TeXhax Digest Tuesday, April 21, 1987 Volume 87 : Issue 30 TEXHAX30.87 Editor: Malcolm Brown Today's Topics: Documentation for earlier form letter submission. Symolics Lisp TeX latex letter closing VAX/VMS PXL Files John Pavel's message DVI family update #7 -- Version 2.07 announcement Re: TeX vs. Mac :-) TUGboat LaTeX notes variable number of parameters to macros MakeIndex: An Index Processor TeX: alignment question ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 16-Apr-87 17:36:33-PDT,12454;000000000000 Date: Thu, 16 Apr 87 17:37:57 PST From: To: texhax@score.stanford.edu Subject: Documentation for earlier form letter submission. Well, after receiving numerous responses regarding my form letter format for (need I reiterate) PLAIN TeX, I realized that I provided no way for people to guess what the correct format for the letter file(s) and/or address file(s) are. I am sending on a text version of our local guide as to the usage. Unfortunately, since it uses a format that I developed here for producing TeXnical Memoranda, I am unable to send a TeXable version. Also, the examples refer to DCL (VAX/VMS) commands---users of other operating systems forgive me. I am certain that the file is too big to post in TeXhax, so hopefully it will be archived along with the macro files sent earlier. Ed Bell Dept. of Physics and Astronomy University of Kansas Bitnet: BELL@UKANVAX SPAN: KUPHSX::BELL (7.220) %% Ed's file is too long for the digest. It is stored at Score under %% the name %% BELL.TXH %% and a copy has been forwarded to TEX-L for those on BITNET. Malcolm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Apr 87 14:26 PST From: "Don Hosek, Editor, TeXMaG" Subject: Symolics Lisp TeX To: NEBEL@DB0TUI11, BNB@MIT-XX.ARPA, TeXHAX@Score.STANFORD.EDU TeX for the Symbolics Lisp machines is available from Art Flatau. His standard blurb: The cost for making a tape of the Symbolics verion of TeX is $500 for making a tape that contains TeX, which includes IniTeX, LaTeX and PlainTeX. This does NOT include TeX input files (e.g. for LaTeX, art10.doc, art10.sty, etc..). It also does not include font files that are necessary. The files are the same as the standard TeX distribution tape files. This includes $20 for a cassette tape. (Sales tax of 7.25% is charged on the cassette tape for tape shipped in the state of Texas, i.e., an additional $1.45). An additional $100 for writing the files for the common lisp to pascal translator on to the tape. This includes all the files necessary to translate TeX, including the version of Tangle for the Symbolics. The address is: Arthur Flatau Associates 1300 West Lynn, Suite 200 Austin Texas, 78703 ---------- I don't know anything about whether his port is copyrighted or restricted or any of that sort of thing, so I can't help much with that. As for device drivers, there are apparently a few floating around for IMAGEN printers--the details I have are sketchy at the moment, but I'm working on tracking them down. I have some information on a program called dvi-stream for the symbolics which Chris Lindblad at MIT has offered to distribute as long as he isn't swamped with orders... It uses the Symbolics Generic hardcopy interface as a back end, o it will work with any printer that hasa back end written for it . It has been tested with more printers than I want to type on a terminal with a emi-broken s key,.. To get a copy send a tape with a postage pre-paid mailer to hip itback in to: Chris Lindblad MIT AI Laboratory Room 733 545 Technology Square Cambridge MA 12138 (USA) I hope that this information is useful, -Don Hosek ------------------------------ Mail-From: BEETON created at 18-Apr-87 12:42:37 Date: Sat 18 Apr 87 12:42:37-PDT From: Barbara Beeton Subject: latex letter closing To: djones@rocky.Stanford.EDU the default letter.sty distributed with latex does some checking when it processes \closing . if there was no return address, the closing material will be set flush left; if a return address is present, the closing material will be indented to about half the text width. i don't know why it's set up that way, but i checked the macros, and also tried it out to be sure. insert an \address{...} at the top, and you'll get the date moved to the right as well as the closing matter. -- barbara beeton ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Apr 87 13:31:44 PST From: dual!dbi!stan@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU To: dual!Score.Stanford.EDU!TeXhax Subject: VAX/VMS PXL Files It is not hard to create a batch command file to convert all of the files. When done in pieces, the conversion can be done in much less than a week. The C.S. Dept. at SFSU has converted all of the GF files to PXL format for use with Flavio Rose's dvi2ln03 program. If you want to save yourself the trouble of doing the conversion, send a 2400' tape and $15.00 to cover the cost of return postage. Send your request to: ACM Student Chapter, Computer Science, SFSU, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132. This make 4 weeks to turn around, the end of the semester is aproaching and the students have projects and finals on their minds. Stan Osborne, uucp: ...!ucbvax!dual!dbi!stan ------------------------------ To: texhax@score.stanford.edu Subject: John Pavel's message Date: Mon, 20 Apr 87 04:54:38 -0500 From: Ken Yap John Pavel's message seems to have been the victim of a nasty gateway that snips lines at column 72. I think I have put it back together OK. Here is a replacement shar file. Ken %% John has actually contributed two files. Ken refers to the second one. %% To straighten all this out, John's files have been renamed %% pavel1.txh and pavel2.txh %% on the Score machine. %% Ken's fix has been appended to the John's original mailing (that is %% "pavel2.txh". As usual, the files are available for FTPing from %% Score, and a copy of the new pavel2.txh has been sent on to TEX-L %% for those on BITNET. Malcolm ------------------------------ Date: Mon 20 Apr 87 18:08:48-MST From: "Nelson H.F. Beebe" Subject: DVI family update #7 -- Version 2.07 announcement To: beebe@SCIENCE.UTAH.EDU I have completed today Version 2.07 of my DVI driver family, and updated all the source directories on SCIENCE.UTAH.EDU. Although this version supports one new device, and enhances the support for another, it does not provide any substantial change for users, so sites which have already received Version 2.06 should not feel compelled to do an immediate upgrade. The major changes are as follows: * support for the KCC-20 compiler on TOPS-20; * addition of a driver, DVIL75, for the DEC LA75 printer (thanks to John Sauter for this); * substantially enhanced BBN BitGraph driver: ** instant keyboard response during screen update to support rapid screen repositioning and document skimming ** large characters now sent as downloaded fonts instead of being sent as raster bitmaps ** zoom up and down in magnification ** coarse and fine control of screen positioning ** now works with both white and black backgrounds ** character overwrite at right margin no longer happens (appears to be a BitGraph internal bug) * addition of a public-domain version of the Unix Version 7 MAKE utility which supports six (yes, 6) different operating systems (sources on APS:), and Makefile's now used for building the driver family on all supported machines; * updated, extended, and INDEXED installer's manual (dvidriver.*) (95 pages) * dvijep (HP LaserJet Plus) now handles characters too large to be sent as downloaded fonts * BSD 4.1 core-dump-at-exit bug fixed (the bug was in BSD, NOT the drivers) If you wish to retrieve these via Internet ANONYMOUS FTP, get the file 00README.TXT first; it tells where to find everything else. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Apr 87 22:07:53 CDT From: Glenn L Vanderburg Subject: Re: TeX vs. Mac :-) To: TeXhax digest Boy, I've just got to reply to this one! My answer to Paul Davis' question, ``Why don't we have a WYSIWYG TeX instead of a postprocessor?'' (<--paraphrase) is as follows: God forbid! Let me try to explain. Yes, TeX is a better typesetter than Pagemaker will ever be, even if Pagemaker and such systems used the same linebreaking algorithms, etc. as TeX does, simply because it's *not* WYSIWYG (In my humble opinion). Here's why. I'll quote directly from page 7 of ``LaTeX'', since Leslie Lamport has already said it so well. ``Visual design systems have been characterized as `what you see is all you've got'. Once you have typed the document, changing the format is a laborious process. If you decide that equations should be numbered with roman instead of arabic numerals, you must change each equation number individually; a visual design system regards an equation number as just a number that happens to appear at the right margin, not as a logical structure.'' (Lamport attributes the ``what you see is all you've got'' quote to Brian Reid and/or Brian Kernighan.) Section 1.4 of ``LaTeX: A Document Preparation System'' should be required reading for all TeX users, and probably for everyone who uses computers for document preparation. In addition to what I quoted above, Lamport lists other reasons to use a system like TeX (a `logical design' system) instead of a WYSIWYG system. To summarize: o Logical design encourages sound typography, while visual design discourages it. o Logical design encourages better writing by encouraging the author to think about the logical structure of the document. o Logical design is more flexible than visual design because it deals with parts of a document as logical units. I do not consider TeX's interface terrible; in fact, I hate mice and menus rather fervently. (But then, I prefer Plain TeX to LaTeX, so what do I know?) Fine typography is a difficult craft, and it will never be easy, any more than playing a violin will be. TeX is an attempt to remove certain unnecessary obstacles (such as the need for special equipment) and to put the typesetting in the hands of the author. It is an attempt to simplify the editing and revision of documents. It never claims (that I know of) to make things easy. One of the main reasons it was written was that professional typesetters were doing things the easy way, and getting poor results. On a friendlier note, Paul, would you care to tell us more about using those other fonts in math mode? ;-) Best Regards, Glenn L. Vanderburg ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Apr 87 10:35:52 est From: cjb@eecs.umich.edu (Christopher J. Bmrn) To: TeXhax@score.stanford.edu Subject: TUGboat How does one join and/or get on the mailing list to receive the TUGboat newsletter? -cjb %% You just got on the TeXhax list. As to TUG, see Appendix J in the %% TeXbook -- it's got the info you want. Malcolm ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Apr 87 10:10:05 PDT From: lamport@src.DEC.COM (Leslie Lamport) To: TeXhax@Score.Stanford.edu Subject: LaTeX notes Piet van Oostrum observes The use of \{ and \} in math mode in a caption command gives an errormessage in the \listofigures. This probably means that these are (more or less) fragile. If so, this is not according to the LaTeX book. These commands will be corrected. Kamal Al-Yahya complains: I believe someone mentioned this (bug?) before. The following caption produces an error: \caption{The result of scaling the data in Figure~\protect\ref{mylabel}.......} The first pass of latex runs fine. When it comes to the second pass, it bombs out if a list of figures is requested ( .lof file). This works fine when I try it. LATEX.BUG reveals that a bug that could cause this was corrected in July 1984. I hope no one is using a version of LaTeX that old. I suspect that there is some other problem in the input file. It is most helpful if bug reports could include a SHORT complete input file that exhibits the bug. David Jones writes about a problem with aligning vectors and matrices. It's impossible to answer such a vague question. A SHORT example indicating the desired output and what was tried would be helpful. Joseph I. Pallas answered his second question in V87 #29. Jonathan_Thornburg%UBC.MAILNET@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA thinks that making \\ a terminator instead of a separator would make LaTeX easier to use. I suspect that if it were a terminator, I would get many more complaints from users who keep forgetting the final \\. Making it optional would be nice, but impractical. In any event, his remark Since plain TeX treats \cr as a terminator, the problem should be doable without too much surgery on LaTeX's guts. betrays a naivete about the difficulty of writing TeX macros. I suggest that he go through the file LATEX.TEX and see how many different ways \\ is defined (depending upon the context) in order to present the uniform semantics seen by the LaTeX user. Leslie Lamport ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Apr 1987 13:57 PST From: AGTLEJS%CALSTATE.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu Subject: variable number of parameters to macros To: TeXhax@score.stanford.edu Is there any way to define a macro, \length, that counts the number of parameters passed to it? \def\length#1#2\terminator{% \define\temp{#1}% \ifx\temp\empty \global\globalvar=0% \else \length#2{}\terminator\global\advance\globalvar by 1% \fi } The parameters must be delimited by {braces}, but the case of one parameter: \length{one only}\terminator and 0 parameters \length\terminator don't work. I am doing item enumeration of a variable number of items and I want TeX to be able to figure out the number of items and automatically put some enumeration text: (a) text............ ................ (b) text........ (c) text............ ................ ......... My source would look like: \beginitem{ aitem}{% {text for first item}% {text for second item}% {text for nth item}% \enditem% and determine the longest length of '(a)' or '(b)' or '(c)' so that I need not place hard dimensions within the TeX source. Please respond via e-mail, as I am not certain whether my request to TeXhax-request has been processed yet. Thank you, Ed Skochinski BITNet: AGTLEJS@CALSTATE.BITNET ARPA: AGTLEJS%CALSTATE.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Apr 87 14:42:46 PDT From: vortex@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (The VorTeX Distribution) To: TeXhax@score.stanford.edu Subject: MakeIndex: An Index Processor We now have a general purpose index processor in our Berkeley VorTeX distribution. This program transforms raw index entries generated by the formatter to an alphabetized version. It is largely independent of the formatter and the format being used, although the default is LaTeX. Input/output formatsd can be customized through a simple style specification facility. Other major features include entry permutation, page merging, multi-level indexing, cross referencing, sort/actual key separation, page encapsulation (setting page numbers in different fonts). Five types of page numbers (arabic, lowercase/uppercase roman, and lowercase/uppercase alphabetic) are supported; their precedence is customizable. Also supported is composite page numbering which allows a page number to be any combination of the five page types (e.g. II-4). It is a C program developed under UNIX. Adapting it to other operating systems should be straightforward. A documentation written by Leslie Lamport on indexing in LaTeX is included (Leslie contributed the initial design specification). A man page is also available which gives details about customizing the system to work with different styles. We also have an index placing subsystem implemented on top of GNU Emacs as part of our TeX-mode environment. Placing index commands in the document source is a task that has been performed traditionally in an ad hoc fashion. It is often tedious and time-consuming. This facility offers a systematic and efficient approach to this effort. Please send mail to dist-vortex@ucbarpa.edu for more information. ------------------------------ Date: 21 Apr 87 1510 PDT From: Phyllis Winkler Subject: TeX: alignment question To: texhax@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU %% Although addressed to Don Knuth, this inquiry has been forwarded to %% TeXhax by Phyllis Winkler, Don' secretary 21-Apr-87 1506 darrell%beowulf@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu TeX: alignment questionDate: Tue, 21 Apr 87 15:06:13 pst From: darrell%beowulf@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu (Darrell Long) Message-Id: <8704212306.AA11717@beowulf.UCSD.EDU> Organization: UCSD Ministry of Silly Walks Beowulf-Mathelode: "Wyrd oft nereth unfaegne eorl, thonne his ellen deah." To: dek@sail.stanford.edu Subject: TeX: alignment question Prof. Knuth -- I have a question about alignment. I want to have a centered line with a right-justified line below it whose right boundry is that of the centered line. Make sense? Here's an Example: Tout est pour le mieux, dans le meilleur des mondes possibles. --- Dr. Pangloss (Voltaire) I've looked but I cannot find an easy or flexible way to do it. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks, DL Darrell Long Department of Computer Science and Engineering, C-014 University of California, San Diego La Jolla, California 92093 ARPA: Darrell@Beowulf.UCSD.EDU UUCP: sdcsvax!beowulf!darrell %%% %%% subscriptions, address changes to: texhax-request@score.stanford.edu %%% %%% submissions to: texhax@score.stanford.edu %%% %%% \bye %%% ------------------------------