*******************************************************************************
* *
* 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 2 *
* EEEEEEE A A Distribution: 793 or so... *
* *
*******************************************************************************
February 28, 1988
\footnote.....................................................................1
News
Update for TeX on DECnet/Span...............................................2
Device Driver information Available from LISTSERV@TAMVM1....................3
New Mathematics Publication to Use AmS-TeX..................................4
First Announcement and Call for Papers--TeX users Group Annual Meeting......5
TeX font files................................................................6
Indic and other Fonts for TeX.................................................7
TeX for the Mac...............................................................8
Second Annual Readers Survey Results..........................................9
TeX Mysteries and Puzzles....................................................10
The Toolbox..................................................................11
TeXMaG Index.................................................................12
__1
\footnote{Justifying my existence}
Among comments in the survey responses I received was the following
from Dr. Hubert Partl:
Since there is so much more (and more frequent) Information
being found in TeXhax and TUGboat, I think that TeXMaG is not
worth the effort of maintaining, and it will never reach the
high level of quality of those other two media. Why spread your
(and our) efforts into something like TeXMaG instead of
concentrating on TUGboat and TeXhax and helping B. Beeton and
M. Brown with their work (to make their media even more
complete and up-to-date etc.)?
First let me just say, that this was not quite sufficient to make me
decide that my efforts in TeXMaG are completely worthless, and shut
down the whole operation, but it did leave me thinking, "Gee, why
*do* I do this?"
At first I had a hard time justifying TeXMaG. Dr. Partl does have
a point that TeXMaG probably does detract to some degree my and your
efforts from contributing to the well-being of TUGboat and TeXhax.
So with the fact that I really don't know why I do this and Dr.
Partl's criticism I decided to take a look back at what led me to
start a crazy project like this anyway.
I first started using TeX in the spring of 1986 (I should have
asked how long people have been using TeX in the survey, oh well),
and immediately realized that there was a severe lack of available
information on TeX. I looked on every server I knew about to see if
I could find any information and tried to subscribe to the
then-defunct TeXhax. Working in virtual isolation (I started using
TeX at about the same time it was installed, so there was no
established user base yet), I learned enough TeX to write my papers
and do the odd macro here and there.
In the late summer/early fall of that year, Netmonth ran an
article on what's involved with publishing an electronic magazine and
at about that same time, Chris Condon suggested that users should
work to do their part in contributing to the well-being of the
network. In the back of my mind, a little voice started to whisper
"electronic magazine, electronic magazine". Finally I decided to take
the plunge and sent an announcement of TeXMaG out to about 30 people.
The first people I solicited for contributions were selected from
names of people who answered questions. Finally, at the end of
January, with Ken Yap's announcement of the LaTeX-Style collection
as my only "article", I sent out TeXMaG V1N1 to 53 people.
A bit over a month later, I actually had an article submission and
decided that I could put out the second issue. As time went by, I
encountered many "dry spells" as well as trickles of article
submissions for what I had envisioned as something that would take
a place somewhere between TeXhax and Tugboat. At times, I felt like
I had taken on too big of a load, and was ready to throw in the towel
once or twice.
Now, however, I think that TeXMaG has become what it originally
set out to be. A forum containing short news items of interest to the
TeX community (now that I get press releases, I figure I should do
*something* with them), as well as assorted contributed macros and
articles of interest.
Perhaps TeXMaG is at times a little pointless, but when it comes
down to the bottom line, it exists because I enjoy putting it out,
and I'm just crazy enough to devote a bunch of hours to it every
week.
Be happy,
-dh
__2
**********************************************************************
* Update for TeX on DECnet/Span *
**********************************************************************
by Max Calvani <CALVANI@VAXFPD.INFNET>
The TeX-depository for VAX/VMS available on DECnet/Span in Italy now
also includes:
[tex.clark] Programs to produce halftone outputs.
VAX/VMS change file to increase TeX memory
TPU interface
(supplied by Adrian Clark)
[tex.usa.dvidis] Programs to display DVI files on VAXstations
(VMS) (supplied by Jerry Leichter)
[tex.usa.textyl] Curve drawing postprocessor
(by John Renner, modified by Jerry Leichter
for VMS)
For further information send a decnet/span message to:
39003::fisica
__3
**********************************************************************
* Device Driver Information Available From LISTSERV@TAMVM1 *
**********************************************************************
The TeX Users Group listings of device drivers are now available from
Listserv@Tamvm1. The files DRIVERS.* contain lists of known DVI
drivers compiled by Don Hosek <DHOSEK@YMIR.BITNET>. The file
DRIVERS.LASER lists Laser printer drivers; DRIVERS.LOWRES lists dot
matrix and plotter drivers, DRIVERS.TYPESET lists typesetter drivers,
and DRIVERS.SOURCES lists the addresses and availability of drivers.
The LASER, LOWRES, and TYPESET files are listed by output device. The
drivers available for each device are then subdivided into "Big
Computers" (consisting of Amdahl (MTS), CDC Cyber, Cray, Data General
MV, DEC-10, DEC-20, HP9000/500, IBM MVS, IBM VM/CMS, IBM VM/UTS,
Prime, Unix, and VAX/VMS), and "Little Computers" (consisting of
Apollo, Atari ST, Cadmus 9200, HP1000, HP3000, IBM PC, Integrated
Solutions, SUN, TI PC, VAXstation/Unix, and VAXstation/VMS). Under
each individual computer is listed each driver known, and as much
information about it as is available. The PREVIEW file has a slightly
different hierarchy: The top level is the computer type (since screen
previewers tend to be less portable), then each driver is listed with
the terminals supported listed below it. When a driver is available
from more than one source, all sources are listed. The program name
and author are listed for additional identification.
To obtain a copy of a file from LISTSERV@TAMVM1 send the command
GET DRIVERS --- in an interactive message (TELL LISTSERV AT TAMVM1
... on CMS, SEND LISTSERV@TAMVM1 ... on VMS) or as the first line of
a mail message where --- is one of EXP, LASER, LOWRES, PREVIEW,
SOURCES, or TYPESET.
Additions and corrections to the lists are welcome. Send them to
Don Hosek, Bitnet: <DHOSEK@YMIR.BITNET>, Postal Address: Platt Campus
Center, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711
__4
**********************************************************************
* New Mathematics Publication to use AmS-TeX *
**********************************************************************
Pergammon Press (Oxford) has recently announced a new publication,
"Applied Mathematics Letters: An International Journal of Rapid
Communication" (AML), promising rapid publication with papers
normally published within 90 days.
AML makes this promise by encouraging authors to submit papers via
electronic mail or diskette (papers submitted in other, more
conventional forms are also accepted with the caveat that they will
take longer to publish). The journal will use a specially designed
AmS-TeX style file for producing the final "near-typeset quality"
output. Articles will be typically about four typeset pages with
topics expected to cover "The brief description of any work involving
a novel application or utilization of mathematics, or a development
in the methodology of applied mathematics... All areas of mathematics
are appropriate: from number theory through Lie algenras to
differential games. All applications areas are welcome as well, be
it computer science, physics, anthropology, fluid dynamics or any
other of the main fields of endeavor, where mathematics is used in
nontrivial ways."
For more information write to
Managing Editor: Ervin Y Rodin
Department of Systems Science and Mathematics
Box 1040, Washington University
St. Louis, MO 63130, USA
__5
**********************************************************************
* First Announcement and Call for Papers *
* TeX Users Group Annual Meeting *
**********************************************************************
1988 Marks the first time the TeX Users Group Annual Meeting will be
held outside the United States. The 3-day meeting will be conducted
as the highlight of a 2-week conference (August 15-26) during which
courses will be offered in TeX and TeX-related subjects. Details of
these courses will be announced at a later date.
*Call for Papers*
Since we plan to provide a printed copy of the proceedings of the
1988 meeting to each attendee, we are putting out the "call for
papers" earlier than usual. In order that a preliminary program
announcement may be published in a timely manner, it is requested
that you contact the Program Coordinator (name and address below) no
later than January 14, informing him of the title of the paper you
would like to present and the amount of time required. (The normal
time allotted to present a paper is up to 45 minutes.) A short
abstract of the proposed paper will be due March 18. Papers will be
selected at that time and authors notified as to whether their papers
have been accepted. The finished paper wil be due June 20. Here are
some suggested topics, though papers are not limited to these:
o Using TeX in production environments
o How we address problems caused by our environment and
requirements:
o large scale of operation;
o management of data---very large documents;
o deadlines and production pressures;
o device dependencies and independencies;
o using both cm and non-cm fonts.
o What goes where? Separating functions, e.g., driver,
preprocessor, etc.
o Human factors:
o presenting TeX to novices;
o interactive front ends, alternate approaches;
o document tools---characterizing similarities and differences
among documents. (Can it be done? How can you take advantage
of these features?)
o Unusual situations we overcame: limitations and strengths caused
by the characteristics of the problem, e.g., use of multiple
languages.
o Call for problems:
o Why don't you use TeX?
o How do you cope with things that TeX does not do, e.g.,
graphics?
o Inherent limitations of TeX.
o Problems that require general discussion.
Program Coordinator: Dean Guenther
Washington State University
Pullman, WA 99164-1220 USA
Phone: 509-335-0411
Bitnet: Guenther@Wsuvm1
*Calendar*
Preliminary notification.................................January 15
Abstract Due.............................................March 18
Papers Selected..........................................April 4
Finished Papers Due......................................June 20
Annual Meeting...........................................August 22--24
Abstracts and program inquiries should be directed to the Program
Coordinator.
Questions concerning any other aspect of the meeting (or the
conference) should be directed to the TUG Office: (401)272-9500
ext.232 (Eastern Time)
__6
**********************************************************************
* TeX font files *
**********************************************************************
By Don Hosek <DHOSEK@HMCVAX.BITNET>
One topic that often leads to confusion with users of TeX is the
large variety of font files used by TeX. One system might have TFM,
GF, PK, PXL, and RST font files and perhaps others. In this article,
I will attempt to describe the purpose of the various font files used
by TeX and related programs to reduce some of the confusion.
The TFM file is what TeX reads to get its font information, so this
is the single most important font file needed for typesetting. If TeX
cannot locate a TFM for the requested file, then the font is
effectively unavailable. The TFM file itself contains information on
the dimensions of all of the characters in a font (width, height,
depth, italic correction), as well as general information about the
font (name of the font family, and the font itself, weight of
characters (roman, light, bold, semi-bold, black, etc.), and for math
fonts other special information such as rule thickness, "recipes" for
putting together large characters from smaller pieces, and so forth).
Dimensions for the font are given in terms of the font's "design
size". The design size is the size any given font is intended to be
used at. For most of the computer modern fonts, the design size is
part of the font name: e.g., cmr10 has a design size of 10 points
while lasyb7 has a design size of 7 points. This use of the design
size means that TFM files are resolution- and magnification-
independent. If you load a font in using scaling (by the command
\font\xxx=cmr10 at 12pt or \font\xxx=lasy5 scaled 1440 for example),
you are effectively changing the design size as far as TeX is
concerned.
In theory, TeX can use any font for which a TFM file exists.
Technically speaking, this is true; however, in practice, the fonts
available to TeX are dependant also on what is available to the
Device Driver. This is where the assorted font formats, GF, PK, and
PXL come in. A font in one of these formats contains the Bitmap for
the character as it will be typeset on the page in a resolution-,
magnification-, and device- dependent format.
GF files are the output from MetaFont. The bitmap is stored in a
run-encoded image with additional information generated by MetaFont
sometimes included.
PK files are a compact format for the character Bitmap. On the
average, a font in PK format will take about 30-40% of the disk space
as the same font in GF format. This is desirable since it not only
reduces storage requirements, but can increase the speed of a device
driver since less disk access is necessary.
PXL files are an obsolete, but still common format for encoding the
character bitmap. The bitmap is not encoded in any way, so a PXL file
will generally take up about three times as much space as the same
GF file.
Two schemes are generally used to determine how to find the
appropriate character bitmap file for a font at some given size and
resolution. The first is to have the files in a "flat" directory (no
subdirectories). The size is then indicated by a numerical prefix on
the file type. For GF and PK files, this prefix is given by
resolution*magnification where resolution is the resolution of the
outpu device in dots per inch and magnification is the magnification
of the font with 1 being the normal size. Thus, the filename for
cmr10 scaled 1440 at 300 dpi would be CMR10.432PK or CMR10.432GF. For
PXL files, the convention is similar except the prefix is given by
resolution*magnification*5. The PXL file for the font above would be
CMR10.2160PXL. The multiplier of 5 exists for historical reasons:
back in the early days of TeX, the primary output device had a
resolution of 200 dpi so the PXL files were named to make the prefix
match the TeX magnification of the font.
The second scheme for naming the fonts uses subdirectories to arrange
the fonts. Rather than place the numerical prefix on the file type
(which is imposible on some operating systems such as MS DOS), it is
used in a directory name. The directory name will either be simply
the numerical prefix (for example, TeX$ROOT:[PIXEL.1500] on VMS
systems), or a combination of the numerical prefix and some other
string (on IBM PCs, two equivalent naming structures exist: PXLnnnn
with the nnnn being resolution*magnification*5 or DPInnn where nnn
is simply resolution*magnification). The font naming structure is
very system dependent, and sometimes (as is the case with PCs), will
vary from program to program.
For more information on TFM files, see either TeX: The Program,
Metafont: The Program, or the TeXware book. For more information on
GF, PK , or PXL files, see the TeXware book.
TeXware may be ordered from
Maria Code
Data Processing Services
1371 Sydney Drive
Sunnyvale CA 94087
There is a charge of $10 plus postage and handling for this document.
__7
**********************************************************************
* Indic and other Fonts for TeX *
**********************************************************************
By Dominik Wujastyk <dow@harvunxw.BITNET>
I first started compiling this Memorandum late in 1987, as a note to
myself and my immediate Indological colleagues. But it seemed little
extra work to include more information in it about other fonts I have
heard of, and doing this has greatly widened its usefulness to TeX
users in general.
*Introduction*
Here is a compilation of what I know of Indic fonts and METAfonts for
use with TeX. By the term "Indic fonts" I mean to include Devanagari,
with variants for Hindi, Marathi and Sanskrit, and fonts for Bengali,
Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Sinhalese, Urdu, Arabic,
Persian, Kashmiri (Sharada) and Tibetan. Although I am primarily
interested in fonts designed with Metafont, I would also like to
include information about any other Indic fonts that have been
successfully used with TeX, i.e., fonts with font metric files, and a
mechanism for the creation of the appropriate ligatures, be it within
the TFM file, or by means of a preprocessor. I have added an appendix
giving some information about additional TeX fonts known to me.
*Devanagari*
An early Devanagari font was designed with old Metafont (MF-in-SAIL)
by P. K. Ghosh during a visit to Stanford in 1982--83. Ghosh
published in 1983 a report on what he had done, as a Stanford
technical report. One of the valuable aspects of this work was that
Ghosh worked from Devanagari characters designed and drawn for him by
the famous Bombay calligrapher R. K. Joshi. Drawings of these, on a
grid, are published in the abovementioned Report. Unfortunately,
Ghosh's work was done in a now superseded version of Metafont, and
was not fully worked out at the keyboard level. It also lacked a
number of the conjunct consonant clusters necesary for fine Indian
typography. The report, however, remains of interest for general
background. The source code is available at University of Washington,
through Pierre MacKay (net address below), and presumably at Stanford
(try Emma Pease). Ghosh has said explicitly that he has no objection
to others doing further {ork on it. MacKay has said that one problem
with the Ghosh font is that it was arbitrarily developed in a
framework that bears no relation to the monotype-based character grid
used for Computer Modern, and that this is unfortunate, since it
makes it almost unusable in a bilingual environment. If you wish to
contact Ghosh he can be reached at the following address:
Pijush Ghosh,
National Centre for Software Technology,
Gulmohar Cross Road 9,
Juhu, Bombay 400 049,
INDIA
The only fully worked out version of Devanagari presently
available is that of Frans Velthuis: In November 1987, Frans Velthuis
completed version 1.0 of a Devanagari METAfont for TeX. He has
written Metafont code for all the aksharas necessary for Hindi, and
most of those for Sanskrit too, although in the latter case some
viramas are used. Frans intends to produce a special Sanskrit version
of his font in the future. Also included are the Devanagari numerals,
anusvara, virama, danda, candrabindu, visarga, avagraha, full stop
and superscript abbreviation circle.
Usage of this font: You prepare your TeX or LaTeX file normally,
and mark any Hindi portions, typed with a simple Roman
transliteration, with the font marker {\dn ... }. At the top of the
TeX file you \input a file called DNMACS; in LaTeX, a DEV.STY file is
provided which inputs the necessary macros, and automatically makes
necessary font size changes. Frans provides a preprocessor, DEVNAG,
written in Pascal (source not available), which reads your file and
converts the Hindi transliteration into the appropriate codes for
Frans's font. The converted file is then processed by TeX or LaTeX in
the normal way, and the resulting .DVI file can be printed on using a
standard DVI output program. The portions of Hindi text originally in
Roman transliteration will be printed in Devanagari, with full use of
conjunct consonants (sandhyaksharas), etc.
The quality of the fonts is excellent, with full calligraphic
moulding of the curves and loops, like some of the best handwriting
of manuscript scribes using a broad nib.
Terms of Availability: Frans will sell a set of four or five sizes
of the Devanagari fonts, at the printer resolution you specify (Epson
type 9-pin matrix, 24 pin matrix (180*180, 360*360, 180*360),
write-white laser, or write-black laser), together with the compiled
code (specify VAX/VMS, SUN, Cyber, IBM/PC, Atari ST) of DEVNAG, his
text preprocessor, for $119. The Metafont source programs are not at
present being made generally available.
Frans J. Velthuis
Postal address: Nyensteinheerd 267, 9736 TV Groningen,
The Netherlands
Bitnet: Velthuis@HGRRUG5.Bitnet
A note about Velthuis's Devanagari font appeared in TeXhax, 1987,
issue 93.
*Tamil*
According to Emma Pease (network response on 10 November 1987 to
my query in TeXhax 1987, issue 93) a basic set of Tamil characters
for TeX was designed at Stanford by T. S. Arthanari created when he
was at Stanford (May-July 1985). Emma has the source code but does
not want to distribute it further without his knowledge. His present
address is
Quality Informatics Labs, Ltd.
312, P. M. G. Complex
57, South Usman Rd.
Madras, 600 017
INDIA
(Address gotten by Emma from the Stanford Computer Science Dept.)
There are approximately 160 characters in several styles written
in a pre-release version of the current Metafont. Emma has only tried
producing characters for one style but had little difficulty in doing
so (a few commands had changed). They are rough but look fairly good.
I (Dominik) am writing to Mr. Arthanari today to ascertain his
intentions concerning his work, and especially to learn whether he is
willing and able to allow the source code of his Tamil font to be
distributed as public domain software. (February 3, 1988: still no
answer.)
Ramanujan, a graduate student who worked at Washington two years
ago, designed a Tamil font in Metafont84 (I think). According to
Pierre MacKay, the problem with this, as with Ghosh's Devanagari, is
that it was arbitrarily developed in a framework that bears no
relation to the monotype-based character grid used for Computer
Modern; this is unfortunate, since it makes it almost unusable in a
bilingual environment. Moreover, it does not make much use of the
macro capabilities of METAFONT, and although reasonably well
designed, the programming could perhaps be improved. MacKay says that
the people at Washington are continuing to work on it.
Pierre MacKay,
Phone: 206-543-6259; 545-2386.
Net: MacKay@june.cs.washington.edu
*Marathi*
No known font, but the addition of a few extra characters, such as
retroflex la, to Velthuis's Devanagari (which he is considering
doing) will make his font perfectly adequate for Marathi.
*Arabic*
On Mon, 18 Jan 88 Jacques J. Goldberg wrote to TeXhax (1988, issue
#07) giving details of a package giving the capability of printing
Hebrew. He said that an article is currently being written for
submission to TUGboat (see below under HEBREW). He also included a
brief note referring to a nearly completed Arabic font.
Goldberg said, "An Arabic font is three characters away from
completion, but the MetaFounders are near mid-year exams and unpaid,
so the Arabic font *might* show up around mid-March [1988]. (to be
precise, their font is Parsi, and some limited work is needed to
extend it to full Arabic)."
Regarding the Hebrew package of fonts and macros Goldberg says, "I
do not expect any fee from individuals, but I would be happy if
*institutions* that may use this package would later voluntarily
contribute $25 to $50 [payable to the Treasurer of the University]
to help my Department ... pay students employed on font
development." It is likely that the Arabic may be distributed on
similar terms.
Jacques J. Goldberg, phr00jg@technion.bitnet (the id has two zeroes
in it). If you are not on Bitnet, try:
<PHR00JG%TECHNION.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>,
or write to:
Prof. Jacques J. Goldberg,
Dept of Physics,
Technion-City,
32000 HAIFA, Israel.
Pierre MacKay and the Washington team have been working on an
Arabic implementation of TeX for some years. Their plans are
ambitious, and include building a customised version of TeX, to be
called XeTTeX, which has a built-in capability of handling
bidirectional text. Details of this change to TeX were published by
Don Knuth and Pierre MacKay in TUGboat Vol. 8, #1. This is an active
project, but MacKay says wistfully that Arabic remains a long-term
dream.
MacKay notes that the babel directory in the UnixTeX distribution
now contains a directory for Semitic languages with TeX-XeT.web and
other program fragments, which will be added to.
Phone: 206-543-6259; 545-2386.
Net: MacKay@june.cs.washington.edu
Further information on several of the items mentioned below can be
obtained from the following publication:
_Proceedings of the Eighth TeX Users Group Annual Meeting,
University of Washington, Seattle, August 24--26, 1987_, edited by
Dean Gunther (Providence: TUG, 1988).
*OCR-A*
Information given in TeXhax 1987, issue #106. Coded in Metafont84 by
Tor Lillqvist, VTT/ATK (Technical Research Centre of Finland,
Computing Services). Based on ISO Recommendation R1073, 1st ed., May
1969 (probably obsolete by now).
Tor Lillqvist may be contacted at at tml@fingate.BITNET,
tml@santra.UUCP, or mcvax!santra!tml.
On 1 Jun 87, Brandon S. Allbery (allbery@ncoast.UUCP) and Michael
Lichter (cwruecmp!sun!seismo!harvard!csvax.caltech.EDU!netsrc) posted
the METAFONT sources for the OCR-A on USENET as article 53 of
comp.sources.misc (Message-ID: <7632@brl-adm.ARPA>)
*Classical and Modern Greek*
Regular, bold, and typewriter versions of the Greek alphabet have
been coded in Metafont84 by Silvio Levy of Princeton, starting from
the Greek character set created by Don Knuth as part of the CM
family, but with all accents, breathings, correct spacing, and macros
to implement a convenient Roman transliteration for input.
The initial release of the Metafont source at the end of December
87 proved to contain difficulties, at least when attempts were made
to compile the fonts using the PC implementation of Metafont version
1.3. These difficulties seem to center on the levels of nested files
that a particular Metafont implementation allows. Levy says the
following:
If possible, you should create a version of Metafont with
max_in_open >= 8. The default value of this variable [5, I
think] is really unreasonably small, and barely enough for
making the CM fonts. In my case it would be possible but much
less orderly to use fewer levels of nesting.
Don't worry about a bad path in drawing the lowercase omega,
it comes out all right. I'll fix it when I have the time. I
think there's also a bad pen_pos somewhere.
Doug Henderson is working on a version of these Greek fonts for the
American Mathematical Society's APS typesetter, to be published in
TUGboat, and in the process he is revising the code. Levy is aware of
the difficulties and will be producing a revised release of the
fonts.
Silvio Levy: levy@Princeton.EDU
*Japanese*
An article on JTeX and the fonts appeared in TUGboat Volume 8, #2,
103--116.
Japanese fonts are available, together with a customised version
of TeX, called JTeX (by Yasuki Saito), and Japanese versions of LaTeX
(JLaTeX) and SliTeX (JSliTeX).
Hideki ISOZAKI, NTT Software Laboratories, Japan.
JUNET isozaki@ntt-20.ntt.junet
CSNET isozaki@ntt-20.ntt.jp
ARPA isozaki%ntt-20@sumex-aim.stanford.edu
or
Yasuki Saito, NTT Electrical Communications Laboratories, NTT
Corp., 3-9-11 Midori-cho Musashina-shi, Tokyo 180, Japan.
Phone: +81 (422) 59-2537
Net: yaski%ntt-20@sumex-aim.stanford.edu
*Chinese*
Work done on a Chinese METAfont by John Hobby is available by
anonymous FTP from june.cs.washington.edu, in the directory pub, as
the (large) file chinese.tar.Z. This was written up in one of the
issues of TUGboat between #5 and #7 (I think).
*Turkish*
Work on properly accented roman-letter Turkish fonts in Metafont
has been undertaken at the University of Washington by Pierre A.
MacKay and Walter Andrews. See the note in TUGboat Volume 8, #3,
p.260b. Pierre MacKay reports that the fonts lack only a reworking of
the italics for a first working release.
MacKay notes that the next Tugboat (the first 1988 issue) will
describe a Turkish hyphenation file.
Phone: 206-543-6259; 545-2386.
Net: MacKay@june.cs.washington.edu
Address:
Prof. Pierre A. MacKay,
Northwest Computer Support Group,
Univ. of Washington,
Mail Stop DW-10, Seattle, WA 98195.
*International Phonetic Alphabet*
Pierre MacKay reports (mail, Thu 21 Jan 88) that the University of
Washington team is working on a large set of phonetic characters.
Phone: 206-543-6259; 545-2386.
Net: MacKay@june.cs.washington.edu
*SPRITE.STY*
If you use LaTeX, and you only need one or two extra characters,
an ingenious and very easy way to generate them has been devised by
Martin Costabel <XBR1DA29@DDATHD21.BITNET>. It is a LaTeX style
called SPRITE, and the code and documentation were published on 14
November 1987 in issue V1N8 of TeXMaG, an online TeX magazine put out
by Don Hosek <DHOSEK@HMCVAX.BITNET>. Here is an extract from Martin's
documentation:
SPRITE.STY is a LaTeX macro that allows you to define in a
quick and dirty way your own symbols. You just have to define
the character as a dot pattern on your screen and enclose it by
\sprite and \endsprite commands. Of course, I know, TeX is
awfully professional and this primitive technique will not
provide results as good as a Metafont-designed character or
even one drawn using device-dependent \special commands, but if
you just need one special character or some cute little symbol
and you don't have the time/brains/MacIntosh/
superuser-privilege/money-for-AmS-fonts/orwhatever-is-necessary
for a professional solution, this might produce acceptable
results. Using SPRITE one "draws" the character to be defined
as a pattern of characters on a grid. The following example
shows how schwa is done:
%%%-------------------------------------------------------------------
\def\schwa{\FormOfSchwa\kern 1 pt} % Only necessary if \kern... is wanted
\sprite{\FormOfSchwa}(16,24)[0.4 em, 1 ex] % Resolution ca. 200x340 dpi.
:.......BBBBBBBBBB....... |
:....BBBB........BBBB.... |
:..BBB.............BBBB.. |
:.BB.................BBB. |
:.B...................BBB |
:.....................BBB |
:.....................BBB |
:.....................BBB |
:BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB |
:BBB..................BBB |
:BBB..................BBB |
:BBB.................BBB. |
:.BBB...............BBB.. |
:..BBBB...........BBBB... |
:....BBBBB.....BBBBB..... |
:.......BBBBBBBB......... |
\endsprite
%%%-------------------------------------------------------------------
To use this character in your LaTeX document, all you have to
do is use the command \schwa. This method uses a lot of
TeX's memory, and is only suitable for characters which are
used rarely, say a few times on a page.
[[Editor's note: See the end of the magazine for TeXMaG back issue
information]]
*Elvish*
On 4 Dec 1986 (sic) Mike Urban (urban@spp2.UUCP) released the
Metafont code for Tolkien's Tengwar through USENET (article 66 of
comp.text, Message-ID: <1191@spp2.UUCP>)
Mike said the following:
This shell archive contains METAFONT sources for a digitized
version of the Tengwar (Elvish script) created by J.R.R.
Tolkien. They have only been tested on a 300dpi laser printer.
No guarantee of the quality of either the code or the output is
offered. I'm not particularly satisfied with the quality of the
code (my first non-trivial attempt to use Metafont), but the
results look OK to me.
Michael Urban,
TRW Inc.,
R2/2009
One Space Park,
Redondo Beach, CA 90278
*Hebrew*
On Mon, 18 Jan 88 Jacques J. Goldberg wrote to TeXhax (1988, issue
#07) giving details of a package giving the capability of printing
Hebrew. He said that an article is currently being written for
submission to TUGboat.
Goldberg says that the package comprises:
o A set of fonts at 8, 9, 10, 12, 17 points in regular type, 10
points slanted and bold, and any magnification on request
(1000 off the shelf).
o A 100% portable preprocessor written in C (MS-DOS users who do
not have a compiler can get the .COM file)
o A small set of TeX macros.
o A sample file.
Hebrew words in English transliteration are inserted either by
typing first-typed-last-read with the font invoked, which is a pain
but "displays" in natural reading order, or by typing first typed
first read as argument of the \reflect macro given by D. Knuth and P.
MacKay, TugBoat Vol.8, #1, p.14. Long Hebrew sequences are typed, in
first-typed-first-read order, within delimiters. The preprocessor
copies non-Hebrew sequences to an auxiliary file. Hebrew sequences
are parsed into words, written to the auxiliary file one word at a
time after each word has been reflected. TeX is then invoked,
inputting the file which has the extra macro package, never the
user's input. This macro reads the auxiliary files, feeding TeX with
either English TeX as is or \line{}s adjusted by the macro to the
optimal number of Hebrew words.
Goldberg is--I suspect unnecessarily--diffident about the quality
of the fonts. He calls them "ugly fonts not good for anything else
than Office documents (drafts,reports,...)".
Goldberg is looking for a convenient table representing the 22
Hebrew letters by Latin letters. Then the preprocessor could
translate to standard ASCII the character codes used in Israel with
their special Hebrew terminals, so that anybody with an English-only
terminal could write in Hebrew.
Goldberg says, "I do not expect any fee from individuals, but I
would be happy if *institutions* that may use this package would
later voluntarily contribute $25 to $50 [payable to the Treasurer of
the University] to help my Department ... pay students employed on
font development."
Jacques J. Goldberg, phr00jg@technion.bitnet (the id has two zeroes
in it). If you are not on Bitnet, try:
<PHR00JG%TECHNION.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>, or write to:
Prof. Jacques J. Goldberg,
Dept of Physics,
Technion-City,
32000 HAIFA, Israel.
*Cyrillic*
The American Mathematical Society has developed a post revolution
Cyrillic font, in old Metafont78, and a set of macros to implement it
comfortably. Details of the font, with examples of its use, and grids
of the character set were published in TUGboat (somewhere about
issues #5--#7). [[Editor's note: the information mentioned above is
included with the fonts.]]
Barbara Beeton,
The American Mathematical Society,
P. O. Box 6248,
Providence, RI, 02940.
Tel: (401) 272-9500
Arpanet: bnb@xx.lcx.MIT.edu
Pierre MacKay reports that the Washington team is working on Old
Russian (more or less Old Church Slavonic, but specifically designed
for the Slovo).
Phone: 206-543-6259; 545-2386.
Net: MacKay@june.cs.washington.edu
Address:
Prof. Pierre A. MacKay,
Northwest Computer Support Group,
Univ. of Washington,
Mail Stop DW-10, Seattle, WA 98195.
The Metafoundry offers "a Slavic package of Cyrillic and Slavic
characters in Roman and sans serif styles compatible with our English
fonts." The fonts are supported for 300dpi positive imaging machines
(i.e., Canon, HP, Apple and certain other laser printers.)
These fonts are available on a commercial basis, but I don't
remember the prices. In the order of $100, I think.
The Metafoundry,
6565 Frantz Road,
Dublin,
Ohio 43017.
*Old English*
Pierre MacKay reports that the Washington team is working on an Old
English font.
Phone: 206-543-6259; 545-2386.
Net: MacKay@june.cs.washington.edu
Address:
Prof. Pierre A. MacKay,
Northwest Computer Support Group,
Univ. of Washington,
Mail Stop DW-10, Seattle, WA 98195.
*Miscellaneous Font Collections*
The Austin Code Works has a large collection of bitmap fonts that
work with TeX, and which were originally created at SAIL (Stanford
Artificial Intelligence Lab) in the late 60s or early 70s (I think).
Because these fonts are not coded in up-to-date Metafont, what you
get is what you get, i.e., you cannot change the size or resolution
of the fonts. I believe they are all (or most) 200dpi fonts. Bear in
mind that although you might get, say, a Hebrew font, there are no
accompanying macros to implement it at the keyboard level.
The "KST Fonts by Les Earnest" are described thus in the ACW
handout:
Originally developed for the Xerox XGP printer, the 137 KST
fonts include Hebrew, Greek, Old English, Old German, Cyrillic,
hand[sign alphabet], and Tengwar alphabets in addition to the
Roman alphabet in a large number of eclectic styles. Specify
TeX or bitmap format. Both come with an extraction and display
program.
The fonts include such essentials as single character fonts for
the Stanford and MIT logos (separate fonts for each, naturally), two
views of Snoopy, two views of Starship Enterprise, three fonts of
chess pieces, several sans serif fonts, and what looks as if it might
be a very tiny Arabic font. The fonts cost $30.
The Austin Code Works,
11100 Leafwood Lane,
Austin Texas 78750-3409 USA.
Tel.: (512) 258-0785
BBS: (512) 258-8831
FidoNet: 1:382/12
Net: acw!info@uunet.uu.net
The Metafoundry offers several complete families of TeX fonts. The
main one on offer is a sans serif which is "lighter and more compact"
than the Computer Modern sans serif (CMSS) designed by Richard
Southwell and included in all TeX distributions. It also includes
math symbols, math italic and extensible characters.
Also offered are a decorative package, outline fonts, black letter
fonts and a copperplate script font. The fonts are supported for
300dpi positive imaging machines (i.e., Canon, HP, Apple and certain
other laser printers.)
The fonts are distributed as bitmaps (not Metafont code) on a
commercial basis.
For product catalogues send a check for $6 ($15 outside USA or
Canada) to:
The Metafoundry,
6565 Frantz Road,
Dublin, Ohio 43017.
*Custom Fonts*
If you are desparate for a TeX font which does not yet exist, why not
commission a Metafont programmer to create it?
Neenie Billawala advertises her services as a Metafont consultant
in TUGboat. She is responsible for creating the fine calligraphic
capitals that are part of the Computer Modern typeface family (in the
cmsy fonts).
Neenie Billawala,
2014 Colony #8,
Mt. View, CA 94043
Tel: (415) 965-0643
*List of Interested Parties*
The following people would be glad to be kept informed of any news
concerning the development of Indic METAfonts or any other Indic
fonts usable with TeX. Indic fonts include Devanagari, with variants
for Hindi, Marathi and Sanskrit, and fonts for Bengali, Tamil,
Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Sinhalese, Urdu, Arabic, Persian,
Kashmiri (Sharada) and Tibetan:
Dominik Wujastyk DOW@Harvunxw.Bitnet or DOW@WJH12.Harvard.Edu
Emma Pease Emma@CSLI.Stanford.Edu
Ajit Ranade SO405000@BROWNVM.Bitnet
Frans Velthuis Velthuis@HGRRUG5.Bitnet
Pierre MacKay MacKay@june.cs.Washington.Edu
Michael Inman minman@csli.stanford.edu
Steven Osborne osborne@unb.bitnet
These individuals are already in touch with each other through
TeXhax, and person-to-person. If you wish to add your name to this
list, which is maintained by Dominik Wujastyk, please send him your
network (or other) address. Once the list exceeds critical mass (to
be decided by me) I shall stop distributing the memo myself, and hand
it over to be a file in the TeXhax collection, or some other such
source, where it can be picked up by FTP as required.
Dominik Wujastyk
Until July 1988:
Quincy House #101,
Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA,
Thereafter:
Wellcome Institute,
183 Euston Road,
London NW1 2BP, England.
__8
**********************************************************************
* TeX for the Mac *
**********************************************************************
by Don Hosek <DHOSEK@HMCVAX.BITNET>
additional experimentation by Eric Zager <EZAGER@HMCVAX.BITNET>
*Disclaimer*: Don Hosek and Eric Zager have no connections to
Addison-Wesley or Kellerman & Smith. The opinions expressed in this
review are primarily those of Mr. Hosek with some input from Mr.
Zager.
TeXtures v1.0. Requirements: Apple Macintosh 512, Macintosh Plus,
Macintosh SE, Macintosh II, or Macintosh XL with two floppy drives or
hard disk. Prints on either an Apple Imagewriter, Apple Laserwriter,
or PostScript typesetter. Cost: $495; multi-use licenses available.
Order from Addison-Wesley: TeXtures, EMSD Marketing, Addison-Wesley
Publishing Company, 12 Jacob Way, Reading, MA 01867. Phone:
(617) 944-6795
TeXtures is Addison-Wesley's implementation of TeX for the
Macintosh. In general, the implementation is faithful to Knuth's
original and the documentation is adequate, although not as well
organized as it could be.
The editor provided by TeXtures includes a few nice features not
offered by some others, such as go to a specified line (of course,
those of us who have been using large computers for any length of
time are seldom impressed), and seems to do the job fairly well.
Cursor movement using the Mac's cursor keys is a bit on the slow side
and I found myself using the mouse a bit more than I prefer to
perform cursor movements.
The typesetting process is relatively painless. The on-screen
dialogue and journal file familiar to users of TeX on other systems
have been placed into a "TeX log" window which gives the traditional
TeX output as well as keeping a commentary on the side of how far
into the current file TeX has gotten. On our VAX, I seldom use the
interactive error handling capabilities of TeX since I tend to forget
to fix the TeX souce file when I do. With TeXture's TeX log window,
it's possible to make changes to the TeX source file without stopping
TeX itself.
After TeX has finished with its work, TeXture's previewer is
automatically invoked. The previewer is reasonably fast and allows
the user to magnify (or shrink) the document by several factors. The
implementation's use of windows is again useful since it allows the
user to edit his TeX source while remaining in the previewer.
Graphics included are also shown in the previewer.
INITeX has been included into TeXtures invisibly. If TeXtures
encounters a \dump statement, it automatically switches into INITeX
mode and dumps a format file.
Graphics inclusion is simple and fairly easy to use. The manual
includes several examples of including illustrations into documents.
All that is lacking, in my opinion, is the presence of simple
graphics primitive \special commands (for example arcs lines and so
forth), but these should hopefully appear when the \special standard
is finished.
This implementation of TeX is certainly a step above a
minimum-level version of TeX. However, in some ways it was a bit
disappointing. For example, it would have been nice to have more of
a WYSIWYG implementation of TeX (Arbortext has done something along
these lines with their program, The Publisher, which apparently
allows WYSIWYG TeX as well as an escape to the familiar command-style
environment. I haven't seen the program myself, so I cannot make any
bold comments). Also, the copy that I received seemed to be missing
many fonts that I would think might be commonly used (such as cmr10
at 14.4pt). For the mainframe user of TeX, TeXtures is certainly a
fine program (albeit a bit expensive). For the user familiar with
Macintosh software, however, TeXtures may seem a bit too esoteric for
the few benefits that are apparent at the surface (easy math, ability
to do generalized design of a document and so forth), and with Mac
word-processing programs becoming more sophisticated, the lack of a
more friendly interface may make TeXtures unpalatable to the new TeX
user.
__9
**********************************************************************
* Second Annual Readers Survey Results *
**********************************************************************
The response to the second annual readers survey are in. The response
rate is down to 57 out of 623 (9.1%) from last year's 23 out of 51
(45.1%). My friend Kyle, who took psychology last semester, says that
this means that the results probably aren't very useful (something
about only people with really strong opinions responding).
Nevertheless, I'm going to go ahead with printing the results (such
as they are).
The national breakdown of respondants was USA: 64.9% (the big
states were California, New York, and Massachusetts), West Germany:
12.3%, Canada: 7.0%, Netherlands: 5.3%, and Austria, Denmark,
Finland, Italy, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom with 1.8% each.
Listserv lists the following additional countries: Belgium, Chile,
France, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Norway, Spain, and Sweden.
Two thirds of the respondants spoke English as their native
language. Behind this were German (14%), Dutch (7%), and Chinese,
Danish, Italian, Marathi (Indian), Russian, and Swedish (1.8% each).
The median age was 32, and 94.6% of those responding are male.
The vast majority of those responding were from educational
institutions, although there were also individuals working in
government, commercial, and non-profit positions as well. The most
common position held was computing staff, followed by research.
Students out-numbered academic faculty by a 5 to 4 ratio.
The most common field was computer science/computer engineering
(42.1%) followed by mathematics (28.7%) and physics (10.5%).
Most of the respondants heard about TeXMaG either from Netmonth
or TeXhax (or both) while the PCTeX bulletin board, local
publications and so forth were responsible for many others learning
about the magazine. For the curious, the percent who said that I
publicize TeXMaG shamelessly was 15.8%.
This year, the IBM PC has jockeyed into the first place position.
77.2% of the respondants said that they used TeX on their PC. Second
place is held by VAX/VMS (59.7%). IBM VM/CMS holds third place
(26.3%), fourth place is BSD Unix (22.8%), and fifth by the Apple
Macintosh (19.3%). Also-rans are: Amdahl MTS (1.8%), CDC Cyber
(1.8%), Data General MV (3.5%), HP 9000/500 (1.8%), IBM MVS (7.0%),
IBM VM/UTS (3.5%), Modcomp Classic (1.8%), Prime (1.8%), Siemens
BS2000 (1.8%), Sperry 1100 (1.8%), Symbolics Lisp (3.5%), System V
Unix (3.5%), Apollo Workstation (3.5%), Atari ST (8.8%), AT&T System
V (3.5%), DEC Rainbow (1.8%), Siemens PC MX2 (1.8%), Sun Workstation
(12.3%), VAXstation/Unix (3.5%), VAXstation/VMS (3.5%).
The most common output device was the Epson Dot Matrix printer,
followed closely by PostScript printers, the HP Laserjet Plus and the
DEC LN03. Device dependant articles on these devices might be in
order in the near future.
A greater percentage of respondants are using version 2.0 or later
with 2 having already made the upgrade to version 2.9. One respondant
is using Common TeX, a C translation of TeX.
Most of the respondants read TeXhax and over half read TUGboat.
One TeX mailing list not mentioned in the survey, was brought to my
attention. TeX_D-L, a German language TeX discussion list.
Information on this list is included at the end of TeXMaG.
What you want most, according to the survey, is information on TeX
services and discussion groups on the networks. In the coming issues,
I will try to hilight some of the assorted services available (by the
way, this is where YOU, the reader can be helpful. I don't have
access to the internet for FTP, and I don't have a personal computer
or modem, so much of what's out there is inaccessible to me. For
example, who knows whats available from Score.Stanford.Edu? How can
it be obtained and by whom?). Next on the wish list is reviews of TeX
products (Look! there's one already in this issue!), followed by
Metafont examples and plain TeX macro writing. General priorities
were in order of decreasing desire, Metafont, Plain TeX, LaTeX, WEB,
and AmS-TeX. Tutorials are least important. Some of the additional
topics suggested were: DVI driver theory, Graphics merging, TeXtures
fonts (just what are those little suitcase things and how can I make
them), information on fonts available, TeX vs. other text formatters,
new LaTeX stuff, what exactly are all those files?, AMS document
styles, driver standards, CMS TeX, indexing, BibTeX, SliTeX, \output,
Driver Availability, SGML, and graphics standards.
To close, a few comments from the surveys:
"More, bigger, better. For the moment I vote for beating on
people for anything and taking all the good stuff, no matter what
aspect of TeX is covered. Of course, since I don't have to do the
beating, this is easy for me to say." -Jon Radel
<6033138@Pucc.Bitnet>
"Since there is so much more (and more frequent) Information being
found in TeXhax and TUGboat, I think that TeXMaG is not worth the
effort of maintaining, and it will never reach the high level of
quality of those other two media. Why spread your (and our) efforts
into something like TeXMaG instead of concentrating on TUGboat and
TeXhax and helping B. Beeton and M. Brown with their work (to make
their media even more complete and up-to-date etc.)?" -Dr. Hubert
Partl <Z3000pa@Awituw01>
"Maybe I'm not reading my magazines well enough, but I'd like to
have a regular survey on what fonts are (freely) available. Sometimes
you hear of people looking for a certain font, and sometimes they
find someone who knows where to find it. You also do hear about
font-collections everywhere, but I have the impression it isn't very
centralized yet. Or am I wrong and just paying no attention?" -Redmer
Alma <Redmer@Hgrrug5>
"Can you include some sort of index with your next TeXMaG (since
they appear to be semi-irregular) so we can tell if we're missing
some? Keep up the good work! TeXMaG is a nice, relaxed alternative to
the often frenetic TeXhax." -Charles Antonelli
<Cja@Crim.Eecs.Umich.Edu>
"Many people are unsure how to get TeX up and running on a given
machine. There are apparently several places to get ahold of TeX,
e.g. Washington, Stanford, K&S, etc. This leads to confusion."
-Kevin McCurley <MccurLey@Uscvm.Bitnet>
"One valuable thing that TeXMaG provides is a more elementary
introduction to TeX fancy features for neophytes. Neophytes find
TeXhax a bit intimidating, and full of stuff they don't care about
(like how to get the device driver for a printer they've never heard
of running on a system they've never heard of). I am currently the
resident TeX expert at UIC... and now that we have a viable TeX
running on our mainframe, we are getting a lot more neophytes using
TeX, and TeXMaG will (I hope) provide a more useful resource for them
than TeXhax. I'm running a TeX Show 'n' Tell Seminar on campus (the
idea is that people come in with problems, and we talk about them),
and I'll be encouraging people to look at TeXMaG." -Richard Larson
<U09254@Uicvm>
"Very happy to recieve my issue of TeXmag each month but I wonder
if there is enough cooperation with TugBoat... I see TeXMag as
complementing TugBoat... in TeXMag short, timely articles and macros
of all descriptions including those published in TugBoat... In
TugBoat longer, illustrated, less time-sensitive articles." -Chris
Carruthers <Cjc@Uottawa.Bitnet>
"BITNET/EARN is a better and safer distribution medium than
others. For instance we have difficulties getting files from the
Rochester style file collection. It would be nice to get some style
file or other as part of the magazine." -Georg Bayer
<C0030001@Dbstu1>
"It would be helpful if there was a central source on availability
of style files, drivers, etc. Also, there are often references to
items which are probably familiar to 'older' readers of TeXhax and
TeXMaG, but newer readers could benefit from 'central source' idea
above. For example, the words 'Rochester Collection' doesn't mean
much to me, and 'just FTP the files' isn't much help to us bitnet
users. I realize that some of this may be beyond the scope of
TeXMag." -Darrel Hankerson <HANK@AUDUCVAX>
__10
**********************************************************************
* TeX Mysteries and Puzzles *
**********************************************************************
In TeXhax V88 #14, I put forth the following puzzle:
In _Tom Jones_, (Penguin Classics, Middlesex England. 1987.), each
chapter has a long title (up to six lines) that is typeset with
all but the last line being set flush right and flush left, and
the last line centered. Viz,
A Dialogue between the Landlady, and Susan the Chambermaid,
proper to be read by all Innkeepers, and their Servants;
with the Arrival, and affable Behaviour of a beautiful
young Lady; which may teach Persons of Condition how they
may acquire the Love of the whole World.
Can these chapter headings be typeset using TeX's line breaking
algorithm, and if so how?
I received several (five) solutions to my query (to give credit where
credit is due, the respondants were David G. Cantor
<dgc@math.ucla.edu>, Frank Holzwarth <A64@Dhdurz1.Bitnet>, Jerry
Leichter <Leichter@YaLevms.Bitnet>, Jim Walker
<N410109@Univscvm.BITNET> and an unnamed person from Arbortext
<Gpg@Arbortext.Com>.
The general solution was to box the paragraph and split off the
last line, unbox that and center it. Frank Holzwarth recognized that
the problem was similar to one that he encountered when he attempted
to get lengthy table of contents lines. He was getting something
like:
%values between ">" and "<" give the columnwidth
>myindent<> hsize - myindent - 3 true cm <> 3cm <
1.1 NORMAL HEADING ....................... 77
1.2 ABNORMAL HEADING, BECAUSE IT WRAPS
AROUND SOME LINES; SO THE LEADERS
COME MISPLACED .... 88
I wanted to get *leaders above here* impossible.
His solution was: "the text of the heading goes inside a scratch-box,
which can be deleted line by line with \lastbox and be measured to
overlay at last a leaderfilled box with the right dimension. And it
works fine. I didn't test it at page breaks, so it may work wrong in
that case."
The original macro looked like:
%%%------------- tear neatly -------------------------------------%%%%
\def\leaderfill{\kern0.5em\leaders\hbox to 0.5em{\hss.\hss}\hfill\kern
0.5em}% right out of the 'bible'
\newcount\nmbroflines \newbox\scratch \newbox\rule \newdimen\myindent
%caution! \myindent needs to be set first, say e.g.
\myindent=1.5true cm
\def\hugeheader#1#2#3{\bgroup\parskip=0pt
\setbox\scratch=\vbox{{\advance\hsize by-\myindent
\advance\hsize by-3true cm\noindent#2\par}% to prevent blanks
\global\nmbroflines=\prevgraf}% 'you never know'
\unvbox\scratch \setbox\rule=\lastbox
\loop\ifnum\nmbroflines>1
\unskip\unpenalty\setbox\scratch=\lastbox
\advance\nmbroflines by-1\repeat
\setbox\scratch=\hbox{\unhbox\rule\unskip\unskip\unpenalty}%
{\par\advance\hsize by-3true cm\hangindent\myindent
\noindent\hbox to\myindent{#1\hss}#2\par}%
\vskip-\baselineskip
\line{\kern\myindent\kern\wd\scratch\leaderfill#3}\egroup}
% usage:
\line{\hbox to\myindent{1.0\hfil}Normal Heading\leaderfill 66}
\hugeheader{1.1}{Abnormal heading of a chapter about giant holes all
over Australia caused by elephants interbreeded with local kangaroos}%
{77}
%%%------------- cut along this line ----------------------------%%%%%
He continued, "To solve your puzzle now one only has to do a
\centerline with the last line thus the first that is removed by
\lastbox as follows"
%%%--- cut it, tex it and wonder ---------------------------------%%%%
\newbox\all \newbox\part
\def\puzzletitle#1{\bigskip\bgroup\parskip=0pt
\setbox\all=\vbox{\noindent #1\par}% prevent blanks 'you never know'
\setbox\all=\vbox{\unvbox\all \global\setbox\part=\lastbox
\unskip\unpenalty\unskip}% 'yes I do!'
\setbox\part=\hbox{\unhbox\part\unskip\unskip\unpenalty}% again
\box\all\par\centerline{\box\part}\egroup\medskip\noindent}% and again...
last words of the previous paragraph.
\puzzletitle{A Dialogue between the Landlady, and Susan the
Chambermaid, proper to be read by all Innkeepers, and their
Servants; with the Arrival, and affable Behaviour of a beautiful
young Lady; which may teach Persons of Condition how they may
acquire the Love of the whole World.}
Normal beginning of this thrilling paragraph.
\bye
%%%------------- finished ----------------------------------------%%%%
David Cantor's solution was a bit simpler.
%%%------------- Cut with care ---------------------------------------
% Here is the desired macro. It is called with one argument,
% the text that is to be the heading. It assumes Plain TeX.
% The argument of \hsize can be whatever is desired, of course.
\newbox\jx\newbox\jy
\def\jones#1{\hsize3.75in\par\setbox\jx\vbox{\noindent\strut
\ignorespaces#1\par\global\setbox\jy\lastbox}%
\vbox{\unvbox\jx\par \line{\hfill\unhbox\jy\hfill}}}
% Here is an example of its use.
\jones{
A Dialogue between the Landlady, and Susan the Chambermaid, proper to be
read by all Innkeepers, and their Servants; with the Arrival, and
affable Behaviour of a beautiful young Lady; which may teach Persons of
Condition how they may acquire the Love of the whole World.}
%%%-------------------------------------------Guess what to do here---
However, the most elegant solution was courtesy of Jim Walker who
came up with the following:
%%%----------Remove and admire----------------------------------------
\def\weirdtitle#1{%
\setbox0=\vbox{\noindent #1}%
\setbox1=\vbox{%
\unvbox0
\setbox2=\lastbox
\line{\hfill\unhbox2 \hfill}%
}%
\unvbox1
}%
%%%---------Neat, isn't it?-------------------------------------------
I had so much fun with this, I've decided to make it a regular
feature in TeXMaG. Readers are welcome to send me their
puzzles/curiosities for this column. By the way here's the next
puzzle:
The Singapore tourism board (or some such entity) has ads in the
Los Angeles Times in which two or three paragraphs are typeset with
the typeface alternating between roman and italics with every
character (spaces don't count). To illustrate, let's pretend that an
uppercase letter represents italic type and lowercase represents
roman. Then the phrase "come to Singapore" would be typeset as: "cOmE
tO sInGaPoRe". All punctuation is typeset in roman. The text typeset
in this manner may span several paragraphs and could conceivably
include TeX control sequences. The goal is to find an elegant way to
typeset text in the style of this ad. [[Disclaimer: The editor has no
association with the Singapore tourism board. In fact, he's never
been further west than Santa Monica]]
__11
**********************************************************************
* The Toolbox *
**********************************************************************
Lately, there has been a plethora of requests in TeXhax for a macro
to typeset dropped initial letters in paragraphs. The following LaTeX
style file was adapted from a macro written by David G. Cantor
<dgc@math.ucla.edu> by Dominik Wujastyk <dow@harvunxw.bitnet>. The
style file is pretty much self-explanatory, so here it is:
%%%%%%%%------Cut Here------------------------------------------------
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% DROP.DOC <February 17, 1988>
% Macro for dropping and enlarging the first letter(s) of a paragraph.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%
% Macro written by David G. Cantor, and published Fri, 12 Feb 88, in
% TeXhax, 1988 #16.
% Internet: dgc@math.ucla.edu
% UUCP: ...!{ihnp4, randvax, sdcrdcf, ucbvax}!ucla-cs!dgc
%
% Modified for use with LaTeX by Dominik Wujastyk, February 17, 1988
% Internet: dow@wjh12.harvard.edu
% Bitnet: dow@harvunxw.bitnet
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%
% This LaTeX macro is for dropping and enlarging the first letter(s) of a
% paragraph. The argument may be one or more letters.
%
% Here is an example of its usage:
%
% \documentstyle[drop]{article}
% \begin{document}
% \drop{IN} THE beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Now the
% earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the
% deep; and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.
% \end{document}
%
% Which will produce something along these lines:
%
% I I\ I THE beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
% I I \ I Now the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was
% I I \I upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God hov-
% ered over the face of the waters.
%
% In the first instance the macro will pause during LaTeX processing and
% ask you for the font you wish to use for you drop capital. When you
% have something that looks good, then comment out box one in DROP.STY,
% and comment in box two, replacing "cmr10 scaled \magstep5" with the font
% of your choice.
%
% In my opinion (DW) there are no fonts available in the standard
% TeX/LaTeX set that are ideal for this use, unless you go down to 9pt or % 8p
t for your text face, and this is too small. If you have Metafont you
% should consider generating a cmr17 font at a magstep of two (about 25pt)
% or three (about 30pt), or even more, depending on the point size of your
% main text. Why not go the whole hog and design some really fancy
% capitals from scratch!
%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% BOX ONE %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\typein[\dropinitialfont]{Font for Dropped initial:} %
\font\largefont \dropinitialfont %
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% BOX TWO %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%\font\largefont= cmr10 scaled \magstep5 %
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\def\drop#1#2{{\noindent
\setbox0\hbox{\largefont #1}\setbox1\hbox{#2}\setbox2\hbox{(}%
\count0=\ht0\advance\count0 by\dp0\count1\baselineskip
\advance\count0 by-\ht1\advance\count0by\ht2
\dimen1=.5ex\advance\count0by\dimen1\divide\count0 by\count1
\advance\count0 by1\dimen0\wd0
\advance\dimen0 by.25em\dimen1=\ht0\advance\dimen1 by-\ht1
\global\hangindent\dimen0\global\hangafter-\count0
\hskip-\dimen0\setbox0\hbox to\dimen0{\raise-\dimen1\box0\hss}%
\dp0=0in\ht0=0in\box0}#2}
%%%-------Terminate cutting-------------------------------------------
__12
**********************************************************************
* TeXMaG Index *
**********************************************************************
Below is a cumulative index for issues V1N1 to V2N2 inclusive. An
article is referred to by VxNy.z where x is the volume number, y the
issue number and z the article number (designated by __z preceeding
the article).
advertising V2N2.10 weird paragraphs V2N2.10
AmS-TeX V2N2.4 MFware V1N6.5
\anti V2N1.9 network services
Applied Mathematics DECnet V2N1.2
Letters V2N2.4 V2N2.2
article ideas V1N2.2 LaTeX-Style V1N1.4
V1N5.3 listserv@tamvm1 V2N1.3
V2N2.9 V2N2.3
BibTeX V2N1.8 TeX-L V2N1.3
\bra V1N8.6 TeXhax V2N1.3
\bracket V1N8.6 \noalign V1N8.3
\citer V2N1.8 outline.sty V1N7.3
\dlap V1N3.4 outlines V1N7.3
V1N6.6 PC-OUTLINE V1N7.3
V1N7.5 PCTeX BBS V1N8.1
\dowcomp V1N5.5 V2N1.7
drop.doc V2N2.11 plain TeX
dropped initial V2N2.11 and BibTeX V2N1.8
DVI drivers intricacies of pars V2N2.10
announcements readers' survey V1N1.2
DVIview V1N7.4 V2N1.6
driver lists V2N2.3 results V1N2.2
standards V1N5.4 V2N2.9
eqnarray V1N8.3 resumemac.tex V1N3.2
European TeX conference V2N1.4 V1N6.2
\EV V1N8.6 resumes V1N3.2
\fakebold V1N1.3 V1N6.2
fill in the blanks V1N7.2 reviews
\fnote V1N1.3 TeXtures V2N2.8
fonts Singapore V2N2.10
faking them V1N1.3 \slasha V1N8.6
V1N8.4 \slashb V1N8.6
V2N2.7 \special standards V1N5.4
files V2N2.6 \split V1N4.5
fonts available V2N2.7 V1N5.2
fortran.tex V1N2.4 \sprite V1N8.4
grovelling V1N5.3 sprite.sty V1N8.4
headlines V2N2.7
plain TeX V1N2.4 subeqn.sty V1N4.5
V1N5.5 subequations V1N4.5
V1N6.6 TeX implementations
index V2N2.12 Macintosh V1N5.2
\ket V1N8.6 V2N2.8
laps.tex V1N3.4 TeX Users Group
LaTeX conference V1N4.2
dropped initial V2N2.11 V2N2.5
eqnarray environment V1N8.3 courses V1N4.2
introduction V1N3.3 V1N6.3
style collection V1N1.4 V2N1.5
useful internal macros V1N7.5 TeXtures V1N5.2
V1N8.2 V2N2.8
macros TeXware V1N6.5
LaTeX V2N2.6
sprite characters V1N8.4 timeline.sty V1N7.5
subequations V1N4.5 V1N8.2
timelines V1N7.5 timelines V1N7.5
V1N8.2 V1N8.2
plain TeX toc.tex V1N2.3
anti-particles V2N1.9 TUGboat V1N4.3
bibliographies V2N1.8 V1N6.4
day of week V1N5.5 V1N8.5
fill in the blanks V1N7.2 \ulap V1N3.4
footnotes V1N1.3 V1N6.6
headlines V1N2.4 \undertilde V1N8.6
V1N5.5 \unot V1N7.6
V1N6.6 WEB
outlines V1N7.3 formatting
program listings V1N4.2 ss for identifiers V1N7.6
resumes V1N3.2 standard programs V1N6.5
V1N6.2 webmacss.tex V1N7.6
side by side pars V1N4.5 \xlap V1N3.4
V1N5.2 \xsplit V1N4.5
table of contents V1N2.3 V1N5.2
V2N2.10 \ylap V1N3.4
timelines V1N7.5 \zlap V1N3.4
__13
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 sporadicly, and
the editor likes to think that its monthly so the readers humor him.
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> (being sure to mention that they wish to
subscribe to TeXMaG), and JANET subscribers should send requests to
be added to the list to Peter Abbott, <ABBOTTP@UK.AC.ASTON.MAIL>.
Back issues are available for anonymous FTP in the file
BBD:TEXMAG.TXT on SCIENCE.UTAH.EDU. BITNET users may obtain back
issues from LISTSERV@TCSVM, or from UBSERVE@UBVMSC (see below). Janet
users may obtain back issues from Peter Abbott (e-mail address above)
and DECNET/SPAN users may obtain them from the Decnet repository (see
below). They may also be obtained 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@Score.Stanford.EDU>. Internet
subscribers may subscribe by sending a request to
<TeXHAX-REQUEST@Score.Stanford.EDU>. JANET subscribers should send
subscription requests to <texhax-request@uk.ac.ucl.cs.nss>. 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. Australian users
should send subscription requests to <munnari!elz@uunet.uu.net>
Japanese users should send subscription requests to
<takagi%icot.jp@relay.cs.net>. Back issues are available by anonymous
FTP from Score.Stanford.Edu and from the Bitnet servers
Listserv@Tamvm1 and Ubserve@Ubvmsc (see below).
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@JUNE.CS.WASHINGTON.EDU>. Requests to be added or deleted
from the mailing list should be sent to
<Unix-TeX-Request@JUNE.CS.WASHINGTON.EDU>.
UKTeX. A U.K. version of TeXhax. To subscribe, send a note to Peter
Abbott at <info-tex-request@uk.ac.aston.mail>.
TeXline. A TeX newsletter edited by Malcolm Clark. To subscribe, send
a note to <texline@uk.ac.ic.cc.vaxa>.
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
LaTeX-style collection. A collection of LaTeX files is available for
FTP and mail access at cayuga.cs.rochester.edu. To obtain files via
FTP, login to cayuga.cs.rochester.edu (192.5.53.209) as anonymous,
password guest and go to the directory public/latex-style (where the
files are). The file 00index contains a brief description of current
directory contents. If your site does not have FTP access, you may
obtain files by mail by sending a message to
latex-style@cs.rochester.edu with the subject "@file request". The
first line of the body of the message should be an @. The second line
should contain a mail address from rochester TO you (for example, if
you are user@site.bitnet, the second line should be
user%site.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu). The lines that follow should be
the filenames you desire and the last line should also contain only
an @.
LISTSERV@DHDURZ1 has file archives of interest to TeX users. Included
are the Beebe drivers and contents of the LaTeX style collection, as
well as some TeX macros. Many files are available only in German.
LISTSERV@TAMVM1 also has file archives that may be of interest to TeX
users on BITNET, including the files from the Score.Stanford.EDU FTP
directories and back issues of TeXHAX. For a list of files available,
send the following command to LISTSERV@TAMVM1: GET TeX FILELIST.
UBSERVE@UBVMSC has back issues of TeXhax and TeXMaG available to
Bitnet users. Send the command DIR to Ubserve@Ubvmsc in an
interactive message (commands via mail are not currently accepted)
for a list of available files.
DECNET. There is a TeX file collection on DECnet accessible from
DECnet and Spam. Available files include the Beebe DVI drivers, the
LaTeX style collection, and back issues of TeXhax, TeXMag, and UKTeX.
For more information, contact Marisa Luvisetto (DECNET:
<39937:luvisetto>, Bitnet: <LUVISETTO@IBOINFN.BITNET>) or Massimo
Calvani <CALVANI@VAXFPD.INFNET>.
JANET. Peter Abbott keeps an archive of TeX-related files available
for FTP access. For more information send mail to
<Abbottp@Uk.Ac.Aston.Mail>.
Special thanks to those who contributed to this issue, as well as Dan
Ostercamp and his band of merry men.
Character code reference:
Upper case letters: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Lower case letters: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Digits: 0123456789
Square, curly, angle braces, parentheses: [] {} <> ()
Backslash, slash, vertical bar: \ / |
Punctuation: . ? ! , : ;
Underscore, hyphen, equals sign: _ - =
Quotes--right left double: ' ` "
"at", "number" "dollar", "percent", "and": @ # $ % &
"hat", "star", "plus", "tilde": ^ * + ~