar descriptions. Seems to me what i want is something like a tabular environment with two columns. My first pass is this: \begin{tabular}{r@{\ $\rightarrow $\ }l} Now the problem: if the right-hand side of an expression doesn't fit on a single line, i want it wrapped without getting extra production arrows, i.e. something like a --> this | that | the-other-thing | yet-another-thing | one-more-thing b --> quit NOT a --> this | that | the-other-thing | yet-another-thing --> | one-more-thing b --> quit And besides i don't want to have to specify line breaks in the text. WAIT, don't flame me yet! I know about the p{} argument to tabular, which would put the right hand side of the rule into a parbox and solve all my problems. *The real problem* is that i don't know the width of the parbox in advance: i don't want to pick some arbitrary number, because then i have to twiddle it all the time. Seems like the information is all there to calculate it: the difference between the width of the text and maximum side of any left hand side of a rule plus the size of the arrow. How do i turn that prose into something LaTeX can act on? What i think i want is something equivalent to: \begin{tabular}{r@{\ $\rightarrow $\ }p{\asbigaspossible}} but i don't know where to get that \asbigaspossible value. I guess the real magic that tabular uses comes from \halign in TeX: what i want is a smarter environment that will calculate the maximum size of the left column, then use that information to figure out how big to make the parbox on the right. But my command of TeX isn't up to it: any suggestions? Sean Boisen -- sboisen@bbn.com BBN Systems and Technologies Corporation, Cambridge MA Disclaimer: these opinions void where prohibited by lawyers. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 7 Aug 89 13:14:27 EDT From: chaotl@eng.umd.edu (Chuan-Lung Chao) Subject: Problem with TeX and LaTeX on SUN Keywords: TeX, LaTeX, SUN We have a strange thing happening with Tex and LaTeX in our Sun. In Servers, we get the following message when we try to invoke TeXor LaTeX: Segementaion fault (core dump) But in all clients ( They share same /usr/local/tex file system, exactly, they share totally same thing about TeX) TeX is working fine. Anything wrong about server's kernel or something else ??? We would really appreciate any advice. Jason Chao Staff of OSL at U. of Maryland ( College Park ) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 8 Aug 89 16:43:12 PDT From: lamport@src.dec.com (Leslie Lamport) Subject: Re: TeXhax Digest V89 # 71 (LaTeX environment) Keywords: LaTeX, environment Steve Fisk writes: How can I define an environment "nothing" so that nothing between \begin{nothing} and \end{nothing} is output. For instance, I would like this is text \\ \begin{nothing} here is something\\ here is more \\ \end{nothing} this is text to produce this output: this is text this is text It is trivial to write a command to do this; how do I turn the command into an envrionment? This seemingly simple request is actually a nice exercise in moderately advanced TeX hacking. The best way to do it depends upon what can come inside the "nothing" environment. If the environment contains only text, then the best approach is to typeset the contents of the environment in a box (using TeX's \setbox command), then throw away the box. Doing this requires figuring out how to turn an environment into a TeX \hbox or \vbox. To see the trick, look at the definition of the LaTeX "minipage" environment (in latex.tex). If the environment may contain commands, like \typeout or \setcounter, that could have effects even if the text containing it is never printed, then another approach must be taken. In this case, \begin{nothing} must expand to a macro whose argument is delimited by the \end{nothing}--a macro that simply throws away its argument. To see how this is done, look at the definition of the "verbatim" environment, which works this way. Leslie Lamport ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 6 Aug 89 21:52:03 EDT From: jorgnsn@qucis.queensu.ca Subject: Why the kludge in lfonts.tex? Keywords: lfonts.tex At the top of ``LFONTS - Version of 11 November 1986'' are the lines: % This file contains the following kludge: 8pt and 9pt versions % of \sc call magnifications of amcsc10 instead of cmcsc10. % Search for KLUDGE to find for both instances. What's the point of the kludge? Why not just shrink cmcsc10, the way that ``LFONTS - Version of 6 May 1986'' did? Is the shrunk AM font thought to look better? I don't have the AM fonts on hand now--is it worth getting them instead of just switching back to using cmcsc10? Email me your answers, and I'll mail a summary back to the net if there seems to be general interest. Thanks John Jorgensen jorgnsn@qucis.queensu.ca ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 89/08/07 at 17H07M01 (French time) From: UCIR001%FRORS31.BITNET@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU (Bernard GAULLE at CIRCE) Subject: MILSTD font usage Keywords: MILSTD Hi folks, Who know how to use the MILSTD font? Is there any macro package with a sample test? Thanks, Bernard GAULLE CIRCE-CNRS FRANCE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Aug 89 8:29:35 EDT From: Bernie Cosell Subject: Explicitly terminating control string names Keywords: TeX, character There is a real problem with using no-argument commands in running text: the algorithm for how to terminate them is moderately complicated, and is viewed as being mostly a total crock by less-than-experts. It'd be great if you *always* did "\bbn\" in running text, but of course you don't: you only do that if the \bbn has a space after it, otherwise you do nothing; and worse, most all of us type in our text with 'autofill' on, and you run the constant risk that your editor will break a line just after the command [and then you need to do a *different* thing, and that'll totally wedge your paragraph if you happen to re-line-break it as you do other edits in it]. Also, global replaces are near-impossible [trying figuring out how to change "Digital Equipment Corporation" to "\dec"!]. ANYHOW... all that said, the 'solution' is fairly obvious: what _I_ think that TeX needs is a character to *explicitly* terminate a command name. As I said, if "\bbn\" worked in all circumstances (and the second backslash were otherwise ignored, and so you would write "\bbn\'s" and the like), that'd be great, and that's in essence what I want. My problem is that I haven't a clue what would be a good character to pick (all the vaguely uncomon ones are mostly used!), and I'm not at all sure how to kludge it in. My first idea was to pick a character and define it to be an 'active' character, but bind it to an empty command. Thus, the non-alpha char would terminate the command name just right, but since it is bound to be a zero-width, do-nothing character, it wouldn't affect the output at all. I couldn't find such a free character... Does anyone have a suggestion or some other technique/trick for achieving the same end? [for example, I wondered if I could hack TeX so that I could use '}' --- that is, an unmatched right curly brace --- do to the job. "\bbn}" is a little ugly, but if it all worked I suspect we'd get used to it]. Thanks /Bernie\ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 10 Aug 89 17:04:39 EDT From: geller@vienna.njit.edu (james geller) Subject: Problem with BibTeX... Keywords: LaTeX, Publisher, BibTeX I am running Latex under Publisher and I have the following problem with bibtex: I need to format references in the reference list in the following way: Seniorauthorlastname initial. ......... .................................. ..................................... SeniorauthorTWOlastname initial. ......... .................................. ..................................... etc. etc. After editing the bbl file I almost got it, but I cannot get rid of the square brackets in front of the references. The best I am able to do is to make sure that they are empty. So what I have looks like this: []Seniorauthorlastname initial. ......... .................................. ..................................... []SeniorauthorTWOlastname initial. ......... .................................. ..................................... Can anybody help with this? I am not on this mailing list, please reply directly. Jim P.S.: Where can I get bst files for journals like Cognitive Science? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 12 Aug 89 11:51:50 MDT From: carlos@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Carlos A. Felippa) Subject: \narrower does not work (p. 100 of the TeXbook) Keywords: TeX, \narrower The \narrower macro does not perform as advertised on p. 100 of the TeXbook in the following sample text. Neither do \leftskip and \rightskip work as advertised in the \midinsert-\endinsert construction that follows. I am using Arbortext's Plain TeX release 2.9.7, but the same behavior is observed in the public TeX distributed with SunOS 4.0 in directory /usr/local/bin. \parskip=4pt\parindent=20pt The first paragraph. This is supposed to be followed by a ``narrower'' paragraph. {\narrower\smallskip\noindent ``problems involving nonuniform heating and/or large deflections [$\ldots$] in a series of linearized steps. Stiffness matrices are revised at the beginning of each step to account for changes in internal loads, temperatures, and geometric configuration.'' \smallskip} \midinsert\leftskip=\parindent\rightskip=\parindent \smallskip\noindent ``problems involving nonuniform heating and/or large deflections [$\ldots$] in a series of linearized steps. Stiffness matrices are revised at the beginning of each step to account for changes in internal loads, temperatures, and geometric configuration.'' \smallskip \endinsert The next paragraph. \bye ----------------------------------------------------------------------- %%% Further information about the TeXhax Digest, the TeX %%% Users Group, and the latest software versions is available %%% in every tenth issue of the TeXhax Digest. %%% %%% Concerning subscriptions, address changes, unsubscribing: %%% %%% BITNET: send a one-line mail message to LISTSERV@xxx %%% SUBSCRIBE TEX-L % to subscribe %%% or UNSUBSCRIBE TEX-L %%% %%% Internet: send a similar one line mail message to %%% TeXhax-request@cs.washington.edu %%% JANET users may choose to use %%% texhax-request@uk.ac.nsf %%% All submissions to: TeXhax@cs.washington.edu %%% %%% Back issues available for FTPing as: %%% machine: directory: filename: %%% JUNE.CS.WASHINGTON.EDU TeXhax/TeXhaxyy.nn %%% yy = last two digits of current year %%% nn = issue number %%% %%%\bye %%% End of TeXhax Digest ************************** -------