TeXhax Digest Tuesday, May 19, 1987 Volume 87 : Issue 37 [SCORE.STANFORD.EDU]TEXHAX37.87 Editor: Malcolm Brown Today's Topics: Journal/Proceedings Articles Help with METAFONT with Canon CX8 printer Re: Latex comment facilities upside down and mirrored 'e' TeX courses Quotation alignment Re: Quotation alignment Some thoughts on typefaces. Round off errors in font magnifications Hebrew Fonts ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 11-May-87 09:37:54-PDT,2563;000000000000 Date: Sun, 10 May 87 15:08:12 PDT From: To: texhax@score.stanford.edu Subject: Journal/Proceedings Articles Date: Sun, 10 May 87 15:05 MST From: Subject: Journal/Proceedings Articles To: texhax@score.stanford.edu X-Original-To: texhax@score.stanford.edu, JMS I have followed with interest some of the discussions on this list regarding style sheets and formats in TeX and LaTeX. From the perspective of an editor of a Journal, let me provide some feedback. First, it is important to note that none of what I say applies to book publishing. Journal editors are interested in having all of the articles in the same style. Very few editors have time (or inclination) to decide what that style is, or even care very much. The important part is *consistency*. Thus, particularly in a field where we cannot afford to send out articles to be re-typeset, one takes what one can get. The question of oversize sheets vs. normal-size copy (often called 100% copy) is mostly historical. Most journals/proceedings were printed from copy submitted by the author typed on an IBM Selectric. In order to make maximum use of expensive pages, and provide a more readable book, authors typed their articles on 120% (or larger) paper which was photo reduced to get a better image. Now, with most 300 dpi printers able to print in the "reduced" type-size which would have resulted from the photoreduction, the differences are quite small -- so small that most people wouldn't notice (consider -- content is more important than form, supposedly). In fact, as an editor, I would prefer to get papers in 100% format since (1) it costs me less money to print them (there is a per-page charge for the reduction) and (2) I can handle them and mail them around more easily. If you are preparing an article for a journal and want to do it in 100% format (with an appropriate style sheet), don't be put off by the large paper which has been sent to you -- call the editor/publisher and ask if they'll take it at 100%. You may be surprised by the enthusiasm of the answer (after all, I'd rather have 100% TeX than 120% IBM Selectric). Joel Snyder Editor, Proceedings of the Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society jms@arizmis.bitnet ------------------------------ From: Ian Kemmish Date: Fri, 8 May 87 20:27:37 GMT To: TeXhax@score.stanford.edu Subject: Help with METAFONT with Canon CX8 printer Does anyone have a *proven* set of values for the METAFONT parameters blacker, fillin & o_correction for the Canon CX8 printer? I'm currently trying to design a metafount (Monotype Times-ish) AND figure out these values simultaneously, which is not the easiest thing in the world. As of this morning, my best estimate (based on experiments with small point sizes, as a previous poster suggested) gives blacker := somewhere around -0.2 to -0.15. This worries me a little, as none of the examples I've seen have negative values of blacker. On the other hand, it does fit in with our other experiences with this printer (small dots spread out slightly). So who knows? I'm hoping one of you does!! ------------------------------ Date: 11-MAY-1987 17:12:50 From: ABBOTTP%UK.AC.ASTON.MAIL%UK.AC.RL.GB@ac.uk To: TEXHAX@score.stanford.edu Aston University - Electronic Mail Date: 11-May-1987 17:09 BST From: Peter Abbott ABBOTTP@UK.AC.ASTON.MAIL Dept: Computing Service Tel No: 021 359 5492 -direct TO: Remote Addressee ( _POST TEXHAX%SCORE.STANFORD.EDU@RL.E Subject: Information request LaTeX and contents pages Having at last sort all the problems of getting the digests delivered I should like to thank those who responded to my query for a DVI2PS for VAX VMS. It is up and running alongside the LN03 version. When using LaTeX on the IBM PC or the VAX the table of contents is spaced out with article style. Leslie Lamports book format for the table of contents has a more pleasing appearance in general. It is possible to add protected commands to the toc file with negative space but this seems unecessarily longwinded. Can anyone tell me how to produce the same effect when using article style. Peter Computing Service Tel Bham (021) 359 5492 - direct line Aston University (021) 359 3611 - ext 4245 Aston Triangle +44-21-359-5492 Birmingham B4 7ET +44-21-359-3611 - ext 4245 U.K. Telex 338425 ASTUCC G (automatic no operator) JANET abbottp@uk.ac.aston.mail ARPA abbottp@mail.aston.ac.uk UUCP ...!ukc!aston!abbottp BITNET abbottp%uk.ac.aston.mail@ac.uk ------------------------------ From: riedl@purdue.edu To: texhax@score.stanford.edu Subject: Re: Latex comment facilities In-Reply-To: Your message of Fri, 01 May 87 13:57:00 D. Date: Mon, 11 May 87 17:35:41 EST Probably a scoping comment could be defined with a \begin{comment} ... \end{comment} sequence, but I find the following TeX definition just as easy to use: \long\def\comment#1{} Then long comments look like \comment { ... ... possibly lots of text ... } If you don't put long comments in places like macro arguments it would be good style to precede the definition with \outer. Note that this solution is poor for extremely long comments since TeX will have to remember the entire text of the comment as an argument before it discovers that it is to be discarded. Happy TeXing, John Riedl {ucbvax,decvax,hplabs}!purdue!riedl -or- riedl@mordred.cs.purdue.edu ------------------------------ To: texhax@score.stanford.edu Subject: upside down and mirrored 'e' Date: Mon, 11 May 87 16:36:10 -0700 From: Rick L. Spickelmier I would like to use the pronunciation symbol schwa. It is represented as an upside down and mirrored 'e'. I can not find a way to do this in either the TeX or LaTeX books. Have I missed something? Is it possible to do? Thanks, Rick Spickelmier (ricks@shambhala.berkeley.edu) UC Berkeley ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 May 87 11:15:56 PDT From: Kent_Wada%UBC.MAILNET@MIT-Multics.ARPA To: texhax@score.stanford.edu Subject: TeX courses Could someone tell me where I can get information on the TeX programming courses that will be taught this year? -Kent ARPA: kent_wada%ubcmtsg.bitnet%ubc@relay.cs.net BITNET: kent_wada@ubcmtsg UUCP: ...{ihnp4!alberta,seismo}!ubc-vision!ubcmtsg.bitnet!kent_wada ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 May 87 18:02:40 pdt From: darrell%beowulf@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu (Darrell Long) To: texhax@score.stanford.edu Subject: Quotation alignment This concerns the question I posted a few weeks ago about aligning the author of a quotation below the centered text. I got many replies for which I am grateful. However, none of them work quite right. Sometimes the author is just a wee bit too far right (about the width of the letter 'n'). Here's the most concise (non LaTeX -- I have my reasons) solution that I got: \def\quotation #1#2{{ \tabskip = 0pt plus 1fil \halign to \hsize{ \hfil##\cr #1\cr #2\cr } }} Here's an example of text that just doesn't work right -- \quotation{ {\sl He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.}} {-- Doctor Johnson} Could it be because of \sl ? Italic correction \/ doesn't seem like the right thing to do. Any sage advice? DL ------------------------------ Mail-From: BEETON created at 11-May-87 19:27:44 Date: Mon 11 May 87 19:27:43-PDT From: Barbara Beeton Subject: Re: Quotation alignment To: darrell%beowulf@SDCSVAX.UCSD.EDU In-Reply-To: <8705120102.AA10035@beowulf.UCSD.EDU> in the quote you cite the first line ends with a period, and the second with a letter n: ... a man. ... Johnson you may just be getting an optical effect from the presence of a solid letter below a period. if you'd really rather have the period hang out over the end, and the last actual letter of the quote line up with the last letter of the author, you might try putting \phantom{.} at the end of the author's name. a kludge, admittedly, but ... (take a look at page 11 of the texbook, where there are a couple of instances of mid-paragraph line-ending commas and periods, to see the effect i'm talking about.) -- bb ------------------------------ Date: 12-MAY-1987 12:33:20 From: ABBOTTP%UK.AC.ASTON.MAIL%UK.AC.RL.GB@ac.uk To: TEXHAX@score.stanford.edu Aston University - Electronic Mail Date: 12-May-1987 12:22 BST From: Peter Abbott ABBOTTP@UK.AC.ASTON.MAIL Dept: Computing Service Tel No: 021 359 5492 -direct TO: Remote Addressee ( _POST TEXHAX%SCORE.STANFORD.EDU@RL.E Subject: LaTeX,Tabular and Tabbing I have read somewhere that macros are available to enable TABULAR to spilt over pages. Can anyone let me know where the macros are held. Using LaTeX I can achieve the desired result of splitting over pages by using the parbox in tabbing for flowing text. This means that right justification of values (e.g 2.46) is more cumbersome. The spacing however is not consistent and the last line in the parbox is printed to close to the next printed line. It is possible to insert a \\ [..] to insert additional spacing but the appearance of the printed material is clumsy. It appears that baseline skip in parbox is at variance with the baseline skip in the remainder of the tabbed environment. I want to achieve the same spacing throughout. Peter Computing Service Aston University Aston Triangle Birmingham B4 7ET U.K. JANET abbottp@uk.ac.aston.mail ARPA abbottp@mail.aston.ac.uk UUCP ...!ukc!aston!abbottp BITNET abbottp%uk.ac.aston.mail@ac.uk ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 May 87 09:07:22 EDT From: Karl Berry To: texhax@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU Subject: Some thoughts on typefaces. To people who want other faces besides Computer Modern (and rightfully so, one face is never enough): hire a designer to create a face. Buy Lucida, from Bigelow & Holmes, which is one of the first (but certainly not the last) face specifically designed for digital type. Try to make your own. It is ironic that the demand for more and better digital typefaces is so great. Ironic, because that very demand pushes companies like Adobe and Bitstream into producing more and more designs, faster and faster. The ``better'' part is reduced, as far as I can tell, refining their algorithms to scan convert outlines. Hand-editing has gone the way of the dodo bird, in the face of the commercial pressure. It is my opinion that outlines don't hold enough information to give truly superior results, no matter how good your scan conversion is. One major problem is that outlines are analog, in a sense -- they have to be converted to a specific pixel grid. This gives them device independence, an enormous commercial advantage, but the outlines won't adapt very well to any *particular* grid. I've spent the last four months developing (with a colleague), twelve letters of a Greek typeface, for a specific printer, starting from scratch. It may not be commercially viable in today's market to take a year to develop one set of characters for one printer, but the difference in quality from a scan converted outline is noticeable. I think that the people at Adobe and Bitstream would be all too happy to have time to make fewer faces better. It's just not possible. Incidentally, to those people who think Computer Modern is badly designed: you don't know what you're talking about. You may not agree with its design decisions, you may not want that particular look for your paper, but those are opinions on its uses. As a typeface, it is coherent, crisp, and the fact that it is generated by meta-programs is phenomenal. On an unrelated note, I have written a small TeX file that produces somewhat different proofs of characters than `mode = proof'. It reads GFtype output, and produces a blown-up bitmap of the character, a rough estimate of the gray of the character, and the character itself. (I did this initially to see what the curves in Knuth's characters looked like; I'm still trying to figure out a way to blow up built in PostScript characters.) You may also enjoy the tricks with TeX in it. If you're interested, drop me a line. Karl Berry. kbb@cs.brown.edu {decvax,ihnp4,allegra,...}!brunix!kbb ------------------------------ Date: Tue 12 May 87 10:24:31-EDT From: John Gourlay Subject: Round off errors in font magnifications To: i5f@l.cc.purdue.edu, texhax@score.stanford.edu Stephan, In my Xerox 2700 driver I solve the problem of some font magnifications being off by one by rounding the magnifications to the nearest magstephalf. It's probably overkill, but I use the formula b^{\round\log_b m}, where b=\sqrt{1.2}, and m is the ideal magnification. One should probably check first to see if the ideal magnification exists before rounding, but I don't do that because in my installation it would usually require looking across a network at another machine. John Gourlay gourlay@ohio-state.arpa cbosgd!osu-eddie!gourlay (614) 422-6653 ------------------------------ Date: 12-May-1987 To: From: Subject: Hebrew Fonts Does anyone know how to get hebrew fonts ? Juergen ------------------------------ %%% %%% subscriptions, address changes to: texhax-request@score.stanford.edu %%% %%% submissions to: texhax@score.stanford.edu %%% %%%\bye %%% End of TeXhax Digest **************************