TeXhax Digest Friday, 23 Oct 1992 Volume 92 : Issue 019 % The TeXhax Digest is brought to you as a service of the TeX Users Group % % and UK TeX Users Group in cooperation with the UK TeX Archive group % Today's Topics: TeX/LaTeX compatible spell checkers translations between Mac and Unix texts re: info on publishers using (la)tex Transformation of pk file resolution (or location of unusual fonts) Re: 4 second delay on startup Re: 4 second delay on startup Overlaying postscript figures with LaTeX fragments magnification in LaTeX dvipsk 5.495a available Administrivia: Moderators: David Osborne and Peter Abbott Contributions: TeXhax@tex.ac.uk Administration, subscription and unsubscription requests: TeXhax-request@tex.ac.uk ------------------------------------------------------------ Date: 09 Oct 92 11:19:45 -0500 From: "DR. JIM WALKER @CRL" Subject: TeX/LaTeX compatible spell checkers Could some kind person help me locate a pc (with/without windows) spell chacker that is compatible with TeX and LaTeX. Thank you, Jim Walker ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 09 Oct 92 20:04:37 -0500 From: amphoras@epas.utoronto.ca (PMW Matheson) Subject: translations between Mac and Unix texts A package for RTF -> TeX conversion, which I use to translate texts from MSWord, was written by Robert Lupton (rhl@astro.Princeton.edu), and can be got by sending a SENDME RTF2TEX message to FILESERV@SHSU.edu. From the man page entry: rtf2TeX is a filter built on Paul DuBois' RTF reader that converts RTF (Microsoft's Rich Text Format) into TeX. rtf2TeX expends a good deal of effort in an attempt to make the resulting TeX maintainable and modifiable. There are a large number of features that rtf2TeX doesn't support due to a lack of motivation; many could be easily added without making any major changes to the programme, by just adding short sections of code. I would be happy to receive such patches from you and will attempt to merge them into an evolving version of rtf2TeX. However, I doubt if I will have much chance to work on the code myself. Works fine for me. My notes also include this exchange from the comp.editors newsgroup: > I'm looking for a an RTF parser, preferably public domain. > Please send me email if you can give me any info on this. Anon ftp to ftp.primate.wisc.edu, in pub/RTF. but I haven't investigated it... - -- __ __ [||] Philippa MW Matheson amphoras@epas.utoronto.ca [||] ( ) The AMPHORAS Project 43 McKenzie Ave (416) ( ) \/ University of Toronto Toronto M4W 1K1 925-9931 \/ ------------------------------ Date: 10 Oct 92 07:54:02 -0500 From: bbeeton Subject: re: info on publishers using (la)tex in texhax 92 #16, jim walker asks for information about publishers who are using (la)tex. the 1991 tex users group meeting theme was "tex in publishing", and several of the speakers represented commercial (technical) publishers or organizations who, under contract, prepare final copy for publishers using tex. among the publishers represented were elsevier, addison-wesley, the bartlett press, springer verlag, prentice hall, and the american mathematical society. the proceedings of this meeting have been published in tugboat, vol. 12, iss. 3 & 4; issue 3 contains most of the papers from the point of view of publishers, while issue 4 has a more technical orientation. information about tugboat can be obtained from the tex users group office, tug@math.ams.org . -- bb ------------------------------ Date: 10 Oct 92 09:41:17 -0500 From: "DR. JIM WALKER @CRL" Subject: Transformation of pk file resolution (or location of unusual fonts) I have a large selection of slightly eccentric pk files (Euler, Concrete, Cyrillic, Punk) which are all at a base resolution of 300 dpi. I'd like to be able to use these with a previewer that uses 118dpi as its base size. Is there any way that I can convert these 300,329,360...dpi pk files into 118,129,142...dpi pk files? Alternatively, does anyone know of an anonymous FTP site where euler,concrete, cyrillic,punk) pk files are available at 118dpi etc resolutions? Thanks, Jim Walker. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Oct 92 09:15:06 +0000 From: Lars Henrik Mathiesen Subject: Re: 4 second delay on startup When I had this problem, the reason turned out to be that I had set TEXINPUTS_SUBDIR to be my equivalent of /usr/local/lib/tex/inputs. TeX then tries to identify all subdirectories in that directory, which entails a stat() system call for each file. In my case, TeX saw the directory via NFS, and I think the large number of stat()s effectively flushed the local attribute cache --- in any case, I got a 6 second delay on start-up, even when running TeXs back-to-back. Moral: Don't let a SUBDIR path element be a directory with lots of regular files. Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) (Humour NOT marked) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Oct 92 09:11:14 -0500 From: Patrick O'Callaghan Subject: Re: 4 second delay on startup >> I built TeX3.14t3 which I got from u.washington. The only problem (so >> far) that I've encountered is a 4 or 5 second delay on startup, before >> TeX says >> >> This is TeX, C Version 3.14t3 I have precisely the same problem. TeX (v 3.0) used to start instantly. Now it takes an appreciable delay. Is there some Dark Secret? I think we should be told! Patrick O'Callaghan Internet: poc@usb.ve Departamento de Computacion UUCP: sun!emsca!usb!poc@sun.com Universidad Simon Bolivar Tel: +058 (2) 963 3022 ext 3320 Apartado de Correos 89000 "The secret is to bang the rocks Caracas, Venezuela together, folks" - Douglas Adams ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Oct 92 11:56:17 -0800 From: Craig Barratt Subject: Overlaying postscript figures with LaTeX fragments A new version (1.1) of the PsFrag macros is now available. This version handles a wider class of postscript figures, allowing PsFrag to work with packages such as freehand and mathematica. The PsFrag macros make it easy to overlay postscript figures with fragments of LaTeX. These macros allow you to get the best of both worlds: you can generate a postscript figure as usual using your favorite drawing or plotting program (for example, xfig, idraw, freehand, matlab, xmath, or mathematica), but each piece of text can be selectively replaced with high-quality LaTeX formatted equations, text, or pictures, when it is included in a LaTeX document. The LaTeX fragments can be optionally rotated, scaled, and repositioned relative to the text being replaced. The LaTeX fragments automatically track the postscript text position as the postscript file is updated, or as the scaling and offsets of the enclosing \special or \epsfbox are changed. Certain programs (like xfig/fig2dev) provide hooks for mixing their postscript output and LaTeX. However, PsFrag provides a general facility that works with postscript generated by numerous drawing and plotting programs. PsFrag is available via anonymous ftp from isl.stanford.edu (internet address 36.60.0.10). Get the compressed tar file pub/boyd/psfrag/psfrag.tar.Z Extract the archive using uncompress and tar xvf (or gtar zxvf). See the files README, USAGE, INSTALL for detailed information. If you can't ftp then I can email you a uuencoded version. Note: PsFrag uses ghostscript (gs) from the gnu distribution, and assumes that your dvi to ps driver is Tomas Rokicki's dvips (Radical Eye Software). You will need both of these programs to use PsFrag. Basically, PsFrag uses ghostscript to interpret the postscript figure and spit out a LaTeX picture environment that exactly lines up with the postscript figure. Craig Barratt craig@isl.stanford.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Oct 92 18:37:58 +0700 From: zheng@maths.uwa.oz.au (Wei Xing Zheng) Subject: magnification in LaTeX The LaTeX Manual says, "The \magnification command in Plain TeX has no counterpart in LaTeX. Magnification of the output can often be done by the program that prints the dvi file." If anyone knows what this means and how to do magnification in LaTeX, please kindly let me know. Many thanks. Wei X. Zheng Dept. of Maths, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, WA 6009 Tel: (09) 380 3367; Fax: (09) 380 1028; E-mail: zheng@maths.uwa.edu.au ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Oct 92 13:52:42 -0500 From: Karl Berry Subject: dvipsk 5.495a available I have released version 5.495a of dvipsk, my modified version of Tom Rokicki's dvips DVI-to-PostScript translator. It is available by ftp from ftp.cs.umb.edu [192.12.26.23]:pub/tex/dvipsk.tar.Z The major modification is to use the same path searching algorithms as Unix TeX (i.e., web2c), the GNU font utilities, and my modified xdvi. In addition, the configuration process is (more or less) automatic, in the GNU style. The Makefile uses the standard variable names and targets in GNU makefiles. The documentation is included in the GNU texinfo format (thanks to zoo@cygnus.com for providing it). Here are the important changes in this version: * TFM, VF, and LaTeX style files added (from dvipslib). * README, NEWS, INSTALL files rewritten/created. * `check' target added. * Update for dvips 5495. karl@cs.umb.edu Member of the League for Programming Freedom---write to lpf@uunet.uu.net. ------------------------------ 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. 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