UKTeX Digest Friday, 22 Feb 1991 Volume 91 : Issue 8 Today's Topics: Why a new 7-bit encoding scheme is unnecessary BASIC question: Where can I get some mode_def entries? Euler/Concrete RE: Euler/Concrete Good reference for Encapsulated PostScript Re: UKTeX Digest V90 #43 use of PK founts under MS-DOS QMS founts Apologies for loss of service Moderator: Peter Abbott (Aston University) Editor: David Osborne (University of Nottingham) Contributions: UKTeX@uk.ac.tex Administration, subscription and unsubscription requests: UKTeX-request@uk.ac.tex UKTeX back issues: stored in the Aston archive, in the directory DISK$TEX:[TEX-ARCHIVE.DIGESTS.UKTEX.91] TeXhax back issues:stored in the Aston archive, in the directory DISK$TEX:[TEX-ARCHIVE.DIGESTS.TEXHAX.91] Latest TeXhax: #07 TeXMaG back issues: stored in the Aston archive, in the directory DISK$TEX:[TEX-ARCHIVE.DIGESTS.TEX-MAG] Latest TeXMaG: V5 N1 ------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Feb 91 12:08:00 +0100 From: BERN%EARN.DHDMPI50@UK.AC.EARN-RELAY Subject: Why a new 7-bit encoding scheme is unnecessary After browsing through several volumes of UKTeX the only convincing reason (to me) for a 'new' pair of 7-bit encoding/decoding programs is the fact that existing programs in their original versions have little support for non-UNIX file types. That was annoying for me, too. But rather than inventing a new encoding scheme I extended the most popular encoding programs - -- uuencode / uudecode - -- xxencode / xxdecode - -- btoa / atob in a way that is fully compatible with the original versions and has everything one needs. The reason why I didn't make that available to the public so far is that I didn't have the opportunity to test the VM/CMS part. Operating systems and compilers which are presently supported are: - -- MS-DOS with Microsoft or Turbo C compiler - -- ATARI ST with Turbo C 2.0 - -- VAX/VMS with VAX C - -- Ultrix with MIPS C The encoding programs writes the now common encoding table for the UU and XX schemes and a similar (although non-standard) table for the BtoA scheme at the beginning of each output file. Sequence characters are optionally appended for the UU scheme at the end of each line. After the 'end' line a byte count and a checksum are written for the UU and XX schemes. These encoded files can be decoded with the original uudecode/xxdecode/atob and most extended versions thereof without any problems. When decoded with the new 'decode' the encoding scheme is recognized automatically, wrong character translations are corrected (as long as all characters in the table are different), truncated blanks are added, the byte count and the CRC are checked etc. 'encode' may also split large input files to several output files which are decoded automatically by 'decode' (but not the original uudecode/ xxdecode/atob, of course). On VAX/VMS three kinds of file formats are supported: - -- Variable length records, carriage return - -- Fixed length records (binary) - -- stream_LF In fixed length record files the last record may be padded with any character. These three types are probably sufficient for any purpose, including TeX, ARC, UNZIP, COMPRESS, TAR. In text files encoded on PCs (with CR/LF pairs for newline) the CR may be discarded. Or you may encode files on a PC such that the CR/LF pairs are concatenated before encoding. The yet untested VM/CMS version also includes support for variable length/ fixed length files (binary or text), VM/CMS style syntax for options and EBCDIC/ASCII translation included. Documentation is available as 'man' help file, LaTeX document or plain text file. VM/CMS users willing to debug the VM/CMS version (VS C compiler required) are wellcome. All other inquiries for source code/executables/documentation of 'encode'/'decode' are served as time permits (please specify precisely what you want, if it may be packed/encoded somehow). I would prefer to put everything on some file server after the VM/CMS part has been tested. Konrad Bernl\"ohr ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Feb 91 18:20:21 +0000 From: EEANDREW@UK.AC.SWANSEA.PYRAMID Subject: BASIC question: Where can I get some mode_def entries? Can anyone point me towards an arvhive of mode_defs? Apologies for so basic a question, but it's the sort of info that could be very handy. (Specifically an HP LaserjetII and an Agfa P400PS, but there may be others) Thanks, Eddy Andrews eeandrew@pyr.swan.ac.uk ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Feb 91 19:03:52 -0000 From: P.TAYLOR@UK.AC.RHBNC.VAX Subject: Euler/Concrete During discussions yesterday, someone told me that the maths fonts that I would need to match `Concrete' for the text font are the Euler series. In looking at my Euler fonts, they all seem to be a variant of Fraktur. Presumably I am looking at the wrong fonts, so I would be most grateful if someone could give me the full Euler equivalent to CMMI, CMSY and CMEX. Many thanks. ** Phil ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Feb 91 19:15:03 +0000 From: CA_ROWLEY@UK.AC.OPEN.ACS.VAX Subject: RE: Euler/Concrete > During discussions yesterday, someone told me that the maths fonts > that I would need to match `Concrete' for the text font are the Euler > series. In looking at my Euler fonts, they all seem to be a variant > of Fraktur. Presumably I am looking at the wrong fonts, so I would be > most grateful if someone could give me the full Euler equivalent to > CMMI, CMSY and CMEX. Many thanks. ** Phil Dear Phil, "Someone" said today that the necessary information may be found in the file CONCRETE.DOC in the standard distribution of The New Font Selection Scheme, available now from an archive near you. OOPs, sorry, correction: Phil needs CONCRETE.STY: real men dont need the documentation! R, M & S! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Feb 91 20:11:50 -0600 From: U12570%EDU.UIC.UICVM@UK.AC.EARN-RELAY Subject: Good reference for Encapsulated PostScript Kate Crennel asks what is a good reference for EPS. Most PostScript books, including Adobe's recently released PostScript Language Reference Manual, 2nd Edition, cover EPS in the Appendices. For a thorough description of EPS and its applications, I strongly recommend Peter Vollenweider's book: "Encapsulated PostScript" published in English and in German, by Prentice-Hall and Springer Verlag, respectively. This book covers PostScript, and particularly EPS, from a practical application-driven point of view. - --- Ed Garay ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Feb 91 09:44:19 +0100 From: MICHAEL.JOSWIG%COM.SUN.GERMANY@UK.AC.NSFNET-RELAY Subject: Re: UKTeX Digest V90 #43 Hi there, Last week I received several copies of the UKTeX. I didn't got them earlier, so excuse me if I write to problems which aren't any longer existing (and please do excuse this bad english...) In Volume90, Issue 43, Marek Paul asks: > Do you know of a port of this system to the Atari ST or Motorola 68000 > processor. Is the source code available and how much does it cost. > There you have it, short and sweet. Thanks a lot. There has been this question once before, so I'll answer not direct to Marek: Yes. In germany are serveral ports to Atari ST. You will need at least 1MByte of free RAM and (of course) a HardDisk. Besides the commercial ports (One or two) you can get a Public Domain TeX and a Shareware TeX. Both are working *perfectly*! I use Stefan Lindners Shareware TeX (Shareware Rate: about 60DM), but you can also have the Public Domain TeX from Christoph Strunk. Both are running TeX3.1 (But due to the mising european font Stefan's Shareware TeX is only "beta"). I didn't found any bug in it. I don't know much about Christoph Strunk's TeX. But there was a test in an popular german magazine, which said it would be a very good program. Both come with Graphical Shell, Christoph also send the latest Metafont. One of them is willing to give the source code (I think it is Christoph, but I'm not sure). So, that's all I know at this moment. I have their addresses (at home, sorry... ), if anybody is interested, fell free to mail me. My suggestion: Put the latest PD-TeX onto your Mail-Server (I can contact Christoph and talk to him). Ciao, Michael. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Feb 91 14:50:14 +0000 From: CUDAT@UK.AC.WARWICK.CU Subject: use of PK founts under MS-DOS I have recently been setting up LaTeX for someone on an IBM PC compatible. I have been using DVISCRS (version 1.3i) from the emTeX collection as a previewer, and DVITOPS (by James Clark) to convert DVI files to PostScript. Both DVISCRS and DVITOPS use the fount name, printer resolution and fount magnification to find the required PK file for a fount. To do this, DVITOPS can substitute (resolution x magnification) in the name of a file it is looking for (the resolution is in dots per inch). DVISCRS does something similar, but it uses (resolution x magnification x 5). This makes it awkward to have the previewer and the printer driver use the same set of founts. (DVISCRS gives pretty good results with 300 d.p.i. founts and it seems silly to have two sets of PK files when one will do.) Fortunately DVITOPS is persistent enough to look in all the MS-DOS directories it is given until it finds exactly the right fount file, so I name the directories according to emTeX's convention and tell DVITOPS about each directory individually. This is a nuisance as the directory names then need to be kept short so that they can all fit into an MS-DOS environment variable. Is there any chance that developers might be encouraged to agree on the general principles of how to locate a required fount file? (I know that there is something called DVIPS (I think) which can use emTeX "fontlib" files, but I haven't tried this. Also, CDVI version 2.0 is a fast, self-contained previewer for LaTeX documents but costs money. I have a copy.) Also, at one point I found that when using emTeX's MFJOB to create the founts Metafont would complain that it couldn't read or create a file. Raising the limit of files MS-DOS allows to be open at once cured this. I hope this might help someone. - -- Jim Hicks, Computing Services, Warwick University, Coventry, England. CV4 7AL Office: Coventry (STD O2O3) 523262 On JANET: cudat@UK.AC.WARWICK.CU ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Feb 91 14:59:23 +0000 From: CUDAT@UK.AC.WARWICK.CU Subject: QMS founts Some months ago I asked about the files then in [TEX-ARCHIVE.FONTS.CMFONTS.QMS-FONTS] in the Aston archive in connection with the possibility of being able to print DVI files on a QMS PS810 laser printer. I had no replies. I'm not complaining, but if nobody knows what these files are for, perhaps they should be removed. - -- Jim Hicks, Computing Services, Warwick University, Coventry, England. CV4 7AL Office: Coventry (STD O2O3) 523262 On JANET: cudat@UK.AC.WARWICK.CU ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Feb 91 18:15:00 +0000 From: SYSTEM@UK.AC.TEX Subject: Apologies for loss of service Users of the browsing service on Uk.Ac.TeX have probably been very frustrated at being unable to use the service this week; and others who only have mail access via the TeXserver account may have had mail rejected. This was due to a combination of circumstances beyond (mostly) my control. On Monday, the time had come to perform a full backup of the archive disk; this happens once every five weeks, with daily and weekly incremental backups being taken in the interim (these latter backups usually take about 20--30 mins to perform). When performing a full backup, the archive disk is dismounted, so all access by other users or browsers has to be blocked. Due to some vagaries of the mag tape drive in use, the backup has to be performed as separate backup and compare passes (BACKUP/VERIFY fails with positioning errors on the tape). I'd completed the backup phase on Monday afternoon, and had nearly finished verifying the first of the three tapes when I lost my connection to the machine (I manage Uk.Ac.TeX from another site about 100mi away, over an X25 connection). When I was able again to login, about 1hr later, I tried again, and the line went down again shortly therafter; since there wouldn't have been sufficient time to complete the verification pass before Aston's operators went home, I had to abandon it until Tuesday. Tuesday morning, I found that my home site's connection to Janet had collapsed; British Telecom eventually got it fixed, but then the connection to Aston became flaky in the extreme: it would appear that the Manchester Janet hub was failing at 5--10min intervals. Anyway, to cut a long story short, the verification has just been completed --- I've never previously known a backup of a 456MB disk to take a total of 50hrs, and hope never to experience it again! Brian HK ------------------------------ UK TeX ARCHIVE at ASTON UNIVERSITY *** JANET Interactive and NIFTP access *** Host: uk.ac.tex (JANET DTE 000020120091) Username: public Password: public *** Files of interest *** [tex-archive]00readme.txt [tex-archive]00directory.list [tex-archive]00directory.size [tex-archive]00directory_dates.list [tex-archive]00last30days.files *** Media distributions *** Washington Unix tape (28 March 1990) TeX 2.993(==3.0), LaTeX 2.09, Metafont 1.9 (2.0) Unix 4.2/3BSD & System V. Tar 1600bpi, blockfactor 20, 1 file. Send one 2400' tape with return labels AND return postage. VMS backup of the archive requires two 2400' tapes at 6250bpi. VMS backup of TeX 2.991 plus PSprint requires one tape. Exabyte 8mm tapes: same formats available as 1/2in tapes. 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Diskettes: Quantity/Size Europe World UK 1st UK 2nd 18/3.5" 3.10 5.10 1.40 1.10 11/3.5" 1.80 2.90 0.80 0.65 18/5.25" 1.20 2.00 0.60 0.50 11/5.25" 0.80 1.30 0.50 0.35 *** Postal address *** Peter Abbott, Computing Service, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham B4 7ET (Please include SELF-ADDRESSED ADHESIVE LABELS for return postage). *** UK TeX Users Group *** For details, contact Malcolm Clark or Geeti Granger IRS John Wiley & Sons Polytechnic of Central London Baffins Lane 115 New Cavendish Street Chichester London W1M 8JS W Sussex PO19 1UD email: malcolmc@uk.ac.pcl.mole End of UKTeX Digest *******************