Subject: TeXhax Digest V89 #79 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 Thursday, August 31, 1989 Volume 89 : Issue 79 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: Printing LAserJet files under DOS Continuous \big? Line in the heading of the page LaTeX Bibliographies Inline? Regarding the Problem with LaTeX tabular Problem that occurs with LaTeX tabular Re: Problem with LaTeX tabular LaTeX style file for ICPP format Why no TeX on CompuServe? Chapters beginning on odd pages only A few more user-interface guidelines Beta release of MC-TeX available Re: Explicitly terminating control string names ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 23 Aug 89 14:27:09 BST From: Jon Warbrick Subject: Printing LAserJet files under DOS Keywords: LaserJet, DOS Tom Limonce recently asked how to copy a file from a PC to an HP LaserJet in such a way that something actually gets printed. If you look at the small print of a DOS manual, you will find that COPY regards a `text' file as being terminated by the first CTRL-Z in the file, while a `binary' file is just as long as its directory entry claims that it is. COPY defaults to copying files as text files. In a LaserJet file, a CTRL-Z tends to occur during one of the first few character definitions in the document, before anything actually gets printed! The solution? Try COPY xxxxxxxx.xxx /B PRN It works for me, except that I get a 'Device not ready' error just at the end of the document, which I ignore! PRINT has the same problem, but I don't know how to get around it. The correct solution would be a dedicated program to do the sending ... (You must understand that I had the same problem once ...) Jon. Jon Warbrick, Computing Service, Plymouth (0752) 233913 (ddi) Polytechnic South West, --. Drake Circus, `--> Polytechnic South West was formed from Plymouth PL4 8AA UK. Plymouth Polytechnic on 1st April 1989 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 24 Aug 89 00:50:28 MDT From: koslowj@macalstr.bitnet (J\"urgen Koslowski) Subject: Continuous \big? Keywords: delimiters, \big I've tried to replace the dimension of the \vbox in the definitions of \big, \Big, etc. (The TeXbook, p. 360) by other values. Applied to \downarrow, the only changes of size occurred after increments of 3pt, i.e., the next bigger arrow shows up when a \vbox to 20.5pt is used, etc. For intermediate dimensions, the length of the arrows doesn't change. Moreover, the actual size of these arrows grows in 6pt (=.5\baselineskip) steps. \Big\downarrow (with a \vbox to 11.5pt) produces an arrow 18pt long, while \bigg\downarrow (with a \vbox to 14.5pt) gives an arrow 24pt long, etc. Can somebody explain what is going on here? And how does one produce vertical arrows of pt-sizes not divisible by 6 (short of patching together an ordinary \downarrow and a suitably long \vert and having them overlap to some degree)? Actually, I can live quite well with these size restrictions, but I find the phenomenon puzzeling. J\"urgen Koslowski Dept. of Math. & Comp. Sci. Macalester College St. Paul, MN 55105-1899 612-696-6041 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 22 Aug 89 23:48:01 PDT From: desouza@bosco.Berkeley.EDU Subject: Line in the heading of the page Keywords: line, heading, page Does anybody knows how to produce the line underneath the heading of the page (like in the LaTeX book), using LaTeX ? Is there a style that does that ? Thanks, Paulo de Souza ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 23 Aug 89 08:34:53 CDT From: larus@cs.wisc.edu Subject: LaTeX Bibliographies Inline? Keywords: LaTeX, bibliographies Does anyone have a clean and simple way to produce LaTeX bibliographies that are in the body of a paper---for example, a course syllabus? I want something like: ... text ... bibliography entry ... text ... ... I have a kludge using an awk file, but I was wondering if I missed an obvious solution. /Jim -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 23 Aug 89 11:38:39 BST From: David Shepherd Subject: Regarding the Problem with LaTeX tabular Keywords: LaTeX, tabular The problem is that the definition of \sloppy has been changed -- certainly between LaTeX 2.06 and 2.09. If you add the definition \def\sloppy{\tolerance 2000 \hfuzz .5pt \vfuzz .1pt} to the top of your file it will process as before (I've tried it and it works) *BUT* several of the boxes are overfull by 2 or 3 pts. I assume \sloppy was redefined to ensure that there could be no chance of an overfull box and hence it makes unfortunate linebreaking choices --- this is because in the TeX line break algorithm the positions of line breaks are not independent. A line overrun of 2pts or so shouldn't be too obvious, but you could get much worse if you're unlucky. There are some other "bugs" in the LaTeX code for the matrix i) the p-box widths in the table add up to 8ins and do not take account of the extra space for the inter column gaps giving an overfull box for the table as a whole. ii) \center is not a LaTeX command to center (or even centre ;-) a piece of text. Similarily for \flushright -- these are both called to define environments -- the LaTeX should be \begin{flushright} 3/17/89 \end{flushright} \begin{center} ...... \end{center} iii) \parbox, which is used by the p columns in the table, calls \sloppy itself, so the call to \sloppy at the top is, perhaps, redundant hope this is helpful david shepherd INMOS ltd ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 23 Aug 89 09:04:03 -0700 From: lamport@src.dec.com Subject: Problem that occurs with LaTeX tabular Keywords: LaTeX, tabular The problem lies in TeX's line-breaking algorithm. LaTeX uses a \sloppy declaration in this environment to guarantee that there will be no overfull hboxes. This has the effect that, in place of overfull hboxes, one winds up with underfull lines. There appears to be no way in TeX to eliminate overfull hboxes without having this problem. You can get the overfull hbox by adding a \fussy declaration to the paragraph (or rewriting the tabular macro to eliminate the sloppy declaration). But you'll then have overfull hboxes to deal with. Leslie Lamport ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 22 Aug 89 23:08:36 EDT From: Denys Duchier Subject: Re: Problem with LaTeX tabular Keywords: LaTeX, tabular Firstly \flushright and \center are environments. Instead of \flushright{3/17/89} You should write \begin{flushright} 3/17/89 \end{flushright} Similarly for \center. p98 of the LaTeX manual warns you that you can expect bad breaks in narrow parboxes. I just tried it and what I found is that it is possible to get acceptable formating by inserting \tolerance=100 in those entries that would otherwise look funny. \tolerance is documented on p96 of The TeXbook. Denys Organization: Computer Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-2158 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 18 Aug 89 09:22:11 PDT From: Paul E. McKenney Subject: LaTeX style file for ICPP format Keywords: LaTeX, ICPP %% Moderator's note: Due to the size of the file, we have not %% included it in the Digest. It is available by ftp. The shar-format file at the end of this message includes LaTeX style files suitable for printing directly on mattes in the format specified by the International Conference on Parallel Processing. In addition, there are .tex files that serve as a test case. The top-level file is named ``dicthash.tex'', when run through LaTeX using the style files, it should produce mattes corresponding to my paper in the ICPP'89 proceedings. CAVEATS: o This style file does -not- produce a bibliography in ICPP format. A work-around is to use bibtex to handle the citations and to produce a draft bibliography, which can be manually edited to ICPP format. o This style file is set up for 11x17 inch paper. Needless to say, you must have a laser printer that handles this size of paper in order to use this style file. Hope this is of some use! Thanx, Paul -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 19 Aug 89 22:13:00 EDT From: Jim Walker Subject: Why no TeX on CompuServe? Keywords: TeX, Compuserve, GEnie There have been a number of complaints recently about then number of trivial questions being asked in TeXHax Digest. Perhaps the infrequency of the issues makes us feel that each one should be full of valuable information. This prompts me to ask: Why isn't there a TeX forum on CompuServe or GEnie? The most obvious response is that those services cost money. I am also unsure whether they are available outside the U.S. However, I think that the quick response makes it worthwhile. On a CompuServe forum, I can ask a stupid question and usually get a polite response within a couple of days. There are also software libraries which are considerably more user-friendly than archive servers on the net. James W. Walker, Department of Mathematics, University of South Carolina, Columbia SC 29208 BITnet: N410109@univscvm ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 22 Aug 89 11:57:59 -0400 From: lang@caesar Subject: Chapters beginning on odd pages only and trademark symbol Keywords: TeX, LaTeX, chapters, trademark symbol I may be missing something here, but in all the "real" publications that I've ever seen (including the TeX and LaTeX books), chapters start on *odd* pages only. If the previous chapter ends on an odd page, an extra blank dummy page is inserted between the last page of chapter N and the first page of chapter N+1 (see, e.g., pages 10 and 36 of the LaTeX book). However, my experience has been that LaTeX doesn't do this in the twoside option unless the documentstyle is book. If I haven't missed anything, can someone propose a fix? I'm afraid I'm not enough of a TeX hacker to do this. Many thanks. Also, has anyone hacked up a good trademark symbol similar to the \copyright symbol? Many thanks. Francois-Michel Lang Paoli Research Center, Unisys lang@prc.unisys.com (215) 648-7256 Dept of Comp & Info Science, U of PA lang@linc.cis.upenn.edu (215) 898-9511 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 23 Aug 89 09:49:32 EDT From: clayton@thumper.bellcore.com (R. Clayton) Subject: A few more user-interface guidelines Keywords: user-interface, guidelines I'll suggest two more latex user-interface guidelines to go with those given by Charles Karney in texhax vol. 65: 1 Define macros to have keyword/value parameter lists. For example, a local package of formatting macros provides \author to specify author information: \author{name: R. Clayton; location: MRE 2A-279; organization: 21462; project: R2502; phone: [201] 829-4582; misc: {\tt clayton@lavalamp} } Keywords can eliminate the need for most optional arguments and star-form macros: \section{heading: Annotated Bibliography; numbering: false; tocentry: \notocentry } (These examples suggest another guideline: handle irrelevant white space properly; that is, ignore it. Compare the above macro calls to the call \documentstyle[11pt, fullpage, alltt, threepart, twoside, aaai-bib, makeidx, termlist]{article}) Unfortunately, I shouldn't make the macro package generally available. However, everything I know about keyword parameter macros came from reading Wolfgang Appelt's article "Macros with Keyword Parameters" in Tugboat vol. 8, no. 2 (July 1987). 2 Print sensible error messages. In this case, "sensible" means containing only information directly related to what the author typed or should have typed. For example, the \author call \author{name: R. Clayton; site: MRE 2A-279; org: 21462; telephone: [201] 829-4582; } results in (only) the error messages Unknown \author keyword "site: MRE 2A-279". Unknown \author keyword "org: 21462". Unknown \author keyword "telephone: [201] 829-4582". Compare this with the error message given for "\tabular[b]{mm}" (you might also want to compare "\tabular[c]{cc}"). R. Clayton clayton@thumper.bellcore.com {rutgers!}bellcore!thumper!clayton -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 23 Aug 89 21:48:44 -0400 From: Chris Torek Subject: Beta release of MC-TeX available Keywords: MC-TeX, beta A beta release of MC-TeX, the Maryland Unix TeX collection of programs, is available. These are essentially the same programs that were in the `umd-dvi' directory on the Unix TeX distribution tape, except that they reflect the versions in use here at the UMCP Computer Science Department, rather than those in use at the University of Illinois (somehow these got mixed up on the Unix TeX tape). I do intend to merge in versions of texsun and texx, and to add tpic specials to the Imagen and PostScript drivers, but none of these appear in the beta release. (This despite the documentation describing texx and texsun: that is due to the fact that I started the MC-TeX User's Guide with the text of Dirk Grunwald's `DVI Output Guide'.) What *is* on the beta release: - The MC-TeX library (useful for writing drivers, among other things). - Drivers for Imagen printers, PostScript printers, and Versatec electrostatic plotters (the latter untested; I no longer have a Versatec). The PostScript driver allows the use of PostScript fonts (also untested). - DVI-to-DVI programs `dviselect' (page selection) and `dviconcat' (concatenates separate DVI files). - Documentation for all of the above. MC-TeX runs unmodified on 4.3BSD-tahoe VAX and DEC Ultrix 3.1-RISC DS3100 machines, and with some configuration should run on most System V machines, provided that they support long (31 or more character) variable and function names in C code. Previous versions of MC-TeX (which was then called `C-TeX') have been ported to VMS; that process should now be simpler. All MC-TeX drivers support PK, GF, and PXL fonts (via the MC-TeX library). Most imagineable arrangements of fonts are supported (flat or heirarchical directories, etc.) or can be added fairly trivially. To get the code, use anonymous FTP to retrieve the compressed tar file tex/mctex.beta.tar.Z from host mimsy.umd.edu. Be sure to use binary mode. For instance: % ftp mimsy Connected to mimsy.umd.edu. 220 mimsy.umd.edu FTP server (...) ready. Name (mimsy:chris): anonymous Password (mimsy:anonymous): asdf 331 Guest login ok, send ident as password. 230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply. ftp> bin 200 Type set to I. ftp> get tex/mctex.beta.tar.Z mctex.beta.tar.Z 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening data connection for tex/mctex.beta.tar.Z (128.8.128.2,1125) (268345 bytes). Please limit FTP access to non-prime-time hours (any time after 1800 and before 0800 Eastern). Send any bug reports directly to me. In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163) Domain: chris@mimsy.umd.edu Path: uunet!mimsy!chris -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 24 Aug 89 12:55:14 -0400 From: Chris Torek Subject: Re: Explicitly terminating control string names Keywords: control string names In TeXhax Digest V89 #75, Bernie Cosell writes: >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; Correct so far. (Actually, the `\ ') invokes the `\ ' macro.) >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 Hardly risky: \^^M in both Plain TeX and LaTeX (and, presumably, any sane TeX macro package) has been \let equal to `\ ', so these act identically. (You can even type `\ ', or `\', etc.) >[and then you need to do a *different* thing, As I said, not anywhere sane. >Also, global replaces are near-impossible [trying figuring >out how to change "Digital Equipment Corporation" to "\dec"!]. See below. >ANYHOW... all that said, the 'solution' is fairly obvious: what _I_ think >that TeX needs is a character to *explicitly* terminate a command name. There are a number of ways to acheive this, all explained early on in _The_TeXbook_. One is to \def the command so that it includes a terminator: \let\oldTeX=\TeX \def\TeX/{\oldTeX} and then you type `In \TeX/, macros like the one used to produce the \TeX/ logo can be defined to look like this: \verb|\TeX/|.' This can only be done by defining all macros anew, and is distasteful to many `TeXsperts' anyway. (It uses more of TeX's memory, for instance.) Two much simpler tricks are to use {\TeX} or \TeX{} everywhere. The former works fine for text-generating commands, but not for commands that make local changes (since the changes get undone by the closing brace), so the latter is generally preferable. In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163) Domain: chris@mimsy.umd.edu Path: uunet!mimsy!chris ----------------------------------------------------------------------- %%% 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 ************************** -------