UKTeX V88 #27 Friday 19 August 1988
VMS WEAVE
overheard...
PostScript emulation for common printers
how to get ascii code of a char in TeX?
TeXserver
Help needed for the Mail-Server at Aston!
LaTeX newenvironments (UKTeX #23)
Can TeX loop forever?
.doc files
TeX previewers for IBM PCs
BiBTeX change file for VAX/VMS
DVItoVDU 3.0 and PSPRINT 3.0
---------------------------------
Editor Peter Abbott
****I have been obliged to reissue this digest due to local problems.*****
I noticed in TeXhax V88 #73 that some files from the washington tape needed
amendments. If anyone incorporates changes to files in the UNIX section I
would be grateful for a copy with the name of the file to be replaced. In
that way when tapes are written or files are extracted from the archive
they are at least as upto date as possible.
There will now be a break and the next issue will be on Friday 9 September.
Barbara Beeton has sent two new files which are to be found in
[public.texstatus]. They are message_008.14_aug_1988 and
latex_diffs.14_aug_1988
The directory [public.web2c] contains some interesting files contributed by
Sebastian Rahtz.
The directorry [public.pslatex] contains files submitted by Mario Wolczko
Latest TeXhax in the Archive is #74
Latest TeXmag in the Archive is V2N5
---------------------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Aug 88 19:39:18 BST
From: David Barfoot <DTB10@UK.AC.CAM.PHX>
To: INFO-TEX@UK.AC.ASTON
Subject: VMS WEAVE
Message-ID: <9EF28F379DF7E610@UK.AC.CAM.PHX>
There is a bug in the VMS changes to WEAVE 2.8 which causes mishandling
of the `::' type cast operator. A glance at module 27 of the VMS TeX
changes reveals anomalous gaps between the colons, and, more seriously,
accumulating anomalous indentations (which become considerable in so
long a module).
The following additions to WEAVE.CH appear to solve the problem (the
numbers after @x are module numbers):
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
@x [15]
@d carriage_return=@'15 {ASCII code used at end of line}
@y
@d carriage_return=@'15 {ASCII code used at end of line}
@d type_cast=@'27 {equivalent to `::'}
@z
@x [97]
":": if buffer[loc]="=" then compress(left_arrow);
@y
":": if buffer[loc]="=" then compress(left_arrow)
else if buffer[loc]=":" then compress(type_cast);
@z
@x [186]
":": sc1(":")(colon);
@y
":": sc1(":")(colon);
type_cast: sc2(":")(":")(math);
@z
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I can mail the complete change file to anyone who wishes it.
P.S. Thanks are due to The Open University for a generous allocation
of disc-space and cpu time.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| David Barfoot | Phone: 0223 334709 |
| University of Cambridge | Telex: via 81240 CAMSPL G |
| Computer Laboratory | Fax: via 0223 334748 |
| New Museums Site | |
| Pembroke St | BITNET: DTB10%PHX.CAM.AC.UK |
| Cambridge CB2 3QG | ARPANET: DTB10%PHX.CAM.AC.UK@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU |
| United Kingdom | |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------
Date: 12-AUG-1988 08:37:51 GMT
From: CCZDAO@UK.AC.NOTT.VAXB
To: info-tex@UK.AC.ASTON.MAIL
Subject: overheard...
Sender: JANET"CCZDAO@UK.AC.NOTT.VAXA" <cczdao@uk.ac.nott.vaxa>
Reply-To: David_Osborne@UK.AC.Nottingham.CCC.Vaxa
X-Organization: Systems Group, Cripps Computing Centre, Univ of Nottingham, UK
...on this morning's ``Today'' programme (BBC Radio 4):
``President Reagan's former defence secretary, Caspar Weinberger,
is in Britain today to present a paper in Edinburgh at TeX88...''
obviously he doesn't read UKTeX or TeXhax or he would realise
he's too late and in the wrong city!
hmm, perhaps the conference is called ``Tech88''... :-)
dave
---------------------------------
Date: 12-AUG-1988 14:43:47 GMT
From: CHAA006@UK.AC.RHBNC.VAXB
To: Info-Tex@UK.AC.ASTON
Subject: PostScript emulation for common printers
Sender: JANET"CHAA006@UK.AC.RHBNC.VAXB" <CHAA006@UK.AC.RHBNC.VAXB>
Message-Id: <206008A6_000B1BDC.009173C705647180$52_1@UK.AC.RHBNC.VAXB>
Originally-to: JANET%"Info-Tex@Aston"
Mailer: Janet_Mailshr V3.0a (07-Jun-1988)
This is not a TeX question, but perhaps the TeX community may know the answer:
does there exists a PostScript emulator (or a converter to PostScript) for
either the Epson FC-80 printer or the Diablo-630 printer ?
** Phil.
---------------------------------
Date: 15 Aug 88 21:54:26 bst
From: G.Toal @ uk.ac.edinburgh
Subject: how to get ascii code of a char in TeX?
To: info-tex@uk.ac.aston.mail
Message-ID: <15 Aug 88 21:54:26 bst 050692@EMAS-A>
Hello World.
I'm trying to write a macro to distinguish uppercase letters
from lowercase letters. I get the value of the letter in a token
via something like \let\sctoken=<whatever>.
I know it is in there because \meaning\token says "The letter <whatever>"
My question is, how can I get it into a \count variable so that
I can range check it? I.e. I want \newcount\letter \letter=\ascii\sctoken
I have tried \the\mathcode`\sctoken (which would be "7100 + ascii code)
but of course it fails because the ` processing happens too early.
Any suggestions anyone? (The original problem was writing a small-caps
macro for a non-cmr font machine - so it would have been enough just to
distinguish upper and lower case letters, but the general problem of
getting the ascii code out as a number will be a more useful solution
in the long term.)
Thanks for listening. Even more thanks if you know the answer!
(I've just spent a day trying to do this...)
Graham.
---------------------------------
Date: Wed, 17 Aug 88 10:46:12 BST
From: TFEB1@UK.AC.CAM.PHX
To: abbottp@UK.AC.ASTON
Subject: TeXserver
Message-ID: <9EFAE51F44FF5A70@UK.AC.CAM.PHX>
I finally got a message from the mail server with a help file in it: thanks.
Incidentally, how often does it run? (Don't reply if the info is in the
help file --- I haven't read it yet!).
---Tim Bradshaw.
+++Editor - We have been having problems with spock and with the mail
server as you will see from other articles. It now runs every hour. +++
---------------------------------
Date: 17 Aug 1988 10:23:18-WET
From: alien <alien@essex.ese>
To: abbottp@uk.ac.aston.mail
Subject: Help needed for the Mail-Server at Aston!
One of the nicest things the mail-server can do is to generate VMS
`DCL archive' or `shar' (shell archive) mailings of a set of files (a
facility which, incidentally, is not yet widely used). But I've ran
into a little problem: the archive files I generate can have lines
which are too long for VMS's JANET mailer to handle. The best way to
solve the problem seems to be to split lines longer than 80 characters
and use, say, Y as a continuation character in column 1 of lines
which have been split. In other words,
This is a very long...line of text.
^
|
column 80
would become
XThis is a very long ...l
Yine of text.
I can write to software to do this for DCL archives myself without any
trouble, but I'm not sufficiently au fait with Unix to write suitable
`sed' scripts. Could anyone out there oblige? (The prize is a
mention in the documentation and a pint at the next TUG meeting.)
And if there are similar `archives' for other systems, now is the time
to tell me.
**Adrian.
Adrian F. Clark
JANET: alien@uk.ac.essex.ese
ARPA: alien%uk.ac.essex.ese@cs.ucl.ac.uk
BITNET: alien%uk.ac.essex.ese@ac.uk
Smail: Dept. of Electronic Systems Engineering, Essex University,
Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex C04 3SQ, U. K.
Phone: (+44) 206-872432 (direct)
---------------------------------
Date: 18-AUG-1988 13:43:47 GMT
From: RBAILEY@UK.AC.AFRC.RESB
To: INFO-TEX@UK.AC.ASTON
Subject: LaTeX newenvironments (UKTeX #23)
Steve Schwartz's original problem is quite common. There must be {\em no}
spaces between arguments of TeX commands. See pages 33--34 of the LaTeX
manual. Trying to make my macros readable, I commit this error almost
daily. The answer is to end each line of the newcommand with a % sign:
spaces at the beginning of the line do not matter, so you can then
lay the newcommand out in an intelligble manner.
Rosemary Bailey, Rothamsted
---------------------------------
Date: Thu, 18 Aug 88 15:40:54 BST
From: Sebastian Rahtz <spqr@uk.ac.soton.cm>
To: info-tex@uk.ac.aston.mail
Cc: dder@uk.ac.soton.cm, lac@uk.ac.soton.cm, dwb@uk.ac.soton.cm
Subject: Can TeX loop forever?
My TeX just went into a total sleep, and I wonder if someone can
suggest what it is up to. I have a table describing fonts which I want
to appear in both CMR and a PostScript font in the same document. As it
is quite complicated (it shows every combination of size and style
change in LaTeX), I decided to try and be clever, so that my document looks
like this:
\documentstyle{article}
\begin{document}
\newsavebox{\demo}
\input fontdemos % This is the table, which saves itself in box \demo
\makeatletter
\\input palatino.sty
\makeatother
\begin{table}
\usebox{\demo}
\end{table}
\begin{table}
\input fontdemos
\usebox{\demo}
\end{table}
palatino.sty redefines all the font things, to make \rm etc produce
the right PostScript font. You will see that what I wanted to do was
create a table in CMR, save it in a box, load Palatino and then use
that box, followed by the same table, now in Palatino. Fair enough?
The result is that LaTeX gets past reading palatino.sty, starts the
document (we assume), and then goes into an infinite sleep.
Would anyone care to suggest where my philosophy is wrong? If it is
sound, I will try and track down what is going on, but I need
reassurance I haven't missed something obvious.
Before you suggest it, the table uses about 60 fonts with varying
combinations of things like \rm and \large, so I do not want to
explicity load all the PostSCript, or CMR, fonts by name.
Sebastian Rahtz
\end{document}
---------------------------------
Date: Thu, 18 Aug 88 17:11:14 BST
From: TFEB1@UK.AC.CAM.PHX
To: abbottp@UK.AC.ASTON
Subject: .doc files
Message-ID: <9EFC7D0E901D4630@UK.AC.CAM.PHX>
According to the directory I got from the mail server (dir [public...]*.doc),
there are no .doc versions of the "standard" LaTeX style files (book, article
etc). I feel sure they exist somewhere out there, and it would be useful
I think to have them available to develop new styles from (it's hard enough
anyway writing styles...). perhaps someone would like to submit them.
--Tim Bradshaw.
+++Editor - Here is a listing of part of [public.score] Note this subgroup
will be changing shortly see later contribution.
Directory [PUBLIC.SCORE]
ART10.DOC_4;1 ART11.DOC_4;1 ART12.DOC_4;2 ARTICLE.DOC_7;1
BEZIER.DOC_2;1 BK10.DOC_5;3 BK12.DOC_5;3 BOOK.DOC_5;2
FLEQN.DOC_3;1 IFTHEN.DOC_3;1 LEQNO.DOC_2;1 LETTER.DOC_7;1
MAKEIDX.DOC_2;1 OPENBIB.DOC_3;1 PROC.DOC_2;1 REP10.DOC_5;1
REP11.DOC_5;1 REP12.DOC_5;1 REPORT.DOC_11;1 SHOWIDX.DOC_1;1
SHOWIDX.DOC_2;1 SLIDES.DOC_4;1 SUTHESIS.DOC_2;1 TITLEPAGE.DOC_2;1
TWOCOLUMN.DOC_2;1
Total of 25 files.
+++
---------------------------------
Date: THU, 11 AUG 88 08:43:44 GMT
From: C20222 @ UK.AC.PLYMOUTH.PRIME-B
To: info-tex @ UK.AC.ASTON
Sent by: Jon Warbrick <J.Warbrick @ UK.AC.Plym.B>
Plymouth Polytechnic Computing Service.
Just an idea: if the Aston system gives up trying to send UKTeX after two
days, then for issues dispatched on Fridays it will have gven up before
Monday. Our systems run un-attended all weekend (as do many others) and if
they crash they don't get restarted untill Monday morning, and I lose UKTeX.
I don't know if it is possible, but if you could make the timeout a little bit
longer you might reduce the number of rejections.
Jon.
+++Editor - It has been changed so that the period is now 72 hours +++
---------------------------------
Received: from athene.cs.aber.ac.uk by d.cs.aber.ac.uk; Thu, 18 Aug 88 16:56:41 GMT
Received: from lentil.cs.aber.ac.uk by athene.cs.aber.ac.uk; Thu, 18 Aug 88 17:59:05 BST
From: aro@uk.ac.aber.cs
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 88 17:59:04 BST
Message-Id: <5269.8807181659@lentil.cs.aber.ac.uk>
To: info-tex@uk.ac.aston
Subject: TeX previewers for IBM PCs
Does anyone know of (preferably cheap) TeX previewers for IBM PC
clones? We have a number of these, with EGA graphics cards. Something
that would work Sun's PC-NFS software, so that people could preview
documents generated on the host machines would be ideal.
Any suggestions? I'll summarise anything useful.
Andy Ormsby. aro@uk.ac.aber.cs
---------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Aug 88 9:32:55 BST
From: R Fairbairns <rf@CL>
To: Peter Abbott <abbottp@aston>
Subject: BiBTeX change file for VAX/VMS
The file BiBTeX.VMS_CHANGE in [.SCORE.BiBTeX] is a change file for 0.98i,
but the .WEB is 0.99c (or some such). Does this reflect the state of
STANFORD.SCORE (so that there is no 0.99_x publicly available for VMS yet),
or does it mean that you've made a minor mistake?
If the latter, I'ld be most grateful for you to yank a new version (I don't
have transatlantic ftp, just mail). If the former, could you post the following
message to UKTeX:
Does anyone have a .CH for BiBTeX (0.99_x) under VMS, yet?
Robin Fairbairns
Laser Scan
P.S. No replies to email for 2 weeks from tomorrow---I'm away.
P.P.S. I like the last30days files, but feel it'ld be more useful still if
you gave it a quick pass through SORT (/key=(pos:1,size:50) seems adequate).
How does it come to be in the weird order its in just now?
+++Editor - I am in the process of setting up groups under [public.score]
which mirror those groups under tex at score.stanford.edu. This will not
happen overnight but some files are already available in
[public.score.bibtex]. Files in public.score will be moved shortly. I have
also arranged for details of changes at score to be made available to me so
that I can get new files fairly quickly.
Some of the files in the Aston archive have incorrect access modes and to
ensure all the files had read access the last date modified has been
changed. The file mentioned is now sorted. +++
---------------------------------
Date: 19-Aug-1988 15:47 GMT
From: A K Trevorrow <TREVORROWAK>
Sender: A K Trevorrow <TREVORROWAK@uk.ac.aston>
Dept: Computing Service
Tel No: 021 359 3611 X4256
Subject: DVItoVDU 3.0 and PSPRINT 3.0
New VAX/VMS versions of DVItoVDU and PSPRINT are now available for FTP or mail
access from the TeX archive at Aston. They can be found in:
[public.trevorrow.vms.dvitovdu]
[public.trevorrow.vms.psprint]
DVItoVDU is an interactive DVI previewer that drives a variety of commonly
available terminals (VT100, VT220, VT240, VT640, VIS500, VIS550).
PSPRINT is a PostScript driver that supports a variety of PostScript printers
(Apple LaserWriter, DEC PrintServer 40 and Linotronic 300) and can print
a DVI file, a raw PostScript program, or an ordinary text file.
A recent TUGboat article (vol.8, no.1) described DVItoVDU 1.7 and PSPRINT 1.1
and suggested that further development was most unlikely.
This prediction was obviously a little hasty. Significant changes have been
carried out in the UK, initially at The Open University and more recently
at Aston University. See the respective System Guides for a description
of these changes.
Some new TeX-related facilities have also been created
during my stay at Aston. Here is a summary:
SCREENVIEW (a modified version of Mark Damerell's CrudeType)
reads a DVI file and creates an ordinary text file.
Its primary use is the production of help screens and printed output
from the one TeX source file, but it can also be used as a simple previewer.
HEXIFY reads a binary PostScript file created by VersaScan and creates a new,
editable file that can be sent to a PostScript printer's serial port.
(VersaScan runs on a Macintosh and can save a scanned image as PostScript,
but the bitmap data contains 8-bit bytes. This file can be Kermited up to
a VAX but cannot be sent to a PostScript printer's serial port as some
control characters, such as CTRL-D, have special meaning to the interpreter.
HEXIFY replaces each byte of bitmap data with 2 hex digits.)
A5BOOKLET reads a DVI file and creates two new DVI files that can be used to
produce an A5 booklet suitable for folding and stapling.
It is assumed the given DVI file has a page format suitable for A5 paper.
The A5BOOKLET command uses Tom Rokicki's DVIDVI program to do the required
pagination tricks.
These additional facilities can be found in the archive in:
[public.trevorrow.vms.screenview]
[public.trevorrow.vms.hexify]
[public.trevorrow.vms.a5booklet]
Andrew Trevorrow (in Australia: akt@uacomsci.ua.oz).
---------------------------------
!!
!! Files of interest [public]000aston.readme
!! [public]000directory.list
!! [public]000directory_dates.list
!! [public]000directory.size
!! [public]000last30days.files
!!
!! Editor - I have a tape labelled TeX 2.9 LaTeX 2.09 Metafont 1.3
!! Unix 4.2/3BSD VAX SUN 2/3 Pyramid Seqeunt SYS V: 3B2 Tar 1600 bpi blocked
!! 20 1 file dated 26 may 1988 (from washington.edu).
!!
!! I have the facilty to copy this tape for anyone who sends the following
!! 1 2400 tape with return labels AND RETURN postage.
!!
!! Send to
!!
!! P Abbott
!! Computing Service
!! Aston University
!! Aston Triangle
!! Birmingham B4 7ET
!!
!! A VMS backup of the archive requires 2 (two ) 2400' tapes at 6250bpi.
!! Remaining details as above.
!!
!! Replies/submissions to info-tex@uk.ac.aston please
!! distribution changes to info-tex-request@uk.ac.aston please
!!
!! end of issue