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*******************************************************************************
*                                                                             *
*   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 2, Number 6           *
*          EEEEEEE              A       A        Distribution: 1296 or so...  *
*                                                                             *
*******************************************************************************
     
December 30, 1988
     
\footnote............................................................1
News
  LaTeX style collection moves to Clarkson...........................2
  A new and improved LaTeX manual?...................................3
  TeXhax moves to Washington.........................................4
  "You say Lah-TeX I say Lay-TeX": A report on the 1988 TeX Users
    Group Meeting....................................................5
How to change the LaTeX layout.......................................6
The Toolbox..........................................................7
TeX Mysteries and Puzzles............................................8
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
__1
\footnote{Forgotten, but not dead}
     
Well, a mere three and a half months later, I've finally gotten the
time to sit down and put together the latest issue of TeXMaG.
Hopefully, I shall be able to get TeXMaG back on a more regular
schedule for Volume 3.
     
If any of you have submitted articles and not seen them in print,
please let me know. I have a dread feeling that I've lost a few
submisions along the lines.
     
Also, of interest, is the news that TeX and Metafont have reached
versions 2.95 and 1.7 respectively. More on this will appear in a
future issue.
     
G'day
     
-dh
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
__2
**********************************************************************
*             LaTeX style collection moves to Clarkson               *
**********************************************************************
     
The LaTeX style collection has been moved. It now resides at
sun.soe.clarkson.edu. The collection will now be maintained by
Michael DeCorte, a Clarkson University computer science student. As
always, submissions are encouraged. Mail should be sent to
        mrd@sun.soe.clarkson.edu
or
        archive-management@sun.soe.clarkson.edu
     
A few changes have been made in the collection that should be noted.
First, the names of the files that users should access are:
     
Index           A list of all the files in reverse chronological
                ordering
Description     A list of all the files in alphabetical ordering
                with a brief description of each
Readme          Documentation on how to get files
     
Also, all .doc files have been renamed to .sty and the original .sty
will be removed.  This change does not affect the style file's use.
If you must squeeze the last bit of performance out of your machine,
get docsty.shar. [[Note: on smaller computers, e.g. PC's, using the
.sty files as supplied may cause memory problems. -ed.]
     
Internet users can use anonymous ftp to retrieve files.  The files
are stored in  pub/latex-style.
     
Other users can use the mail archive to retrieve files.  Send mail to
archiver-server@sun.soe.clarkson.edu with the body of the mail
message containing the command help or index or send.  The send
command must be followed by latex-style and then the files you want.
Users who are not in the uucp maps database are strongly encourage to
include a path command followed by a path from clarkson to you. If
you don't include a path command, your mail may not get to you and
will definitely be delayed as Michael will have to mail it by hand.
You should realize that Clarkson does not have a uucp connection;
therefore you must send it to an Internet or Bitnet host that does
have a uucp connection. For example, host!user@uunet.uu.net should
send:
     
To: archive-server@clarkson.edu
Subject:
     
path host!user@uunet.uu.net
send latex-style Readme Index
send latex-style resume.sty
     
Note that this syntax is different from that used by the server at
University of Rochester.
     
Clarkson Archiver Server
archiver-server@sun.soe.clarkson.edu
archive-server%sun.soe.clarkson.edu@omnigate.bitnet
dumb1!dumb2!dumb3!smart!sun.soe.clarkson.edu!archive-server
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
__3
**********************************************************************
*               A new and improved LaTeX manual?                     *
**********************************************************************
By Leslie Lamport <lamport@src.dec.com>
     
You all may be interested to know that the LaTeX manual has sold
almost 60,000 copies.  Addison-Wesley would like to publish a revised
edition, and I'm considering whether it's worth doing.  There are
three possibilities: expanding the book with new material, writing a
second book, or doing nothing.  I would like to find out how LaTeX
users feel about this.  What additional material would people find
useful? Should it be a new book to supplement the manual or an new
version of the current manual?  I'm particularly interested in hearing
from users who do not have a technical background.
     
Please reply directly to me at `lamport@src.dec.com'.  If this address
doesn't work, tell your mail wizard that he's probably using obsolete
network software and try resending to `lamport@decwrl.dec.com'.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
__4
**********************************************************************
*                    TeXhax moves to Washington                      *
**********************************************************************
     
Malcolm Brown has retired from his position as TeXhax moderator and
has been succeded by the efforts of Pierre Mackay and Tiina Modiset
(as everybody is fond of saying, yes, *2* I's). Numerous enhancements
have been made to the format of the journal (for example, the inclusion
of keywords in article headers) and Pierre and Tiina have been doing
an admirable job of filling Malcolm's footsteps.
     
In addition, the TeX Users Group has lent its support to the effort
and hopefully, TeXhax will become more coordinated in the future.
     
TeXhax submissions should now be sent to TeXhax@Cs.Washington.Edu
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
__5
**********************************************************************
*                 "You say Lah-TeX I say Lay-TeX":                   *
*           A report on the 1988 TeX Users Group Meeting             *
**********************************************************************
     
For those of you unaware of this, the 1988 TeX Users Group meeting
was held from August 21-24 at McGill University in Montr\'eal,
Canada. Perhaps the most striking fact about Montr\'eal is that they
don't speak English there (well a bit, but not as much as one would
like). I remember wandering about the city thinking, "Gee, this is
just like being in a foreign country." The fact that I was in a
foreign country only reinforced the impression.
     
My experience with the conference began on the morning of the 22nd
when I arrived just in time to miss most of the introduction of
officers, site coordinators, staff, and others. Fortunately I had
many opportunities later to meet all of the assorted people from TUG
as well as many of the participators. It was especially nice to be
able to finally attach faces to the many names that I know and love
from TeXhax, TUGboat, TeXMaG, et al.; of course nobody looked
anything like I expected them to (except, for some strange reason,
Shawn Farrell).
     
The theme of the conference was TeX in Production with a number of
interesting applications of TeX running from TV Guide to NASA
technical reports to kennel club year books (!). Interestingly
enough, nearly all of the presentations on the topic dealt with the
same sort of applications.
     
The primary idea presented regarding TeX was interfacing TeX with
some sort of database system. In some cases, such as TV Guide, the
database was generated from TeX code. This sort of system was used
for requisitions: by typing certain essential information into macro
definitions at the beginning of the TeX file containing the
requisition, indexing information could easily be extracted from the
file. Since TV Guide's primary computing resource is a large number
of independent PC's, this approach allows them to generate a
centralized database.
     
Another approach to interfacing TeX and databases was presented by
Robert Harris, who described his experiences using TeX to produce
kennel club yearbooks. In this case, the information for the
yearbooks was stored in a database accessed by a program written by
Mr. Harris who runs an independent computer company in New York. He
selected TeX as his output program because it seemed to him that it
would be easier to drive it from his database than any other text
processor available.
     
Both of these approaches to interfacing TeX and database programs
seem rather intriguing. In the past months, I've done some work in
generating simple TeX code from dbase III (actually a friend did the
work: I just told him what to do). Many article ideas are lurking
behind this concept he hinted insidiously.
     
Not all of the talk on the first day concerned interfacing TeX and
databases; there were also talks on specific production applications
of TeX given by Laurie Mann of Stratus Computer, Eric Jul of OCLC,
James Mooney of West Virginia University and Elizabeth Barnhart of TV
Guide. Unfortunately, at this late date I remember few details of
their talks although I have a few notes written down on some of the
more important points made, in particular, some of the concerns of
the speakers included the difficulty of using non-CM fonts with TeX,
the need to make TeX a fully integrated part of the user environment,
and the need to shield the user from the complexities of TeX, usually
through the use of a pre-processor. One rather interesting item was a
program developed at TV Guide for producing text of varying column
widths.
     
The talks for the day were wrapped up with a presentation by Alex
Warman on the decision to use TeX made by a trade typesetter
(TeXworks Pty. Ltd.). Much of his presentation dealt with the
barriers in making such a change due to conservativeness on the part
of typesetter manufacturers and a lack of information interchange
between typesetters in Australia.
     
The day closed with a wine and cheese in the student pub sponsored by
PC TeX. Not only were the wine and cheese excellant, but I was also
presented with a number of opportunities to talk to various TeX
people from everywhere.
     
The second day began with presentations from various TeX-related
exhibitors. This was opened by Barry Smith who has left Kellerman and
Smith to form Blue Sky Research to market Textures, his implementation
of TeX for the Macintosh (Kellerman and Smith is now just Kellerman
and is called Northlake Software). Smith gave participants a preview
of two major enhancements that are coming to Textures (as well as the
proper pronunciation: teks-tyers). The first is an interface to Adobe
Illustrator allowing many interesting manipulations of the PostScript
output from Textures. Aside from separating the tasks of typesetting
and "paste-up", in this manner, this allows other tasks such as use of
color. Additionally, the PostScript files manipulated in this manner
may be brought back into Textures for further manipulation.
     
The second enhancement that he announced was the future availability
of Computer Modern fonts in PostScript format developed by Projective
Solutions. The outlines are created from high resolution GF files. The
program for conversions should become available at some point in the
future.
     
Dean Guenther of the Washington State University Computing Service
Center then described his university's TeXT1 text processing macro
package: among the more notable features of this package are
generalized markup, tables of contents, boxes, marginnotes, multiple
columns, and a one pass sorted index for CMS. On IBM PCs, the package
can be accessed from menus. Plus, all of the features are easily
customizable and many samples are included with the package including
a model for creating form letters from DBase III output.
     
In addition to TeXT1, WSU also has available an IPA phonetics font as
well as a driver for the Compugraphics 8600 typesetter for CMS.
     
Amy Hendrickson of TeXnology Inc. then introduced her macro package,
MacroTeX, which is now in its fully completed version. [At this point,
I was getting tired of keeping detailed reports of the speakers, so my
records have thinned out somewhat.] MacroTeX seems to offer many of
the same features as TeXT1, but in a somewhat different format.
There's really no way to tell which is the "better" product from the
presentations.
     
The people of Personal TeX Inc. have introduced numerous new products,
including a new previewer of their very own, PTIview, and a new
TeX typesetting service.
     
Micro Publishing Systems of Vancouver, Canada announced the
availability of their PC implementation of TeX, called CTeX, which is
an implementation of TeX in CWEB. The product currently runs under DOS
2.1, but plans are in the works to implement TeX on other PC operating
systems such as SCO XENIX and OS/2. In addition to CTeX, MPS also has
TeXwrite, a text editor designed for use with TeX on the PC, printer
drivers for PostScript and HP LaserJet compatible printers, and
additional products from Arbortext and the Metafoundry.
     
Robert Kinch, of Kinch Computer Co. then introduced his TeX
implementation, TurboTeX, which is a mechanical translation of the WEB
source of TeX into C. At this time, the program will compile under MS
DOS, System V Unix and Berkeley Unix. Although somewhat slower than
PCTeX, the package is much cheaper. As an added incentive to get
people to try his program, Mr. Kinch gave away 100 copies of the
program, plus numerous rain checks for those who couldn't make it into
the first 100 places in line.
     
The next product introduced was K-Talk's MathEditor which allows
WYSIWYG input of mathematics for TeX and Word Perfect on PC's. This
was followed by Computer Composition Corporation announcing the
availabilty of their typesetting service. They have CM fonts available
for their typesetter and promise a 2-day turnaround time.
     
Stephan von Bechtolsheim talked about his book, _Another Look at TeX_,
which promises to be the definitive guide to plain TeX. At the present
time, it's two volumes and nearly a thousand pages, with many
examples. I've seen early editions of the book and it's pretty good.
     
Finally, we heard from Arbortext, who, as you may already know, have
taken over the marketing of MicroTeX. The mackage is now called
$\mu$-TeX (pardon my math mode) which should allow integrated TeX,
edit, and preview; simplified keyboarding; and automated installation.
     
After everybody came back from the exhibitors' room with their free
copies of TurboTeX, we then heard the site coordinators' status
reports which I have no record of whatsoever.
     
The afternoon was begun with three talks on TeX training: TeX tips for
getting started by Berkeley Parks; The art of teaching TeX for
production by Alan Wittbecker; and Choosing between TeX and LaTeX by
Shawn Farrell (incidentally, he suggests LaTeX). This was followed by
Robert McGaffey reporting on the status of the DVI driver standards
committee and a break.
     
Afterwards, we heard several talks regarding non-English TeX: Nobuo
Saito and Kazuhiro Kitagawa discussed Mathematics textbook publishing
with Japanese TeX (by using TeX, they reduced the cost per book by a
rather remarkable amount); Jacques Goldberg described his system for
using TeX to typeset Hebrew and other right-to-left languages as well
as explaining his choice of the name "SemiTeX" (he also gave a preview
of an Arabic font and a new Hebrew font which his students have been
working on); Michael Ferguson explained the principles and problems
underlying his T\^eX package which allows multiple hyphenation patterns
and accenting of words containing diacriticals; and this was finished
with Kauko Saarinen describing his experiences with Finnish TeX.
     
The day was concluded with "Topical" Birds-of-a-Feather sessions where
I found myself leading one on "servers". However, for various reasons
(e.g. we all knew pretty much the same stuff and we all used CMS
systems), this session became a discussion of CMS TeX. Meanwhile other
people discussed such things as Metafont, LaTeX, and all sorts of
other stuff.
     
The next day began with Stephan von Bechtolsheim discussing a system
for editing LaTeX using EMACS which should prevent mismatched braces
and \begin..\end constructions. This was followed by Lynne Price
describing HP's in-house SGML system which sadly may never be
introduced commercially (from what she's said of it, it's REALLY
nice). Ken Yap described the DVI previewers available in the Unix
world, particularly for workstations such as the Sun.
     
The remainder of the morning was consumed by the TUG business meeting
with lots of interesting things (electing Rick Furuta as the new
vice-president and the move of TUG into its very own office space),
and a few un-interesting things which are necessary anyway.
     
After lunch we heard talks from Robert Kruse, Mike Schmidt, and Paul
Muller detailing various systems for textbook production, and then
finally, the meeting concluded with a TeX problems help session (one
of the answers appears in this issue's Toolbox and one of the
questions in Mysteries & Puzzles) and a report from the training
standards committee who are developing standard outlines for the TUG
courses.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
__6
**********************************************************************
*                    How to change the LaTeX layout                  *
**********************************************************************
By Hubert Partl <z3000pa@awituw01.bitnet>
     
[[The layout of this article has been left intact by the author's
request to demonstrate the appearance of the LaTeX style given in
the example. -ed.]]
     
How to Change the LaTeX Layout
------------------------------
     
         by Hubert Partl, Technical University of Vienna,
         z3000pa@awituw01.bitnet
     
Once Upon a Time ...
     
          If you ask someone ``Why do you love LaTeX so much?''
          you will most probably get an answer like ``Oh, it's
          so easy to use by an author'' or ``Everything is so
          much logic''. This is most certainly true.
     
          If you ask someone ``Why do you hate LaTeX?'' then
          I bet you will hear the answer ``Because I don't like
          its layout and it's so hard to change that.'' Well,
          this is a fairy tale that just isn't true.
     
   ! -->  I just found out that IT IS SO VERY EASY TO CHANGE
          THE LaTeX LAYOUT. Once you know what the layout should
          look like, all you have to do is to look at
            1. the LaTeX Manual
            2. the files ARTICLE.DOC, ART10.DOC, etc.
            3. the file LATEX.TEX
            4. the TeXbook
          and perhaps some Style Files other people have already
          written, and then write a STY-File with re-definitions
          of the commands you want to be modified.
     
A Practical Example (REFMAN.STY)
     
          I dreamed of a LaTeX Style that sets technical texts with
          a layout like that of the famous PostScript Reference Manual,
          i.e. with a rather wide left margin, which is used for section
          headings and marginal notes, and with only narrow empty margins
          above, below, and to the right of the text area.
     
          This seemed a very complicated task, but within a day or two
          I finished a ``good enough'' solution for the article-like
          stuff I usually write. I called the file REFMAN.STY, and here
          it is:
     
1. The Page Layout
     
          From the hints in the LaTeX Manual and those pretty sketches in
          TUGboat Vol.9/No.1, it was easy to define the general page
          layout with the following commands:
     
          \newdimen\leftmarginwidth
          \newdimen\fullwidth % = \textwidth + \leftmarginwidth
          % \textwidth, \columnwidth, \linewidth remain unchanged.
          \fullwidth=6.5in
          \leftmarginwidth=\fullwidth
                  \advance\leftmarginwidth by -\textwidth
          \oddsidemargin=\leftmarginwidth
          \evensidemargin=\leftmarginwidth
          \marginparwidth=\leftmarginwidth
                 \advance\marginparwidth by -\marginparsep
          \advance\topmargin by -5\baselineskip
          \advance\textheight by 10\baselineskip
     
2. The Section Headings
     
          Re-defining the \section commands to use the full page width
          and smaller skips and fonts proved to be very easy, indeed.
          Looking into ART10.DOC reveiled that I just had to copy out
          some lines and to change them to the following:
     
          \def\secshape{\leftskip=-\leftmarginwidth % use \fullwidth
              \rightskip=\@flushglue % raggedright
              \hyphenpenalty=2000} % no hyphenation
          \def\section{\@startsection {section}{1}{\z@}{-2ex plus -1ex
              minus -.2ex}{0.5ex plus .2ex}{\secshape\large\bf}}
          \def\subsection{\@startsection{subsection}{2}{\z@}{-1.5ex plus
              -.5ex minus -.2ex}{0.5ex plus .2ex}{\secshape
              \normalsize\bf}}
          \def\subsubsection{\@startsection{subsubsection}{3}{\z@}{-1.5ex
              plus -.5ex minus -.2ex}{0.5ex plus .2ex}{\secshape
              \normalsize\rm}}
     
          In my papers I don't use \part or \maketitle, so I didn't bother
          to change these, but I guess it's just as easy.
     
3. The Positioning of Marginal Notes
     
          Since the main margin is now the left one for all pages, I had
          to change \marginpar to use always the left margin. This too
          was much easier than I had thought: In LATEX.TEX, I discoverd
          the command \@addmarginpar, and there I found out, that it
          sets a count \@tempcnta to \@ne or \m@ne, depending on whether
          the marginal note should appear to the right or to the left
          of the text. So, I just modified this portion of the command
          to set \@tempcnta always to \m@ne, and it worked.
     
          \def\@addmarginpar{\@next\@marbox\@currlist{\@cons\@freelist\@marbox
              \@cons\@freelist\@currbox}\@latexbug\@tempcnta\@ne
          %-  \if@twocolumn
          %-      \if@firstcolumn \@tempcnta\m@ne \fi
          %-  \else
          %-    \if@mparswitch
          %-       \ifodd\c@page \else\@tempcnta\m@ne \fi
          %-    \fi
          %-    \if@reversemargin \@tempcnta -\@tempcnta \fi
          %-  \fi
              \@tempcnta\m@ne % always to left margin <---
              \ifnum\@tempcnta <\z@ \global\setbox\@marbox\box\@currbox \fi
              \@tempdima\@mparbottom \advance\@tempdima -\@pageht
                 \advance\@tempdima\ht\@marbox \ifdim\@tempdima >\z@
                 \@warning{Marginpar on page \thepage\space moved}\else
                 \@tempdima\z@ \fi
              \global\@mparbottom\@pageht \global\advance\@mparbottom\@tempdima
              \global\advance\@mparbottom\dp\@marbox
              \global\advance\@mparbottom\marginparpush
              \advance\@tempdima -\ht\@marbox
              \global\ht\@marbox\z@ \global\dp\@marbox\z@
              \vskip -\@pagedp \vskip\@tempdima\nointerlineskip
              \hbox to\columnwidth
                {\ifnum \@tempcnta >\z@
                    \hskip\columnwidth \hskip\marginparsep
                  \else \hskip -\marginparsep \hskip -\marginparwidth \fi
                 \box\@marbox \hss}
              \vskip -\@tempdima
              \nointerlineskip
              \hbox{\vrule \@height\z@ \@width\z@ \@depth\@pagedp}}
     
4. Some More Commands
     
          I also defined some additional commands. One of them is
     
          \def\attention{\mbox{}\marginpar{\raggedleft
                         \large\bf ! $\rightarrow$}}
     
   ! -->  The gentle reader may guess what this command does and
          what it is intended for.
     
Conclusions
     
          Of course, one might always go on with fine tunig and additional
          goodies. And certainly you should not change Dr.L's fine design
          without a good reason. But if you really have to change the
          layout, then you CAN do so quite easily, and it's certainly
          better to make these changes within the framework of the LaTeX
          style concept rather than to abandon LaTeX at all and go back
          to the ancient days of Plain TeX's visual design!
     
     
P.S.      I am still working on this topic, so I would like to get YOUR
          comments and suggestions. Why not make this a regular column
          in TeXMaG, e.g. a ``layout box'' in addition to the ``tool box''?
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
__7
**********************************************************************
*                            The Toolbox                             *
**********************************************************************
     
This month's macro is one that was decribed at the TeX Users Group
meeting this past August. The problem itself is a simple one: given
a short piece of text, either print it centered if its length is
under a certain critical size, or if it is longer than that size,
print it as a displayed paragraph. For example, this macro (we'll call
it \epigram) should produce
                           "Twit Twit Twit"
should we call it with \epigram{``Twit Twit Twit''}, but if we should
enter the command \epigram{The glory and power of Printing is not all
in the past. Its influence in the present makes it a powerful
conservator of human progress.} we would want the output to be:
    The glory and power of  Printing is not all in the past.  Its
    influence  in the present  makes it a powerful conservator of
    human progress.
so, here is how we can define this macro:
%-----------severe here-----------------------------------------------
\long\def\epigram#1{% We use \long\def to allow the argument
                    % to span several paragraphs.
    \bigskip       % extra space above.
    \setbox0=\hbox{#1} % put the text into a box
    \ifdim\wd0>\critwidth %check the length
         \centerline{\vtop{\hsize=\episize\noindent#1}}
              % If the length is greater than
              % the critical length, make a
              % displayed paragraph
    \else          % otherwise, we just center the text.
         \centerline{\box0}
    \fi
    \smallskip     % extra space for the end.
}
     
\newdimen\critwidth          \critwidth=.75\hsize
\newdimen\episize            \episize=.6\hsize
%-------------Cut again----------------------------------------------
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
__8
**********************************************************************
*                      TeX Mysteries & Puzzles                       *
**********************************************************************
     
This month's puzzle is a remnant of the TeX Users Group meeting. In a
nutshell, the problem is to make the paragraph indentation of a
paragraph the length of the last line in the preceding paragraph. This
could appear something like this.
                                 Where the indentation is as shown. I'd
imagine that the solution might be to use \lastbox to get the length of
the final line in the paragraph in a manner similar to that used in
the strange title problem which appeared earlier this year, but this may
cause problems when restoring that line to the vertical list.
                                                             Anyway, I
haven't had time to play with the problem, so I'm tossing it out to
you, the teeming masses.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
__9
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