UKTeX Digest Monday, 1 Feb 1993 Volume 93 : Issue 04 ``The UKTeX Digest is brought to you as a free, unfunded and voluntary service of the UK TeX Users Group and the UK TeX Archive.'' Today's Topics: {Q&A}: accents over \boldmath characters UKTUG Meeting - 26 Jan. LaTeX and TeX on the DEC Alpha (AXP) machines Newsletter macros word counts Re: word counts possible problem with accented PS VFs xfig Re: xfig Re: xfig {Announcements}: New release of greektex Administrivia: Moderators: Peter Abbott (Aston University) and David Osborne (University of Nottingham) Contributions: UKTeX@uk.ac.tex Administration, subscription and unsubscription requests: UKTeX-request@uk.ac.tex ------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Jan 93 16:59:00 +0000 From: "Ian Ellery, CPC" Subject: accents over \boldmath characters A LaTeX user at UEA is trying to put an accent over a bold lower case greek character. To get bold lower-case greek you need to use \boldmath, eg \mbox{\boldmath $\mu$} This works fine, but if try to put a hat over the mu to indicate an estimate: \mbox{\boldmath $\hat{\mu}$} gives what looks like a \frown going through the mu. There is a warning on p201 LaTeX book that \boldmath may have problems, but does not mention accents. I tried a couple of other accents at random from table 3.11 (LaTeX book), and got incorrect characters for both (breve gave a lambda, tilde gave a vector). The problem I think is because \hat selects a character directly from the maths font, using the octal code. But \boldmath changes fonts to force bold, so \hat gets its character from a different font, with a different character in the octal position of ^. Is this a known problem? My quick solution is to keep \hat out of the \boldmath: $\hat{\mbox{\boldmath $\mu$}}$ which seems to work, but is pretty ugly (3 switches in an out of maths for a start). Any better solutions? And is it possible to get both the \hat and the \mu into bold? (The above just puts the \mu in bold obviously). cheers Ian Ellery i.ellery@uea ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Jan 93 12:06:16 +0700 From: "R.A.Reese" Subject: UKTUG Meeting - 26 Jan. I always prepare a short report after attending meetings and as this subject is of little interest to colleagues in my department, I may as well share my comme nts with the TeX community who missed the meeting. Two pairs of talks on quite separate topics, plus one pragmatic report. Paul Stiff and Michael Twyman (both from Dept Typography, Reading Univ) discussed the use of design and typography to enhance delivery of a message. Paul set up an aunt Sally that there are no objective rules of design; it is an iterative process based on feedback, relying on the aesthetic feel of a craftsman. Imposing pre-ordained designs could impoverish the process. An example was a Christmas Party invite that looked like every other office circular. However, I think his main message was to be aware of design and to articulate the relationship of content and form, which leads to applying flexible rules - or break them only to achieve a specific effect, not just through ignorance. Michael showed examples from a taxonomy of "modes and methods", and concluded that the designer should be aware of the reader's expectations and probable progression around a page but could strongly influence this. He considered (with audience participation) the structure underlying various text arramgements such as football results, telephone direct ories, timetables and adverts. The second pair were on the internals of LaTeX. Sue Brooks looked at existing LaTeX to find out how and where the logical structure of the document was separated from its appearance as a particular style. She suggested that there is a lot of overhead in LaTeX 2 of structure material in style files that should be in the format file kernel. As a result, the kernel without a style is unusable. Frank Mittelbach put the alternative view, that the logical entities were strictly part of the style (or at least of a style for a "class" of documents e.g., cookbooks) but LaTeX 3 would more carefully separate the logical definition from the visual appearance, and would make style files mainly declarative. He discussed in detail the hierarchy of a logical construct, a formatting function that would specify the appearance of the construct in each context, and the visual influence of the instance such as occurring at a line or page break. As an example, a quote might be a logical entity. It should be displayed in the body text but probably run-in in a footnote. In the text, it is highly undesirable to end a recto page with a hyphen, but TeX will not pick that up by default as it is optimizing line-breaks in paragraphs. Frank was asked why he was working on a TeX-based LaTeX 3 rather than a completely new system. The answers were: a) TeX is a very cost-effective solution as a soundly-based and almost bug-free basis, b) TeX is (despite being ten years old) still a very good system, still state of the art for typography, and c) TeX is widely available, widely used and open. Phil Taylor entertained us with a confessional, as he described the errors he had made while learning about TeX and the battles he had fought (and sometimes won) with publishers. In a reference back to a comment at last October's meeting (authors always want more white space, publishers less) Phil reported how he had gradually reduced his line widths rather than used large characters to get 70ish per line and reduced the vskips *above* headings and the ratio of vskips between heading / subhead/subsub etc. He reported that students preferred block paras (more white space) but publishers insist on indents. One battle apparently won was to move the page number from the outside header to centred bottom of folio, so it could be consistent across chapter start pages. After many attempts to force exactly balanced pages, Phil now uses \fraybottom, where opposite pages may differ by at most one line (I'd have thought you could divide 1 lineskip into a stretch on each baselineskip - say 12pt -> 40 lines = .3 pt max per line. Is that offensive?). Phil highlight ed that a measure that has *any* stretch can be stretched infinitely with only a warning. This can lead to excessive gaps under fully automatic pagination. It also causes a problem in making headings fit an exact multiple of \baselineskips; Phil gets round this with a macro that puts the heading into a box. computes the height and rounds it up to an integer number of lines, then smashes the box and moves the reference point to the correct position for the heading. Finally he considered the question of penalties. He had tried \penalty\maxdimen but then TeX may try to add penalties and give overflow. \penalty 10000 (Knuth's maximum) can cause awful side effects, so 9999 is preferred in all practical contexts. Phil uses an iterative technique to optimize \tolerance. Run with tolerance very small, say 150, and you may be lucky - no overful boxes. If not, run with tolerance 9999 and TeX will report underfull boxes and a maximum badness, say it's 3456. So run with tolerance 3455 (one less) and TeX will now report a smaller maximum badness because it's made several lines "a little" worse to allow for the one really bad one that's no longer allowed. Repeat with one less than the maximum until TeX screams again about overfull boxes, then go back one step. Unfortunately I couldn't stay for the open discussion due to the extreme intolerance of BR's timetable. (R.) Allan Reese Janet: r.a.reese@uk.ac.hull Head of Applications Direct voice: +44 482 465296 Computer Centre Voice messages: +44 482 465685 Hull University Fax: +44 482 466441 Hull HU6 7RX, U.K. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Jan 93 17:40:00 +0000 From: "CCF::ARNETT"@uk.mod.hermes Subject: LaTeX and TeX on the DEC Alpha (AXP) machines I've recently ordered four DEC Alpha machines, and want to install LaTeX and TeX on them as soon as they arrive. Because these machines use the new AXP processors rather than the old VAX processors, the code will require recompilat ion. The machines will be running Open VMS AXP. Has anyone yet successfully ported LaTeX to the new Alpha machines, and if so, what, if any, are the problems found with doing this? Any advice would be gratefully received. Please contact Paul Howland on (0684) 895366, or mail HFSECT@UK.MOD.HERMES. I'd prefer a phonecall! Many thanks, Paul. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Jan 93 18:06:19 +0000 From: Peter J Knaggs Subject: Newsletter macros I know that this is a FAQ, however, this is the first time I have ever wanted to know the answer. Could someone point me to a set of macros for composing newsletters. I know some exist, but what and where I don't know. I am wanting to group a number of articles together under the one newsletter for internal publication, with the possibility of going external in the future. Peter J Knaggs Computing Science, University of Paisley, pjk @ cs.paisley.ac.uk High Street, Paisley, Scotland. 081 848 3545 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Jan 93 14:39:25 +0000 From: ee01th@uk.ac.surrey.ee Subject: word counts How can I get a true word count from a LaTeX file? ie, don't include any keywords, or anything in a section header, just real text (after of course any macros have been expanded for frequently used phrases) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Jan 93 08:26:05 +0000 From: Malcolm Clark Subject: Re: word counts two suggestions for a 'true' wordcount (whatever that really means): 1. process the dvi file 2. use crudetype and then process its output. to process the .tex would require writing a macro processor (just like TeX!), which i understand has already been done by knuth. (an the other hand, the ntss people might be interested...) malcolm ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Jan 93 15:58:01 +0000 From: Adrian F Clark Subject: possible problem with accented PS VFs I've just come across what I think is a problem with the VFs that commonly accompany PostScript fonts. The \aa macro should (according to p52 of The TeXbook) generate an `a' with a little circle above it (a lower case Angstrom!) but I get an `a' with a tilde accent above it. I'm using the latest LaTeX and NFSS with Sebastian's times.sty, plus VFs from the Aston archive. Could anyone confirm that this problem is not specific to my systems before I start digging? Many thanks in advance. ..Adrian Dr Adrian F. Clark JANET: alien@uk.ac.essex INTERNET: alien%uk.ac.essex@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk FAX: (+44) 206-872900 BITNET: alien%uk.ac.essex@ac.uk PHONE: (+44) 206-872432 (direct) Dept ESE, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex, C04 3SQ, UK. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Jan 93 14:59:31 +0000 From: Malcolm Clark Subject: xfig what style file is needed with a figure generated from xfig? (exporting to LaTeX). and where is it in the archive? ta. malcolm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Jan 93 16:39:04 +0100 From: Schoepf%de.zib-berlin.sc@uk.ac.nsfnet-relay Subject: Re: xfig Malcolm Clark asked: > what style file is needed with a figure generated > from xfig? (exporting to LaTeX). > and where is it in the archive? After you have run "fig2dev -Llatex" on it, it's supposed to work without any extra style file. However, if you're using NFSS, you need to define all the internal font switching commands fig2dev generates (which, BTW, I consider a serious error in the design of the fig2dev translator). For this, use the file rawfonts.sty from Sebastian Rahtz's psnfss package, to be found in macros/latex/styles/base/nfss/psnfss/rawfonts.sty on ftp.tex.ac.uk or ftp.uni-stuttgart.de Rainer Schoepf ------------------------------ Date: 01 Feb 93 10:17:51 +0000 From: spqr@uk.ac.york.minster Subject: Re: xfig > > what style file is needed with a figure generated > from xfig? (exporting to LaTeX). > and where is it in the archive? > you use the "transfig" package to convert 'fig' format files to a variety of other formats, such as LaTeX picture, EPS etc finding transfig in the archive is done in the normal way sebastian ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 23 Jan 93 14:37:16 +0000 From: Brian {Hamilton Kelly} Subject: New release of greektex In a message dated Fri, 22 Jan 93 09:49:39 -0800 addressed to the ELLHNIKA Distribution List for ???????? TeX Users , Yiannis Moschovakis announced a new version of greektex, as follows: A new version of greektex has been posted in the following two sites: math.ucla.edu 128.97.4.254 in the directory pub/moschovakis/greektex University of Stuttgart russoft server 129.69.1.12 in the directory tex/languages/greek/moschovakis It has also been installed in the UK TeX Archive at Aston University (Janet NIFTP: site UK.AC.TEX, username PUBLIC, password PUBLIC Internet ftp: host TeX.ac.uk, [134.151.40.18], username anonymous, password your-user-name) in the directory [tex-archive.langs.greek.moschovakis] greektex is a package of programs which make it easy to use the well known Greek text fonts of Silvio Levy in Plain TeX or LaTeX with the full functionality of these sets of macros, exactly as we use them to process English files. In fact greektex understands files with mixed Greek and English text, so that it is particularly useful for the typesetting of Greek scientific class notes, articles and books: these typically contain many English words---names, references, scientific terms traditionally given in both Greek and English when first introduced, etc. To install and use greektex you need to have a complete TeX (version 3.0 or later with its initex program) installed in your machine. You also need the standard files needed to build plain TeX and LaTeX, including hyphen.tex and latex.tex. To print the dvi files produced by the system you need a 300 DPI laserprinter and a dvi driver capable of handling 8 bit fonts. (Most do by now.) The easiest way to create the mixed Greek-English files used by the system is on a PC with a VGA screen running DOS, and the package includes the necessary programs and instructions for this. greektex provides a method for creating "Greeklish" files in any system using a monolingual (English) editor, but it is not very friendly in such an environment. The most notable improvement over the first distribution of greektex two years ago is that the new system has a classical (polytoniko) mode in which classical Greek can be typeset with its full set of aspiration marks, accents, etc. The modern (monotoniko) mode has also been improved substantially, primarily by allowing friendlier typesetting of accented capitals, the diairesis and the Greek quotation marks (which have been added). The package includes a complete set of all preloaded and loaded-on-demand LaTeX fonts at 300 DPI, including the "Greek italic" font which now looks reasonably good. It also includes the complete set of metafont files and scaling programs used to produce these fonts, so that someone with a running version of METAFONT can compile them at any pointsize and resolution. The starting point for greektex is the fact that English and Greek are disjoint languages (no common letters in the internal coding), so their union can be considered as a single language: there is no confusion in hyphenation, for example, since no word is both Greek and English. The system simply replaces the Computer Modern fonts CMR, CMBX, etc. used by TeX by extended fonts GECMR, GECMBX, etc. which have exactly the same letters coded in the first 128 ASCII characters but incorporate the Greek letters in the high-bit ASCII characters >127. In doing this you do not change at all the guts of format files, so that e.g. it is easy to predict how greektex output of Greek LaTeX files will look---exactly like LaTeX output, with Greek letters. There is a conceptual simplicity to this, but also (and more to the point) it makes it possible to use existing systems of macros (like LaTeX and its many styles) on documents which contain mixed Greek and English with no conflicts. The greektex version of LaTeX has complete LaTeX functionality in the monononiko mode. The polytoniko mode requires the use of a set of macros which make some characters active and allow the "friendly" entering of aspiration marks, accents, etc. It also appears to enjoy complete LaTeX functionality (as far as I have been able to test it), it can jandle e.g. footnotes, tabbing, etc. It is clear, however, that reasonable care must be exercised: one cannot enter math mode while the \polytoniko command is in effect, for example, since the characters >, <, = and " are active---and do not have their usual, math meaning. The document greektex.doc explains in some detail the precautions needed to insure (essentially) full LaTeX functionality in the polytoniko mode. It has been argued that one cannot build a fully hyphenating system with both English and classical Greek using 256 character fonts, because the 128 high-bit characters left free after English is coded do not suffice to code as ligatures all the combinations of letter+accent+aspiration mark needed by classical Greek. greektex solves this problem by coding the most commonly occuring combinations as ligatures and depending on the TeX \accent primitive for the rest. This works much better than one might think: greektex applies the hyphenation algorithm to all words which do not have either (1) an aspirated peripvmenh or (2) an accented letter with an iota subscript. The words in category (1) have at most two syllables and rarely need to be hyphenated, and there are just two few of those in category (2) to cause any problem. Since Greek hyphenation is governed by flexible and easy to code rules, it turns out that with this scheme, classical Greek is hyphenated by greektex at least as successfully as TeX hyphenates English. A complete description of the system is given in the 00README.TXT file and the manual "greektex.doc" included in the package. What follows is the 00CONTENTS.TXT of the package. INDEX of greektex----------------------------------------------------- (1) 00README.TXT General information and instructions for installing the system. (2) greektex.doc The document describing how to use the system. It also gives the credits for the public domain programs used and distriibuted. (3) pkunzip.exe The program needed to uncompress zip files. [SEE NOTE] (4) extkb.com Extended keyboard program for the PC. (5) vga_ligh.com Greek character set loaders for the PC with vga_bold.com a VGA screen. (6) geinputs.zip The TeX input files needed by the system. (7) getfm.zip The tfm files for the English-Greek fonts. (8) gepk.zip The pk files for the English-Greek fonts. (9) gemf.zip The metafont files used to create the font, with a brief instruction document gemf.doc and some batch files for compiling fonts in additional pointsizes and resolutions. (10) filters.zip Two simple Greek-to-English and English-to-Greek filters (written in C) which make it (just barely) possible to create, read and convert files with mixed Greek and English text in a monolingual environment. See l2g.c for explanation. (11) grsample.ps Postcript file of a 15 page excerpt from a Set Theory book which illustrates mathematical, monotoniko output (and plugs the book). (12) polyton.gr Greek input file and Postcript file of a one polyton.ps page document which illustrates the method for entering polytoniko and the output produced. IMPORTANT. If you are getting these files by ftp, make sure that (3) - (10) are transmitted in binary mode. Files (3) - (5) and (9) - (12) are not needed for installing and running greektex. Yiannis N. Moschovakis Department of Mathematics UCLA, L.A. CA 90024 ynm@math.ucla.edu January 1993 ======================================================================== NOTE: In the UK TeX Archive at Aston University, Moschovakis' original INDEX and README files have been renamed to 00CONTENTS.TXT and 00README.TXT repsectively. The file pkunzip.exe has NOT been put into the archive, because it was felt that anyone using the archive who was PC-based would already have a suitable program for unzipping the files. Implementations of unzip for other architectures also exist. All binary files are stored, as is necessary in this archive, as variable-length records, without carriage control, and with a record length of 512 bytes. Access through NIFTP over Janet can transfer these files in binaary mode to Vax and non-Vax alike; transfers to a Vax using /CODE=FAST wil result in a file of the same format, which will need to be changed to fixed-length records by means of the VMS CONVERT utility. 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