summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/info/digests/tex-mag/v1.n5
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorNorbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>2019-09-02 13:46:59 +0900
committerNorbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>2019-09-02 13:46:59 +0900
commite0c6872cf40896c7be36b11dcc744620f10adf1d (patch)
tree60335e10d2f4354b0674ec22d7b53f0f8abee672 /info/digests/tex-mag/v1.n5
Initial commit
Diffstat (limited to 'info/digests/tex-mag/v1.n5')
-rw-r--r--info/digests/tex-mag/v1.n5418
1 files changed, 418 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/info/digests/tex-mag/v1.n5 b/info/digests/tex-mag/v1.n5
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..d4f0373cdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/info/digests/tex-mag/v1.n5
@@ -0,0 +1,418 @@
+*******************************************************************************
+* *
+* TTTTTTT X X M M GGGGGG A Mostly Unofficial *
+* T X X MM MM G Publication for Users *
+* T EEEEEEE XXX M M M M A G GG Of the TeX Computer *
+* T E X X M M M A A G G Typesetting System. *
+* T EEEE X X M M M AAAAA GGGGGG *
+* E A A Volume 1, Number 5 *
+* EEEEEEE A A Distribution: 365 or so... *
+* *
+*******************************************************************************
+
+ June 25, 1987
+
+ Contents:
+ footnote............................................................1
+ Letters to the Editor................................................2
+ How to write an article for TeXMaG...................................3
+ Call for standardization of DVI specials............................4
+ The Toolbox..........................................................5
+
+
+
+
+
+__1
+ footnote{One embarrassing moment later}
+
+ As most of you probably already realize, I just had the joy of re-
+ mailing the entire past of TeXMaG when I discovered much to my chagrin
+ that the previous issues of TeXMaG where not being sent to the
+ non-BITNET subscribers, due to a bug (feature?) of LISTSERV. Now
+ that I have solved that problem, I have suddenly received vast amounts
+ of feedback from all of the non-BITNET people. (It's kind of nice to
+ suddenly have half your readership get something to read). The few
+ comments I had about the old formatting of TeXMaG were joined by a
+ resounding chorus of agreement; I guess there are a lot of people who
+ appreciate shorter lines and larger margins.
+
+ TeXMaG will continue to be sent out as a mail file from now on since
+ that seems to be the only way to reach most of the subscribers. Also,
+ the poor soul whose system couldn't decode NETDATA files will get
+ readable copies now.
+
+ This issue is a bit low in content, I realize (that's what I get for
+ getting a job where you actually have to *do* thins periodically), but
+ hopefully between the plea for articles and any inspiration that I may
+ get in the next month or so, I should have a good V1N6.
+
+ Enjoy!
+
+ -Don Hosek <DHOSEK@HMCVAX.BITNET> (or <U12921@UICVM.BITNET> for the
+ summer)
+
+
+
+
+
+__2
+ **Letters**
+
+ From: Carol Weintraub <MAWEINTR@WEIZMANN>
+ Subject: Tex on the MacIntosh
+ To: dhosek@hmcvax.bitnet
+
+ Dear Editor,
+
+ I would like to know if there is anybody out there using TeX on the
+ MacIntosh?? I have seen a *preliminary* version of TeXtures run on a
+ MacPlus, but I would like to know if there is a *full* version of TeX
+ (V.2 with *all* the CM fonts) running somewhere, preferably on a
+ MacIntosh II. We are contemplating purchasing either the MacIntosh II
+ or we have just heard of a new system ``The Publisher'' from ArborTex
+ which interacts with TeX on a Sun Workstation.
+
+ If anybody could advise us on either of these two systems/machines
+ please write to:
+
+ Carol Weintraub,
+ Technical Secretary,
+ Dept. of Applied Math. & Computer Science
+ The Weizmann Institute of Science
+ Rehovot, 76100 Israel
+
+ Bitnet: maweintr@weizmann
+
+ Thank you very much!
+ Carol
+ ======================================================================
+ Date: Thu, 14-MAY-1987 09:18 EDT
+ From: Richard S. Holmes <RICH@SUHEP>
+ Subject: improved \split
+ To: u12921@uicvm
+
+ I tried out Eric Skinner's \split macro and, lazy bum that I am,
+ rather than typing in two paragraphs for it to split, I typed in one
+ and duplicated it. Lo, I got an overfull \vbox. Apparently this is
+ the consequence of trying to \split two paragraphs of the same size.
+ Anyway, a simple modification of the conditional in \xsplit cured it.
+
+ Rich Holmes
+ rich@suhep.bitnet
+
+%%%------------------------rrrrrrrrrrrrrrip!--------------------------
+% Macro: \xsplit
+% By: Eric Skinner <ERS2F@UOTTAWA>
+% Function: Takes two pieces of text, and boxes them side by side.
+% Column widths and inter-column gap are set by user.
+% Parameters:
+% #1: Width of first column, including unit specification
+% #2: Width of space between columns, including units
+% #3: Width of second column, including units
+% ** Warning: Don't exceed page dimensions!
+% #4: First column text.
+% #5: Second column text.
+% Registers: \box1,\box2
+\def\xsplit#1#2#3#4#5{{
+ \setbox1=\vbox{\hsize= #1 #4} % First column
+ \setbox2=\vbox{\hsize= #3 #5} % Second column
+ % If the boxes are output side by side at this point, they
+ % will be aligned at the bottom instead of the top.
+ \ifdim\ht2>\ht1 % Column two is longer than column one
+ % Fill bottom of column one with glue
+ \setbox1=\vbox to \ht2{\hsize= #1 #4 \vfill}
+ \else
+ \ifdim\ht1>\ht2 % Column one is longer than column two
+ % Fill bottom of column two with glue
+ \setbox2=\vbox to \ht1{\hsize= #3 #5 \vfill}
+ \fi
+ \fi
+ \hbox{\box1\hskip#2\box2}}}
+%%%------Cut some more------------------------------------------------
+% Macro: \split
+% By: Eric Skinner <ERS2F@UOTTAWA>
+% Function: Takes two pieces of text, and boxes them side by side.
+% Column widths are set by user. Inter-column gap is
+% automatically adjusted to make the first column flush
+% with the left margin, and the second flush with the right.
+% Parameters:
+% #1: Width of first column, including unit specification
+% #2: Width of second column, including units
+% ** Sum of #1 and #2 should not exceed current \hsize!
+% #3: First column text. Don't do anything REALLY weird.
+% #4: Second column text.
+% Registers: \dimen1
+\def\split#1#2#3#4{
+ \dimen1=\hsize
+ \advance\dimen1 by -#1
+ \advance\dimen1 by -#2
+ \xsplit{#1}{\dimen1}{#2}{#3}{#4}}
+%%%------------Tear----------------------------------------------------
+ When submitting a letter, please indicate somewhere in the note
+ that it is for the letters column.
+
+
+
+
+
+__3
+ *How to write an article for TeXMaG*
+ By Don Hosek
+
+ At the risk of harping on the same old chord over and over again, I
+ decided that I would write a TeXMaG article outlining what it takes
+ to write an article for TeXMaG. (not much)
+
+ The first, and most obvious requirement is to have an idea. (Many
+ articles reach publication without containing a single idea, but I
+ like to think I have standards.) Your idea doesn't need to be the
+ greatest idea known to mankind (look what I've been filling TeXMaG
+ with so far!). Perhaps you wrote an interesting macro, or finally
+ feel you understand how to use an intriguing feature of TeX; both of
+ these would make great articles for TeXMaG.
+
+ Another idea would be to write about any interesting applications of
+ TeX that you may have; while TeX was originally designed for type-
+ setting technical papers, it is being used widely for many non-tech-
+ nical uses (nearly half of the papers typed in TeX at Harvey Mudd are
+ papers for humanities classes; the Harvey Mudd newspaper is typeset
+ with TeX). If you use TeX for something other than technical papers,
+ what sort of problems did you encounter? How did you deal with them?
+ Were there any problems that left you clueless?
+
+ Do you know anything about Metafont? Few people do, although many
+ would like to learn more. Why not write an article about some aspect
+ of Metafont? It doesn't have to cover the entire depth of The Meta-
+ fontBook; perhaps you could explain how you avoided the strange
+ that cropped up when you tried to generate cmr8 at 100dpi.
+
+ What about your device driver? Is it developed locally? Does it work?
+ Is there something that you're sure your printer can do but your
+ device driver can't? Why not write a review of the capabilities of
+ your driver, or a wish list of what you'd like to be able to do on
+ your Acme 2000 using TeX.
+
+ Are you running TeX on an unusual installation? (A Cray or Apple II,
+ for example) Did somebody else port it or was it done locally. Why
+ not share your views on using TeX on an odd machine. What limitations
+ do you encounter?
+
+ Is your operating system conducive to TeX? How does EBCDIC affect your
+ TeXing? (EBCDIC makes TeX on our 3081 a bit imperfect, to say the
+ least)
+
+ I suppose this is enough diatribe for one issue. If you have an idea
+ for an article, feel free to write it; if you aren't sure if its
+ suitable for publication, I'll do my best to convince you. :-)
+
+
+
+
+
+__4
+ Call for standardization of DVI specials
+ By Don Hosek
+
+ As TeX develops into its maturity, the need for standardization in
+ other aspects of TeXware is becoming apparent. Perhaps the most
+ important goal for standardization lies in DVI-driver \special's.
+
+ I have discussed this matter with Thomas Reid (TeXrox), and a few
+ preliminary ideas were given. However, to propose a standard to be
+ submitted to the TeX community at large implies that input from
+ the TeX community was solicited. It is to this end that I am writing
+ this article. There are many aspects of the grammar of \special's
+ that need to be solidified. Some of these are:
+
+ o Device Dependancy.
+ ArborText has apparently done some work on this to date (my
+ conjecture on this is based on information from the DVIXER User
+ Manual); their suggestion is to begin a device dependant \special
+ with a three letter tag concluded with a colon to indicate that the
+ \special command is for that particular output device only. For
+ example, a \special that is Xerox 9700-specific would begin with XER:.
+ If this convention is to be adopted, then codes will need to be
+ designated for each TeX output device. However, care should be taken
+ to make \special's device-dependant only when necessary. DVI-drivers
+ should be written to ignore unknown \special commands.
+
+ o \special Naming.
+ This is perhaps the central problem of \special standardization. What
+ should the command to print sideways on the page be called? DVIQMS
+ from Texas A&M uses the command landscape(); Thomas Reid suggests
+ ROTATE=90; I, personally, prefer landscape (without the ()'s). Is it
+ better to have \special's that are easily interpretted by the driver
+ or by the user?
+
+ There are numerous other commands that also need to be specified:
+ printing on both sides of the output sheet (duplex printing); print
+ color selection; graphics inclusion, &c. This is not an exhaustive
+ list, of course, and I would appreciate receiving suggestions for
+ standard \special commands that do not appear above.
+
+ o Graphics.
+ The primary use of \special's in current device drivers is graphics
+ file inclusion. Graphics files included should be processed
+ intelligently (for example, extraneous PostScript material in a
+ MacDraw document should be removed), and perhaps, following on the
+ model of DVIQMS, options should be permitted on the graphics include
+ facility to add or remove commands from the graphics file.
+
+ DVIIMP (which is present in most TeX distributions in WEB source
+ format contains another idea for graphics inclusion: it provides
+ graphics ``primitives'' to draw points, lines, circles, and ellipses.
+ Standardized graphics \special's such as these could be used to
+ enhance LaTeX's picture mode, or be used in new macros to provide
+ convenient device-independant graphics.
+
+ o \special Scope.
+ It was pointed out in TUGboat v. 7, no. 3. that the random paging of a
+ DVI file implicitly prohibits \special's that are global in nature.
+ DVIXER deals with this problem by permiting a sequentialreading
+ command line option to insure that global \special's are read,
+ DVIQMS makes no such provision, but does contain global \special's.
+ Since it is fairly easy to modify output routines to emit a \special
+ command on each page, it should not be too difficult to make
+ \special's local to the page on which they appear.
+
+ The suggestions listed here are by no means intended to be all-
+ inclusive there are many aspects of the problem that were not covered
+ in this article. I would like to have a preliminary document outlining
+ the proposed standard for DVI files available for publication in
+ TUGboat for issue 3 of this year, and a final draft for the beginning
+ of 1988. I encourage contributions from the TeX community at large for
+ this project. My E-mail address is: BITNET: DHOSEK@HMCVAX, or ARPA:
+ DHOSEK%HMCVAX.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU; my postal address is:
+ Don Hosek
+ Platt Campus Center
+ Harvey Mudd College
+ Claremont, CA 91711
+
+ This article will also be printed in TUGboat and in TeXMaG (BITNET
+ electronic ``magazine'').
+
+
+
+
+
+__5
+ **The Toolbox**
+
+ From Charles Karney <Karney%PPC.MFENET@ANLVMS.BITNET>, we have a macro
+ that returns the current day of the week from TeX internal counters.
+%%%------------Start Cutting------------------------------------------
+% \dowcomp returns integer day of week in \dow with Sunday=0.
+% \downame returns the name of the day of the week.
+% E.g., if \year=1963 \month=11 \day=22,
+% then \dowcomp ==> \dow=5 and \downame ==> Friday which happened
+% to be the day President John F. Kennedy was assasinated.
+
+% Converted from the lisp function DOW by Jon L. White given in
+% the file LIBDOC DOW JONL3 on MIT-MC (which follows).
+
+%(defun dow (year month day)
+% (and (and (fixp year) (fixp month) (fixp day))
+% ((lambda (a)
+% (declare (fixnum a))
+% (\ (+ (// (1- (* 13. (+ month 10.
+% (* (// (+ month 10.) -13.) 12.))))
+% 5.)
+% day
+% 77.
+% (// (* 5. (- a (* (// a 100.) 100.))) 4.)
+% (// a -2000.)
+% (// a 400.)
+% (* (// a -100.) 2.))
+% 7.))
+% (+ year (// (+ month -14.) 12.)))))
+
+\newcount\dow
+\def\dowcomp{{\count3 \month \advance\count3 -14 \divide\count3 12
+ \advance\count3 \year \count4 \month \advance\count4 10
+ \divide\count4 -13 \multiply\count4 12 \advance\count4 10
+ \advance\count4 \month \multiply\count4 13 \advance\count4 -1
+ \divide\count4 5 \advance\count4 \day \advance\count4 77
+ \count2 \count3 \divide\count2 100 \multiply\count2 -100
+ \advance\count2 \count3 \multiply\count2 5 \divide\count2 4
+ \advance\count4 \count2 \count2 \count3 \divide\count2 -2000
+ \advance\count4 \count2 \count2 \count3 \divide\count2 400
+ \advance\count4 \count2 \count2 \count3 \divide\count2 -100
+ \multiply\count2 2 \advance\count4 \count2 \count2 \count4
+ \divide\count2 7 \multiply\count2 -7 \advance\count4 \count2
+ \global\dow \count4}}
+
+\def\dayname{\dowcomp \ifcase\dow Sunday\or Monday\or Tuesday\or
+ Wednesday\or Thursday\or Friday\else Saturday\fi}
+%%%--------------Stop cutting-----------------------------------------
+ My own contribution for the month is a macro to permit multiple-line
+ page headers. It works by putting an alignment inside of vtop inside
+ of headline. This approach makes it compatible with most other macros
+ that may change the makeheadline macro (e.g. The Toolbox, TeXMaG
+ V1N2).
+%%%--------------Cut along perforation--------------------------------
+% Macro for multiple line header.
+% By Don Hosek <DHOSEK@HMCVAX.BITNET>
+% To use:
+% \multihead{...}
+% If the header has more than one line, separate the lines with \\
+\newtoks\multihead
+\headline{\vtop{\let\\=\cr\halign{\line{#}\cr
+ \the\multihead\crcr}}}
+\multihead{\hss}
+%%%--------------Tear neatly------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+
+__6
+ TeXMaG is an electronic magazine published by the Harvey Mudd College
+ Mathematics Department available free of charge to all interested
+ parties reachable by electronic mail. It is published monthly, on the
+ last weekend of each month, except when conditions prevent
+ publication. Subscription requests should be sent to Don Hosek
+ <DHOSEK@HMCVAX.BITNET> or send the following message to
+ LISTSERV@BYUADMIN: SUBS TEXMAG-L Your_Full_Name. European subscribers
+ may send the SUBS command to LISTSERV@DEARN, subscribers on CDNnet
+ should send subscription requests to <list-request@ubc.csnet>, and
+ JANET subscribers should send requests to be added to the list to
+ Peter Abbott, <ABBOTTP@UK.AC.ASTON.MAIL>. Back issues are available
+ from Don Hosek <DHOSEK@HMCVAX.BITNET>. Article submissions,
+ contributions for the Toolbox, and letters to the editor are always
+ welcome and should be sent to <DHOSEK@HMCVAX.BITNET>.
+
+ Other publications of interest to TeX users are:
+
+ TeXHAX. Arpanet mailing list for persons with questions, suggestions,
+ etc.. about TeX, LaTeX, metafont and related programs. Submissions for
+ this list should be sent to <TeXHAX@SU-SCORE.ARPA>. BITNET users may
+ subscribe by sending the following command (as an interactive message
+ or as the first line of a mail message) to LISTSERV@TAMVM1:
+ SUBS TEX-L your_full_name. The list is peer-linked to other listserves
+ in the United States and Europe. Internet subscribers may subscribe by
+ sending a request to <TeXHAX-REQUEST@SU-SCORE.ARPA>. The TeX-L mailing
+ list is a ``hybrid;'' i.e., it is both an ARPAnet redistribution, and
+ a BITNET discussion list. Submissions for TeX-L (only --- they will
+ _not_ be forwarded to TeXHAX) may be sent to TeX-L@TAMVM1.
+ LISTSERV@TAMVM1 also has file archives that may be of interest to TeX
+ users on BITNET, including the files in the SU-SCORE FTP directories
+ and back issues of TeXHAX. For a list of files available, send the
+ following command to LISTSERV@TAMVM1: GET TeX FILELIST.
+
+ Unix-TeX. Arpanet mailing list specifically for users of TeX under the
+ Unix operating system. Submissions for this list should be sent to
+ <Unix-TeX@WASHINGTON.ARPA>. Requests to be added or deleted from the
+ mailing list should be sent to <Unix-TeX-Request@WASHINGTON.ARPA>.
+
+ TUGBoat. A publication by the TeX Users Group. An excellant reference
+ for TeX users. For more information about joining TUG and subscribing
+ to TUGBoat send (real) mail to:
+ TeX Users Group
+ c/o American Mathematical Society
+ P. O. Box 9506
+ Providence, RI 02940-9506, USA
+
+ Specials thanks to Peter Abbott for setting up the JANET redist-
+ ribution. Also thanks to the University of Illinois for giving me a
+ summer job.