MacOSX-TeX Digest #270 - 03/21/02

TeX on Mac OS X Mailing List MacOSX-TeX at email.esm.psu.edu
Thu Mar 21 20:00:01 EST 2002


MacOSX-TeX Digest #270 - Thursday, March 21, 2002

  Re: [OS X TeX] Search for pdf editor
          by "Adrian Heathcote" <adrian.heathcote at philosophy.usyd.edu.au>
  Re: [OS X TeX] Newbie install and font question
          by "Tom Kiffe" <tom at kiffe.com>
  PDF versus PS (was Re: [OS X TeX] Newbie install and font question)
          by "Bruno Voisin" <Bruno.Voisin at hmg.inpg.fr>
  Re: PDF versus PS (was Re: [OS X TeX] Newbie install and font question)
          by "Ross Moore" <ross at ics.mq.edu.au>
  Re: PDF versus PS (was Re: [OS X TeX] Newbie install and font  question)
          by "Michael Murray" <mmurray at maths.adelaide.edu.au>
  Re: PDF versus PS (was Re: [OS X TeX] Newbie install and font  question)
          by "Ross Moore" <ross at ics.mq.edu.au>
  Re: [OS X TeX] Newbie install and font question
          by "Gerben Wierda" <sherlock at rna.nl>
  Re: [OS X TeX] Search for pdf editor
          by "William Adams" <wadams at atlis.com>
  Re: [OS X TeX] Newbie install and font question
          by "Enrico Franconi" <franconi at cs.man.ac.uk>
  OzTeX 5.0a is now available
          by "Andrew Trevorrow" <andrew at trevorrow.com>
  Re: [OS X TeX] OzTeX 5.0a is now available
          by "Oliver Hardt" <hardt at u.arizona.edu>
  Re: [OS X TeX] Newbie install and font question
          by "Gerben Wierda" <sherlock at rna.nl>
  Equation Service
          by "Doug Rowland" <rowland at belka.space.umn.edu>
  Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service
          by "Bruno Voisin" <Bruno.Voisin at hmg.inpg.fr>
  Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service
          by "Hemant Bhargava" <hkb at mac.com>
  Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service
          by "Jon Guyer" <jguyer at his.com>
  Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service
          by "Chip Brock" <brock at pa.msu.edu>
  Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service
          by "William Adams" <wadams at atlis.com>
  Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service
          by "Oscar Chávez" <oc918 at mizzou.edu>
  Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service
          by "U. Steiner" <u.steiner at chem.rug.nl>
  Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service
          by "Chip Brock" <brock at pa.msu.edu>
  Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service
          by "Chip Brock" <brock at pa.msu.edu>
  PDF presentations /again/ [was Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service]
          by "Jon Guyer" <jguyer at his.com>
  Re: [OS X TeX] OzTeX 5.0a is now available
          by "Joseph C. Slater" <joseph.slater at wright.edu>
  Re: PDF presentations /again/ [was Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service]
          by "Ross Moore" <ross at ics.mq.edu.au>
  Re: PDF presentations /again/ [was Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service]
          by "Enrico Franconi" <franconi at cs.man.ac.uk>


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] Search for pdf editor
From: "Adrian Heathcote" <adrian.heathcote at philosophy.usyd.edu.au>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 16:15:39 +1100

Philip

In addition to Acrobat 5 there is a product from ENFOCUS called Pitstop 
5.0 professional. It will edit pdfs---but like Acrobat 5 it costs. I'm 
also not sure how independent of Distiller it is, and that, as you note, 
has not been carbonised.

Adrian Heathcote


On Thursday, March 21, 2002, at 03:55 AM, Lucien Lemmens wrote:

>
>
>> pneukom asked:
>>> I have modified and added comments to pdfs using Acrobat 4 (Classic),
>>
>> AFAIK, Adobe Acrobat, the full version, the product formerly known as
>> Exchange is the only thing which will do this.
>>
>>> and
>>> delete or rearrange content using  Canvas 8 (Carbon).  Unfortunately,
>>> Canvas' pdf filter is broken and doesn't have the ability to re-flow
>> text,
>>
>> That's a limitation of .pdf---it precisely places text, and loses the
>> concept of paragraph. Although Tailor.app in NeXTstep was able to do
>> this with .ps files, that capability has been lost, unless it's
>> preserved in OneVision's program(s), www.onevision.com
>>
>>> and add highlights.
>>
>> That's annotation
>>
>>> I don't feel like upgrading to Acrobat 5 until it is
>>> completely Carbonized.
>>
>> We're all waiting on that, but I'm not holding my breath.
>>
>> William
>>
>
> I am using at present Acrobat 5 under OSX and except for a few things 
> ( indexing and html-exporting with a plug in) everything works, 
> especially annotations. The indexing is no problem for files on the 
> hard disk because the indexing capabilities of Sherlock are organized 
> in a different way such that single folders can be indexed. (The 
> shortcoming is that I do not know how the index can be transferred to  
> CD-rom)
>
> L Lemmens
>
>
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> -----------------------------------------------------------------


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] Newbie install and font question
From: "Tom Kiffe" <tom at kiffe.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 00:54:41 -0600

>> I am thinking of installing teTeX and TeXShop.  Is this all I will need to
>> get a workable installation?  If I understand correctly, teTeX is an OSX
>> implementation of TeX and TeXShop is a viewer/creator of documents?
>
>teTeX is a unix implementation of web2c by Thomas Esser, not just Mac OS X. In case you use my installer, you get (up to date) TeX Live for the programs and teTeX for the foundation (macros, fonts, etc) plus some additions of my own.
>
>>
>> I believe that teTeX is installed first including the GhostScript package.
>> GS will install fonts.
>
>Actually, you do not need GS to use TeX. You only need GS if you have older documents that require PostScript tricks or .eps image inclusion. Here Mac OS X differes from most other Unixes as well as older Mac OS 9 implementation, because most of those need/use some sort of PostScript (GS) system. The default on Mac OS X is pdfTeX, which produces PDF directly and not via DVI+PS. PDF is as you probably know the display format of Mac OS X. If you are new to TeX, keep to pdfTeX.
>
>Secondly, both TeX and GS come with their own type 1 fonts. The way TeX handles it, all fonts are included before GS is used (if it is used). TeX has far more fonts than what it has available in type1 format. These are included as bitmaps at the resolution of your choice. The GS fonts are not available to TeX. There is a way to get them available the other way around (and I'll add that later on) but GS in itself is not extremely useful on Mac OS X.
>

I think the advice given above to someone new to TeX on OS X is rather disingenuous. Who decided that pdfTeX is the default on OS X and that GS is not
extremely useful? Did I miss a vote taken sometime in the past? PDF may be
the display format on OS X but Apple has not given us a PDF viewer that is
worth anything. This also applies to PDF viewers created with Apple's APIs.
These viewers do not support such basic things as bookmarks and hyperlinks
and won't even display PDF generated by recent versions of ghostscript. 
The state of PDF on OS X is really no different than on other computer systems. 
Everyone uses Acrobat Reader in order to fully utilize the features of PDF 
but just try to debug TeX sources using Reader.

Trying to debug your TeX sources from PDF can be very tedious. Not only do
you have to convert eps graphics to PDF but you have to wait for pdfTeX to
load all the necessary fonts. It is much quicker to just produce a dvi file
when you are doing basic debugging. Methods exist for directly linking a 
dvi file to the tex source, making it easy to switch from TeX output to TeX
source. Try doing this with PDF output. The insistence that pdfTeX must be 
the default TeX program since PDF is the display format for OS X is a 
perfect example of the tail wagging the dog.

My comments are not meant as a criticism of pdfTeX itself. I think pdfTeX is
a great program and I even ported it to the classic Mac OS several years ago.
If you are writing a presentation or plan to distribute a document via the
Internet pdfTeX is very useful for generating the final product. It may not 
be as useful in the preliminary stages of document preparation. If I am writing
a paper or a book which will be distributed in print format I use TeX and 
dvips to get the best possible Postscript output. There are still many things
one can do easily in Postscript with tex and dvips that are difficult or
impossible with pdfTeX.

Tom

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% Thomas Kiffe                 %
% Department of Mathematics    %
% Texas A&M University         %
% College Station, TX 77843    %
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: PDF versus PS (was Re: [OS X TeX] Newbie install and font question)
From: "Bruno Voisin" <Bruno.Voisin at hmg.inpg.fr>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 09:00:25 +0100

While I do understand Tom Kiffe's support of PS format, and appreciate 
all the points he made, I think some other points should be proposed in 
support of PDF format.

There is indeed a PDF previewer supplied with Mac OS X, it is Preview, a 
quite decent application more pleasant to use, in my opinion, than 
Acrobat Reader. As for bookmarks or hyperlinks, I don't use them. I like 
especially the fact that Preview prints the PDF file exactly as this 
file was designed to be, not reducing or enlarging it behind my back as 
Acrobat Reader does. This fits very well my principal use of PDF files, 
i.e. retrieving articles from online versions of scientific journals and 
viewing or printing them.

I do not agree than PDFs take longer to produce than DVIs. TexShop does 
it extremely well and fast, and I find the display of PDF files nicer to 
look at than that of DVI or PS files.

But first and before everything else, I appreciate the possibility, 
given to scientists by the advent of PDF, to exchange information 
efficiently and quickly. In my experience exchanging .tex or .dvi files 
never really worked, as your .tex or .dvi files needed fonts or packages 
that your correspondant usually didn't have, or at least not the same 
version. I'm not even speaking of included graphics! As for exchanging 
.ps files, this was almost impossible, given the size of usual .ps 
files, and the fact that your correspondant was often living in 
low-memory printer environment so couldn't easily print the file; and 
most people from the DOS/Windows/Mac world, in my experience, did not 
know GhostScript.

If your .ps file was too big, you had to compress it first. If your 
correspondant was Mac, this was all straightforward; but if he/she was 
Windows or Unix things were getting interesting. You had to retrieve 
some versions of Zip, tar and gzip archivers from somewhere (say ZipIt, 
suntar and MacGzip) and make sure all line ending conversions were 
performed.

Now this has radically changed with PDF. There are (I think) versions of 
Acrobat Reader for almost any platform known to man, and PDF files are 
(I think) binary files transferable directly without fuss. This has come 
to a point that editors of scientific journals often advise us to submit 
articles directly as PDFs, that can be sent immediately to reviewers and 
the reviews sent back to the editors also as PDFs. This really expedites 
the assessment/revision/publication process, I and my colleagues 
experienced it.

Bruno Voisin


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: PDF versus PS (was Re: [OS X TeX] Newbie install and font question)
From: "Ross Moore" <ross at ics.mq.edu.au>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 20:04:31 +1100 (EST)

> While I do understand Tom Kiffe's support of PS format, and appreciate 
> all the points he made, I think some other points should be proposed in 
> support of PDF format.

Yes, Tom has some valid points; nevertheless, the use of PDF is
growing very rapidly, in my experience, and not just for TeX.
So Bruno's points are valid too, and there's a lot more.
 
> There is indeed a PDF previewer supplied with Mac OS X, it is Preview, a 
> quite decent application more pleasant to use, in my opinion, than 
> Acrobat Reader. As for bookmarks or hyperlinks, I don't use them. I like 
                                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Then you are missing out on a lot...

> especially the fact that Preview prints the PDF file exactly as this 
> file was designed to be, not reducing or enlarging it behind my back as 
> Acrobat Reader does. This fits very well my principal use of PDF files, 
> i.e. retrieving articles from online versions of scientific journals and 
> viewing or printing them.
 
> I do not agree than PDFs take longer to produce than DVIs. TexShop does 
> it extremely well and fast, and I find the display of PDF files nicer to 
> look at than that of DVI or PS files.

 ... here's an example.

I've recently been working on a volume of mathematical papers.
With pdfTeX (admittedly under Linux, not MacOS X) we've been getting
speeds of 600 pages per minute.
That includes 1000s of cross-references and citations, as well as
dozens of graphics using Xy-pic. That can hardly be called slow.

Indeed it's typical to use a Makefile to script running the complete job,
as well as each of the 17 chapters as single jobs, with the Table of Contents
and correct page numbering from the full volume.
Each of these jobs is run 4 times in succession to ensure correct page-numbering
and cross-references --- fully hyperlinked, of course.
It takes less than 5 minutes for the lot!


Of course, to achieve this has required a fair bit of TeX/LaTeX hacking,
to adapt existing packages to work together smoothly.

But surely this will become more common, as the techniques get more
widely known, and adopted into existing packages or new packages are written.

 
> But first and before everything else, I appreciate the possibility, 
> given to scientists by the advent of PDF, to exchange information 
> efficiently and quickly. In my experience exchanging .tex or .dvi files 
> never really worked, as your .tex or .dvi files needed fonts or packages 
> that your correspondant usually didn't have, or at least not the same 
> version. I'm not even speaking of included graphics! As for exchanging 
> .ps files, this was almost impossible, given the size of usual .ps 

For the above job, the PDF of the 600 page book is ~9.5Mb,
whereas the corresponding .ps, produced via .dvi is  72+Mb .


> files, and the fact that your correspondant was often living in 
> low-memory printer environment so couldn't easily print the file; and 
> most people from the DOS/Windows/Mac world, in my experience, did not 
> know GhostScript.

> If your .ps file was too big, you had to compress it first. If your 
> correspondant was Mac, this was all straightforward; but if he/she was 
> Windows or Unix things were getting interesting. You had to retrieve 
> some versions of Zip, tar and gzip archivers from somewhere (say ZipIt, 
> suntar and MacGzip) and make sure all line ending conversions were 
> performed.
> 
> Now this has radically changed with PDF. There are (I think) versions of 
> Acrobat Reader for almost any platform known to man, and PDF files are 
> (I think) binary files transferable directly without fuss. This has come 
> to a point that editors of scientific journals often advise us to submit 

Some journals; not all.
Many have not woken up yet to the potential of PDF.


There is definitely still a place for  .dvi --> .ps --> .pdf
since, as Tom remarked, there are things that can be done easily with PS
that are next to impossible with PDF.


The point is that there is a lot of work being done, both by application
developers and macro/package-writers, to make the production of sophisticated
electronic documents both faster and easier, and with useful enrichments.
This applies to all routes for producing PDFs: e.g. pdfTeX  or  PS + distill
or PS + ps2pdf , so there is really no point in arguing which route is better,
or which should be the *default* on any platform.

There are many people who are only learning TeX for the first time,
with TeXShop/pdfTeX under MacOS X.  That's fine; indeed very good.

As they gain more experience, they may discover that the .dvi heritage
of TeX contains a richness much greater than they currently experience.
Then Tom's programs will certainly be discovered and his work appreciated.


What's important here is that there are tools available to do whatever
work needs to be done. And those tools are definitely getting better
with time, and with increasing computing power.



> articles directly as PDFs, that can be sent immediately to reviewers and 
> the reviews sent back to the editors also as PDFs. This really expedites 
> the assessment/revision/publication process, I and my colleagues 
> experienced it.

And it's even easier when the hyperlinking works, as this makes it
much, much easier to check the cross-references and citations!


Apple is dragging the chain by not supporting hyperlinks in Preview.
Hopefully this will be fixed in the next version; and hopefully it
will not be too long coming.

It would be good to have complete JavaScript support also;
as there is excellent work happening there, for (La)TeX documents.
(This kind of support was not in  xpdf  either, last time I looked;
so Acrobat (Reader) remains the browser of choice.)



To find out a lot more about these (and other) developments,
consider joining a TeX User group (e.g. TUG: www.tug.org)
and attending one of the annual meetings.

There's  BachoTeX  in Poland (end-of-April, early May)
and TUG 2002 in Kerala, India (early September).

These meetings are a lot of fun,
and are *not* just for the developers.



All the best,

	Ross Moore
       (Director, TeX Users Group)


> Bruno Voisin
> 
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
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> "unsubscribe macosx-tex" (no quotes) in the body.
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> "help" (no quotes) in the body.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: PDF versus PS (was Re: [OS X TeX] Newbie install and font  question)
From: "Michael Murray" <mmurray at maths.adelaide.edu.au>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 20:33:11 +1030

Hi Ross

While we are talking PDF whats the story with pdfmarks like page
transitions in OS X?   They don't work at present in the Acrobat Reader
OS X 5.05.  Can we expect that Acrobat Reader will support them
at some time?   Or is this an OS X problem ?
  I guess I am wondering if they are part of
some official PDF description that all PDF viewers aspire to support.

Does anyone know  a way of getting these to work without
\begin{shudder} launching classic \end{shudder}.


Thanks - Michael
-- 
_________________________________________________________
Assoc/Prof Michael Murray
Department of Pure Mathematics       Fax: 61+ 8 8303 3696
University of Adelaide             Phone: 61+ 8 8303 4174
Australia  5005      Email: mmurray at maths.adelaide.edu.au
Home Page: http://www.maths.adelaide.edu.au/pure/mmurray
PGP public key:
http://www.maths.adelaide.edu.au/pure/mmurray/pgp.txt
_________________________________________________________






----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: PDF versus PS (was Re: [OS X TeX] Newbie install and font  question)
From: "Ross Moore" <ross at ics.mq.edu.au>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 21:48:21 +1100 (EST)

> Hi Ross
> 
> While we are talking PDF whats the story with pdfmarks like page
> transitions in OS X?   They don't work at present in the Acrobat Reader
> OS X 5.05.  Can we expect that Acrobat Reader will support them
> at some time?   Or is this an OS X problem ?

I would certainly hope so.
All I can say (because I don't know anything else) is that
people at Adobe like MacOS X; so support should get better.


Try reporting this as a bug, at:  http://www.tug.org/twg/tfaa/

This site does get seen by Adobe engineers/programmers,
so it may help to up it's priority.


Cheers,

	Ross


>   I guess I am wondering if they are part of
> some official PDF description that all PDF viewers aspire to support.
 
> Does anyone know  a way of getting these to work without
> \begin{shudder} launching classic \end{shudder}.
> 
> 
> Thanks - Michael
> -- 
> _________________________________________________________
> Assoc/Prof Michael Murray
> Department of Pure Mathematics       Fax: 61+ 8 8303 3696
> University of Adelaide             Phone: 61+ 8 8303 4174
> Australia  5005      Email: mmurray at maths.adelaide.edu.au
> Home Page: http://www.maths.adelaide.edu.au/pure/mmurray
> PGP public key:
> http://www.maths.adelaide.edu.au/pure/mmurray/pgp.txt
> _________________________________________________________
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
> "unsubscribe macosx-tex" (no quotes) in the body.
> For additional HELP, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
> "help" (no quotes) in the body.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] Newbie install and font question
From: "Gerben Wierda" <sherlock at rna.nl>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 14:40:44 +0100

> I think the advice given above to someone new to TeX on OS X is rather 
> disingenuous. Who decided that pdfTeX is the default on OS X and that 
> GS is not
> extremely useful?

I stand corrected and this is not how I meant it. Sorry Tom.

I only meant it in the sense that since Mac OS X has PDF viewing 
capabilities (though very limited as you rightly point out, one needs 
Acrobat to actually enjoy most of the PDF possibilities) and in it's 
default release does not have X11 or PostScript, a pdfTeX install is 
more or less the minimum you can work with, to use TeX on Mac OS X. You 
can edit your files with TextEdit.app and display the results with 
Preview.app or Acrobat (which, let us not forget, also ships default on 
Mac OS X) and run the commands in a Terminal.app window. I was talking 
about minimum, about how Mac OS X ships by 'default'.

> My comments are not meant as a criticism of pdfTeX itself. I think 
> pdfTeX is
> a great program and I even ported it to the classic Mac OS several 
> years ago.
> If you are writing a presentation or plan to distribute a document via 
> the
> Internet pdfTeX is very useful for generating the final product. It may 
> not
> be as useful in the preliminary stages of document preparation. If I am 
> writing
> a paper or a book which will be distributed in print format I use TeX 
> and
> dvips to get the best possible Postscript output. There are still many 
> things
> one can do easily in Postscript with tex and dvips that are difficult or
> impossible with pdfTeX.

Agreed. There is a lot of PostScript trickery available. pdfTeX is still 
catching up.

Personally, I think it is not PostScript output per se, but DVI rastered 
to perfection for your resolution that is why normal TeX is still the 
best for actual printed material. But most people these days are not 
after the best typesetting result, they use TeX for a lot of other 
reasons, like it's 'support' for 'conceptual writing' wih packages like 
LATeX or ConTeXt. And their preferred output is PDF, not PS which many 
people normally cannot dispay or print, or which has to be compressed a 
lot before you can safely send it. I can write my letters and articles 
in TeX, produce PDF and send them to any windows user and more or less 
rely on the fact that their system will have a PDF viewer on board. With 
ps and dvi this is not the case.

So, let's rephrase it like this: using just pdfTeX is the 'most basic' 
(not by any means the 'preferred') installation. What you actually need, 
depends more on what you do with TeX.

G


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] Search for pdf editor
From: "William Adams" <wadams at atlis.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 08:39:47 -0500

Adrian said:
 >In addition to Acrobat 5 there is a product from ENFOCUS called Pitstop 5.
0 professional. It >will edit pdfs---but like Acrobat 5 it costs. I'm also 
not sure how independent of Distiller it >is, and that, as you note, has 
not been carbonised.

Enfocus Pitstop, last I checked was a plug-in for Adobe Acrobat.

It's by the folks who did Tailor.app, so its limitations are likely 
imposed by a combination of Adobe Acrobat plug-in capabilities and .pdf 
limitations (mostly the former I'd suspect).

William

--
William Adams, publishing specialist
voice - 717-731-6707 | Fax - 717-731-6708
www.atlis.com


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] Newbie install and font question
From: "Enrico Franconi" <franconi at cs.man.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 14:02:14 +0000

On March 21, Gerben Wierda writes:
> Agreed. There is a lot of PostScript trickery available. pdfTeX is
> still catching up.

My impression is that it will be hard to catch up all the pstricks
derivatives. They are all based on the fact that postscript *IS* a
full blown programming language, and this is heavily used to generate
the special effects. Probably in the future will will have something
equivalent in native pdf, but now I can not live without my pstricks
derivatives. By the way, most of the tricks described in the Graphics
Companion book can not be currently done in pdftex.

So the problem is not whether it is good or not to translate first
your images into pdf or ps, but whether I can generate postscript
programs on the fly from tex -- which is what pstricks and friends do.

> Personally, I think it is not PostScript output per se, but DVI
> rastered to perfection for your resolution that is why normal TeX is
> still the best for actual printed material. 

Correct.

> And their preferred output is PDF, not PS which many people normally
> cannot dispay or print, or which has to be compressed a lot before
> you can safely send it. I can write my letters and articles in TeX,
> produce PDF and send them to any windows user and more or less rely
> on the fact that their system will have a PDF viewer on board. With
> ps and dvi this is not the case.

Completely agree. But what's the problem with "dvips -Pdf | ps2pdf"?
In this way you have all your native pstricks macros available and you
generate the portable, compact PDF you want to distribute.

cheers
-- e.

Enrico Franconi                     - franconi at cs.man.ac.uk
University of Manchester            - http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~franconi/
Department of Computer Science      - Phone: +44 (161) 275 6170
Manchester M13 9PL, UK              - Fax:   +44 (161) 275 6204

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: OzTeX 5.0a is now available
From: "Andrew Trevorrow" <andrew at trevorrow.com>
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 01:59:06 +1100

An alpha version of OzTeX 5.0 is now available for download (12.2Mb):

ftp://ftp.trevorrow.com/beta/oztex5a.sit

Note that this is a full release -- it unpacks to a folder called
"OzTeX 5.0a" with everything in it.  I've called it an alpha release
because it should be very close to the final version that will end up
on CTAN, and on the new CD I'm currently working on.  I'm about 3 weeks
away from burning the master CD so this should give us enough time to
iron out any remaining wrinkles.

The OzTeX User Guide (:TeX:Docs:LaTeX:ozuser.dvi) has lots of changes.
Make sure you read these new sections:

  - Search paths and subfolder expansion        (section 4.3)
  - Changing keyboard shortcuts                 (section 4.7)
  - Adding extra tools                          (section 4.8)
  - Calling Unix commands                       (section 5)
  - OzTeX on OS X                               (section 6)
  - Task lists: a simple scripting facility     (section 7)

Some existing sections also have new info:

  - Low-level PostScript printing               (section 2.6.2)
  - Creating PDF files                          (section 16)

Please let me know if you find any mistakes or have any suggestions
on how it could be improved.

There is a new config file in :TeX:Configs: called "Use texmf tree".
It shows how to tell the Oz* apps to search the texmf trees created by
Gerben Wierda's teTeX installer.  Before using the config file you'll
need to make a few changes -- see the comments inside the file.

Finally, here are the changes to the OzTeX 5.0b8 app:

* I've added a number of new tasks to provide better control when
  calling external, non-Unix applications in drop_* task lists.
  See the discussion of "wait,...", "quit,..." and "front,..." in
  section 7.1 of the User Guide.

* If you hold down the option key before selecting a TeX/DVI/PS file
  from one of OzTeX's TeX/Print/View/Send menu items then the file will
  be processed as if it was dropped onto OzTeX.  This saves you having
  to switch to the Finder to locate and drop a file.  Note that the
  item names change to "Drop ..." to indicate what will happen.

* If the command key is pressed before clicking in the OzTeX menu bar
  then those items with submenus for recent TeX/DVI/PS files now have
  their names changed to "Remove Item".  This provides feedback about
  what will happen if a submenu item is selected.  Similarly, if the
  shift and command keys are pressed then the item names are changed
  to "Remove ALL Items".

* Fixed a bug that prevented dvips finding fonts used in an EPS file
  on OS X.  While fixing this bug I also modified dvips to skip blank
  lines when looking for "%%Document..." lines in an EPS file's header;
  this was done to cope with files created by Freehand.

* The Unix path corresponding to the :TeX:Unix: folder is automatically
  appended to the PATH environment variable when calling Unix commands.
  This makes it easy to call various shell scripts stored in that folder.
  Users can override those scripts by simply putting their own versions
  in a directory specified anywhere else in the unix_path value.

* Added .drv to OzTeX's Default input_file_suffixes list.
  Also added drv to the plst 0 resource's list of known extensions.

* Dithering is always on when viewing a DVI file.  The toggle_dithering
  parameter is no longer recognized.

Andrew

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] OzTeX 5.0a is now available
From: "Oliver Hardt" <hardt at u.arizona.edu>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 08:24:53 -0700

Is oz5 carbonized or does it need classic?  olli.


3/22/02, Andrew Trevorrow wrote:

>An alpha version of OzTeX 5.0 is now available for download (12.2Mb):

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] Newbie install and font question
From: "Gerben Wierda" <sherlock at rna.nl>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 19:36:08 +0100

On Thursday, March 21, 2002, at 03:02 , Enrico Franconi wrote:

> Completely agree. But what's the problem with "dvips -Pdf | ps2pdf"?
> In this way you have all your native pstricks macros available and you
> generate the portable, compact PDF you want to distribute.

The problem is that -Ppdf tries to embed non-type1 fonts at resolution 
8000 or so on which metafont chokes. It works fine, unless bitmaps are 
needed.

Secondly, but correct me if I am wrong, not all PDF-specific settings 
survive this translation (what about pdf-specific stuff like 
animations?).

Anyway, let's end it here. I am not advocating against using dvips + a 
distiller, after all, don't forget that I do support that in my TeX 
distribution, *including* the altpdftex script to make life easy on 
people wanting to do that. People should use what they like.

What I will not do is support X11. My systems will remain X11-free. But 
when there will be a Quartz-device available for ghostscript, I will of 
course have it compiled in.

G


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Equation Service
From: "Doug Rowland" <rowland at belka.space.umn.edu>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 12:59:38 -0600

Dear readers of the MacOSX-TeX mailing list:

I just wanted to let you know about a new OS X app I have written.  It's
called "Equation Service" and it's a specialized front-end to pdflatex meant
for typesetting equations and small amounts of text.

The main feature of Equation Service is that it is a system service.  Any
services-aware app that supports string output and PDF/TIFF input will gain
the ability to turn a highlighted string into a small typeset PDF from
pdflatex.

The beauty of Equation Service is that these small PDF files can be made
exactly the size of the typeset equation, so you can be typing along in
Mail, TextEdit, OmniGraffle, iOrganize, etc, type a LaTeX equation,
highlight it, and then call Equation Service to insert the typeset version
right at the cursor.

It's hard to describe, but if you're interested, please check out the
webpage

http://homepage.mac.com/dougrowland/EquationService (main page)

http://homepage.mac.com/dougrowland/EquationServiceAbout.htm  (about
Equation Service)

Please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions for
improvements.  This is meant to be open-source freeware, but the source is
still a little messy and needs work before I release it.

Especially useful would be improved "templates" that let you input long
numbered equations or equation arrays and that would fit the PDF file just
around the appropriate bounding box.

Thanks.

Doug Rowland
rowland at fields.space.umn.edu 


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service
From: "Bruno Voisin" <Bruno.Voisin at hmg.inpg.fr>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 20:16:18 +0100

Seems very nice and powerful. Is it related to Gerben's 
GWTeXServices.app, from December last year?

Bruno Voisin


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service
From: "Hemant Bhargava" <hkb at mac.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 14:21:29 -0500

Excellent service ... and works very well (where it does).

May I request something that might help a lot of people ...

Imagine that this service could work from within your favorite LaTeX 
editor. So, you might be working on a large document, and have this 
complicated equation you are typesetting, and you want to see how it 
looks. Right now you basically have to compile the whole file (there are 
clumsy solutions to avoid that) - but with this service, you could 
simply highlight the piece of text and then have it typeset. 
Unfortunately, at the moment, the service doesn't work with TeXShop or 
Pepper, the two editors I tried it with. Any chance it could?

- Hemant

On Thursday, March 21, 2002, at 01:59 PM, Doug Rowland wrote:

> Dear readers of the MacOSX-TeX mailing list:
>
> I just wanted to let you know about a new OS X app I have written.  It's
> called "Equation Service" and it's a specialized front-end to pdflatex 
> meant
> for typesetting equations and small amounts of text.


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service
From: "Jon Guyer" <jguyer at his.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 14:26:52 -0500

At 2:21 PM -0500 3/21/02, Hemant Bhargava wrote:
>So, you might be working on a large document, and have this
>complicated equation you are typesetting, and you want to see how it
>looks. Right now you basically have to compile the whole file (there
>are clumsy solutions to avoid that)

[I'm not suggesting this is a bad idea, but...]

Alpha will let you do this now (i.e., it takes care of the clumsy 
solutions for you)

TeX -> Process -> Typeset Selection

Moreover, it does everything within the context of your document's preamble.


-- 


   Jonathan E. Guyer
   <http://www.his.com/jguyer/>


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service
From: "Chip Brock" <brock at pa.msu.edu>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 14:43:30 -0500

Hi
This is cool...the way to make it way-cool would be if it could somehow -
drag and drop, great; copy and paste, good too - communicate with
powerpoint. One of the big problems in giving scientific talks using
powerpoint is equation presentation. Most of us treat this like with high
resolution postcript graphics/plots: make a pdf and use the Acrobat graphic
selection tool to copy and then paste into powerpoint. The pdf rendering is
preserved. If Equation Service could somehow be used that way, then one
could eliminate many steps! Right now, I don't seem to be able to make it
work with powerpoint out of Office X...

Thanks,
Ray Brock

On 3/21/02 1:59 PM, "Doug Rowland" <rowland at belka.space.umn.edu> wrote:

> Dear readers of the MacOSX-TeX mailing list:
> 
> I just wanted to let you know about a new OS X app I have written.  It's
> called "Equation Service" and it's a specialized front-end to pdflatex meant
> for typesetting equations and small amounts of text.
> 
> The main feature of Equation Service is that it is a system service.  Any
> services-aware app that supports string output and PDF/TIFF input will gain
> the ability to turn a highlighted string into a small typeset PDF from
> pdflatex.
> 
> The beauty of Equation Service is that these small PDF files can be made
> exactly the size of the typeset equation, so you can be typing along in
> Mail, TextEdit, OmniGraffle, iOrganize, etc, type a LaTeX equation,
> highlight it, and then call Equation Service to insert the typeset version
> right at the cursor.
> 
> It's hard to describe, but if you're interested, please check out the
> webpage
> 
> http://homepage.mac.com/dougrowland/EquationService (main page)
> 
> http://homepage.mac.com/dougrowland/EquationServiceAbout.htm  (about
> Equation Service)
> 
> Please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions for
> improvements.  This is meant to be open-source freeware, but the source is
> still a little messy and needs work before I release it.
> 
> Especially useful would be improved "templates" that let you input long
> numbered equations or equation arrays and that would fit the PDF file just
> around the appropriate bounding box.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Doug Rowland
> rowland at fields.space.umn.edu
> 
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
> "unsubscribe macosx-tex" (no quotes) in the body.
> For additional HELP, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
> "help" (no quotes) in the body.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Raymond Brock  *  Professor of Physics
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Michigan State University  *  East Lansing, MI  48824
brock at pa.msu.edu

cell..............(517)927-5447
hep office........(517)353-1693/355-9200 #2120
open fax..........(517)355-6661
secure fax........(517)351-0688
Fermilab office...(630)840-2286
CERN Office:......40 5-C31 * 76-71258

Home:            http://www.pa.msu.edu/~brock/
db/dh meetings:  http://www.pa.msu.edu/~brock/file_sharing/dhdb/
Snowmass:        http://snowmassserver.snowmass2001.org/Working_Group_E4/
farm shift log:  http://www.pa.msu.edu/~brock/file_sharing/farming/





----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service
From: "William Adams" <wadams at atlis.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 14:45:04 -0500

Chip Brock said:
>This is cool...the way to make it way-cool would be if it could somehow
-
>drag and drop, great; copy and paste, good too - communicate with
>powerpoint. One of the big problems in giving scientific talks using
>powerpoint is equation presentation. Most of us treat this like with
high
>resolution postcript graphics/plots: make a pdf and use the Acrobat
graphic
>selection tool to copy and then paste into powerpoint. The pdf
rendering is
>preserved. If Equation Service could somehow be used that way, then one

>could eliminate many steps! Right now, I don't seem to be able to make
it
>work with powerpoint out of Office X...

You're blaming the wrong end of the software chain.

/rant begin

The problem isn't with this Service, nor Gerben Wierda's, but with
Microsoft, the people who programmed PowerPoint and didn't trouble to
make it comply with standard Mac OS X concepts like Services.

Moreover, if the problem were in Equation Service, the source is to be
provided, so one could fix it oneself (or hire someone to fix it). Why
don't you ask Microsoft for the source to PowerPoint so you can fix it?

/rant end

The equivalent Service (TeX eq -> eps) in NeXTstep, provided by NeXT's
TeXView.app works with almost every application on my system (hold-outs
include Adobe Illustrator and Stone Design's Create).

There's probably never going to be a system as elegant, consistent and
full-featured ever again which is reprehensible.

William

--
William Adams, publishing specialist
ATLIS Graphics & Design / 717-731-6707 voice / 717-731-6708 fax
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
http://www.atlis.com



----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service
From: "Oscar Chávez" <oc918 at mizzou.edu>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 13:54:05 -0600

If Equation Service can do this with PowerPoint, that will be very useful 
for many. However, you can already use pdfTeX for this. One of the several 
ways is using pdfscreen.

http://www.river-valley.com/download/

Oscar Chávez

On Thursday, March 21, 2002, at 01:43 PM, Chip Brock wrote:

> One of the big problems in giving scientific talks using
> powerpoint is equation presentation.


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service
From: "U. Steiner" <u.steiner at chem.rug.nl>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 20:57:42 +0100

why don't you use Acrobat to do presentation.  Works very well and you 
can use LeTeX typesetting to make the entire presentation, including 
equations.

- Ulli


On Thursday, March 21, 2002, at 08:43 PM, Chip Brock wrote:

> Hi
> This is cool...the way to make it way-cool would be if it could 
> somehow -
> drag and drop, great; copy and paste, good too - communicate with
> powerpoint. One of the big problems in giving scientific talks using
> powerpoint is equation presentation. Most of us treat this like with 
> high
> resolution postcript graphics/plots: make a pdf and use the Acrobat 
> graphic
> selection tool to copy and then paste into powerpoint. The pdf 
> rendering is
> preserved. If Equation Service could somehow be used that way, then one
> could eliminate many steps! Right now, I don't seem to be able to make 
> it
> work with powerpoint out of Office X...
>
> Thanks,
> Ray Brock
>
> On 3/21/02 1:59 PM, "Doug Rowland" <rowland at belka.space.umn.edu> wrote:
>
>> Dear readers of the MacOSX-TeX mailing list:
>>
>> I just wanted to let you know about a new OS X app I have written.  
>> It's
>> called "Equation Service" and it's a specialized front-end to pdflatex 
>> meant
>> for typesetting equations and small amounts of text.
>>
>> The main feature of Equation Service is that it is a system service.  
>> Any
>> services-aware app that supports string output and PDF/TIFF input will 
>> gain
>> the ability to turn a highlighted string into a small typeset PDF from
>> pdflatex.
>>
>> The beauty of Equation Service is that these small PDF files can be 
>> made
>> exactly the size of the typeset equation, so you can be typing along in
>> Mail, TextEdit, OmniGraffle, iOrganize, etc, type a LaTeX equation,
>> highlight it, and then call Equation Service to insert the typeset 
>> version
>> right at the cursor.
>>
>> It's hard to describe, but if you're interested, please check out the
>> webpage
>>
>> http://homepage.mac.com/dougrowland/EquationService (main page)
>>
>> http://homepage.mac.com/dougrowland/EquationServiceAbout.htm  (about
>> Equation Service)
>>
>> Please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions for
>> improvements.  This is meant to be open-source freeware, but the 
>> source is
>> still a little messy and needs work before I release it.
>>
>> Especially useful would be improved "templates" that let you input long
>> numbered equations or equation arrays and that would fit the PDF file 
>> just
>> around the appropriate bounding box.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Doug Rowland
>> rowland at fields.space.umn.edu
>>
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>> To UNSUBSCRIBE, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
>> "unsubscribe macosx-tex" (no quotes) in the body.
>> For additional HELP, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
>> "help" (no quotes) in the body.
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Raymond Brock  *  Professor of Physics
> Department of Physics and Astronomy
> Michigan State University  *  East Lansing, MI  48824
> brock at pa.msu.edu
>
> cell..............(517)927-5447
> hep office........(517)353-1693/355-9200 #2120
> open fax..........(517)355-6661
> secure fax........(517)351-0688
> Fermilab office...(630)840-2286
> CERN Office:......40 5-C31 * 76-71258
>
> Home:            http://www.pa.msu.edu/~brock/
> db/dh meetings:  http://www.pa.msu.edu/~brock/file_sharing/dhdb/
> Snowmass:        
> http://snowmassserver.snowmass2001.org/Working_Group_E4/
> farm shift log:  http://www.pa.msu.edu/~brock/file_sharing/farming/
>
>
>
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
> "unsubscribe macosx-tex" (no quotes) in the body.
> For additional HELP, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
> "help" (no quotes) in the body.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service
From: "Chip Brock" <brock at pa.msu.edu>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 15:02:50 -0500

Hey...cool your jets, man. I don't think that anywhere I suggested that
there was a problem with Equation Service. I'm not blaming anyone or
anything. Just made an observation about your cool utility, thinking that
maybe if I can do what I said within acrobat...it might be possible to
extend this to do something similar. Then it would make a necessary and
painful operation much, much more friendly.

Little touchy, aren't we?

Ray

On 3/21/02 2:45 PM, "William Adams" <wadams at atlis.com> wrote:

> Chip Brock said:
>> This is cool...the way to make it way-cool would be if it could somehow
> -
>> drag and drop, great; copy and paste, good too - communicate with
>> powerpoint. One of the big problems in giving scientific talks using
>> powerpoint is equation presentation. Most of us treat this like with
> high
>> resolution postcript graphics/plots: make a pdf and use the Acrobat
> graphic
>> selection tool to copy and then paste into powerpoint. The pdf
> rendering is
>> preserved. If Equation Service could somehow be used that way, then one
> 
>> could eliminate many steps! Right now, I don't seem to be able to make
> it
>> work with powerpoint out of Office X...
> 
> You're blaming the wrong end of the software chain.
> 
> /rant begin
> 
> The problem isn't with this Service, nor Gerben Wierda's, but with
> Microsoft, the people who programmed PowerPoint and didn't trouble to
> make it comply with standard Mac OS X concepts like Services.
> 
> Moreover, if the problem were in Equation Service, the source is to be
> provided, so one could fix it oneself (or hire someone to fix it). Why
> don't you ask Microsoft for the source to PowerPoint so you can fix it?
> 
> /rant end
> 
> The equivalent Service (TeX eq -> eps) in NeXTstep, provided by NeXT's
> TeXView.app works with almost every application on my system (hold-outs
> include Adobe Illustrator and Stone Design's Create).
> 
> There's probably never going to be a system as elegant, consistent and
> full-featured ever again which is reprehensible.
> 
> William
> 
> --
> William Adams, publishing specialist
> ATLIS Graphics & Design / 717-731-6707 voice / 717-731-6708 fax
> Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
> http://www.atlis.com
> 
> 
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
> "unsubscribe macosx-tex" (no quotes) in the body.
> For additional HELP, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
> "help" (no quotes) in the body.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Raymond Brock  *  Professor of Physics
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Michigan State University  *  East Lansing, MI  48824
brock at pa.msu.edu

cell..............(517)927-5447
hep office........(517)353-1693/355-9200 #2120
open fax..........(517)355-6661
secure fax........(517)351-0688
Fermilab office...(630)840-2286
CERN Office:......40 5-C31 * 76-71258

Home:            http://www.pa.msu.edu/~brock/
db/dh meetings:  http://www.pa.msu.edu/~brock/file_sharing/dhdb/
Snowmass:        http://snowmassserver.snowmass2001.org/Working_Group_E4/
farm shift log:  http://www.pa.msu.edu/~brock/file_sharing/farming/





----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service
From: "Chip Brock" <brock at pa.msu.edu>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 15:07:59 -0500

Hi
Yeah, I know...however, as much as I have to do this, it's sooo much easier
to use otherwise crumby powerpoint. For example, a class I gave last fall
had >700 ppt slides. Any scientific talk has at least 50... My brain finds
it much easier to use the mouse to set things up, and then mess with them. I
have theorist friends who use latex talk styles and acrobat, but they're
much smarter than I am...!

Thanks,
Ray

On 3/21/02 2:57 PM, "U. Steiner" <u.steiner at chem.rug.nl> wrote:

> why don't you use Acrobat to do presentation.  Works very well and you
> can use LeTeX typesetting to make the entire presentation, including
> equations.
> 
> - Ulli
> 
> 
> On Thursday, March 21, 2002, at 08:43 PM, Chip Brock wrote:
> 
>> Hi
>> This is cool...the way to make it way-cool would be if it could
>> somehow -
>> drag and drop, great; copy and paste, good too - communicate with
>> powerpoint. One of the big problems in giving scientific talks using
>> powerpoint is equation presentation. Most of us treat this like with
>> high
>> resolution postcript graphics/plots: make a pdf and use the Acrobat
>> graphic
>> selection tool to copy and then paste into powerpoint. The pdf
>> rendering is
>> preserved. If Equation Service could somehow be used that way, then one
>> could eliminate many steps! Right now, I don't seem to be able to make
>> it
>> work with powerpoint out of Office X...
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Ray Brock
>> 
>> On 3/21/02 1:59 PM, "Doug Rowland" <rowland at belka.space.umn.edu> wrote:
>> 
>>> Dear readers of the MacOSX-TeX mailing list:
>>> 
>>> I just wanted to let you know about a new OS X app I have written.
>>> It's
>>> called "Equation Service" and it's a specialized front-end to pdflatex
>>> meant
>>> for typesetting equations and small amounts of text.
>>> 
>>> The main feature of Equation Service is that it is a system service.
>>> Any
>>> services-aware app that supports string output and PDF/TIFF input will
>>> gain
>>> the ability to turn a highlighted string into a small typeset PDF from
>>> pdflatex.
>>> 
>>> The beauty of Equation Service is that these small PDF files can be
>>> made
>>> exactly the size of the typeset equation, so you can be typing along in
>>> Mail, TextEdit, OmniGraffle, iOrganize, etc, type a LaTeX equation,
>>> highlight it, and then call Equation Service to insert the typeset
>>> version
>>> right at the cursor.
>>> 
>>> It's hard to describe, but if you're interested, please check out the
>>> webpage
>>> 
>>> http://homepage.mac.com/dougrowland/EquationService (main page)
>>> 
>>> http://homepage.mac.com/dougrowland/EquationServiceAbout.htm  (about
>>> Equation Service)
>>> 
>>> Please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions for
>>> improvements.  This is meant to be open-source freeware, but the
>>> source is
>>> still a little messy and needs work before I release it.
>>> 
>>> Especially useful would be improved "templates" that let you input long
>>> numbered equations or equation arrays and that would fit the PDF file
>>> just
>>> around the appropriate bounding box.
>>> 
>>> Thanks.
>>> 
>>> Doug Rowland
>>> rowland at fields.space.umn.edu
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>>> To UNSUBSCRIBE, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
>>> "unsubscribe macosx-tex" (no quotes) in the body.
>>> For additional HELP, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
>>> "help" (no quotes) in the body.
>>> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>>> 
>> 
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Raymond Brock  *  Professor of Physics
>> Department of Physics and Astronomy
>> Michigan State University  *  East Lansing, MI  48824
>> brock at pa.msu.edu
>> 
>> cell..............(517)927-5447
>> hep office........(517)353-1693/355-9200 #2120
>> open fax..........(517)355-6661
>> secure fax........(517)351-0688
>> Fermilab office...(630)840-2286
>> CERN Office:......40 5-C31 * 76-71258
>> 
>> Home:            http://www.pa.msu.edu/~brock/
>> db/dh meetings:  http://www.pa.msu.edu/~brock/file_sharing/dhdb/
>> Snowmass:       
>> http://snowmassserver.snowmass2001.org/Working_Group_E4/
>> farm shift log:  http://www.pa.msu.edu/~brock/file_sharing/farming/
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>> To UNSUBSCRIBE, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
>> "unsubscribe macosx-tex" (no quotes) in the body.
>> For additional HELP, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
>> "help" (no quotes) in the body.
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
> "unsubscribe macosx-tex" (no quotes) in the body.
> For additional HELP, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
> "help" (no quotes) in the body.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Raymond Brock  *  Professor of Physics
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Michigan State University  *  East Lansing, MI  48824
brock at pa.msu.edu

cell..............(517)927-5447
hep office........(517)353-1693/355-9200 #2120
open fax..........(517)355-6661
secure fax........(517)351-0688
Fermilab office...(630)840-2286
CERN Office:......40 5-C31 * 76-71258

Home:            http://www.pa.msu.edu/~brock/
db/dh meetings:  http://www.pa.msu.edu/~brock/file_sharing/dhdb/
Snowmass:        http://snowmassserver.snowmass2001.org/Working_Group_E4/
farm shift log:  http://www.pa.msu.edu/~brock/file_sharing/farming/





----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: PDF presentations /again/ [was Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service]
From: "Jon Guyer" <jguyer at his.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 15:26:00 -0500

At 8:57 PM +0100 3/21/02, U. Steiner wrote:
>why don't you use Acrobat to do presentation.  Works very well and
>you can use LeTeX typesetting to make the entire presentation,
>including equations.

I didn't see this in earlier discussions of PDF presentations, which 
seemed to focus on font problems (which I wasn't having): When I've 
tried to do PDF presentations, using both Utopia and something else 
(P4?), my fonts look fine (as long as I use PS variants), but my 
figures look horrible [*]. Anything rendered from PS vector files 
gets scaled and rendered horribly by Acrobat (reader or full, Mac, 
Mac OS X, 'doze, etc.). What should be smooth lines come out all 
clumpy looking. Complex graphics (like a particular logo used here in 
the lab) could actually be seen rendering element-by-element (I think 
because they were using gradients) on every flipping slide. Rather 
than quick transitions with the same logo remaining static at the 
bottom of the page, every page rerenders the stupid thing. I've tried 
ps2pdf with a variety of gs implementations and Distiller; all with 
the same results.

A graphic arts friend here in the business affairs unit of the lab 
said she had the same problem and that, after /much/ prodding, Adobe 
engineers eventually admitted to her that this was their problem and 
that they weren't going to fix it. Ironically, Preview.app displays 
everything just the way I want, but it's not (yet? ever going to be?) 
an adequate app to do presentations with. Rendering the ps to a 
bitmap produces a reasonable screen appearance, but makes the process 
of creating a PDF presentation even more cumbersome than it already 
is.

As much as I preferred the look of the textual and mathematical 
output (and the pleasure of not using PowerPoint), I eventually gave 
up and went to the Dark Side. I /do/ ultimately have work to do. I'd 
love to find out this isn't necessary. Am I delusional? Does anybody 
else see this? Was this all covered in earlier discussions and I just 
missed it?

[*] These are generally Encapsulated PostScript figures generated 
from Igor Pro, either directly or with the LW8 driver. I pretty much 
went through this hell and gave up on it before Mac OS X was a 
credible platform, so perhaps this issue is moot now. Igor Pro is now 
Carbon, so I can print directly to PDF and thus use pdflatex, 
skipping ps->pdf translation altogether. I'll have to try it and see. 
Also, I often decide it's not worth the trouble, but it can be nice 
to be able to label graphs with TeX. Is there a "pdffrag" equivalent 
to psfrag?

-- 


   Jonathan E. Guyer
   <http://www.his.com/jguyer/>


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] OzTeX 5.0a is now available
From: "Joseph C. Slater" <joseph.slater at wright.edu>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 15:54:33 -0500

Been carbon for a while.
On Thursday, March 21, 2002, at 10:24  AM, Oliver Hardt wrote:

> Is oz5 carbonized or does it need classic?  olli.
>
>
> 3/22/02, Andrew Trevorrow wrote:
>
>> An alpha version of OzTeX 5.0 is now available for download (12.2Mb):
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
> "unsubscribe macosx-tex" (no quotes) in the body.
> For additional HELP, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
> "help" (no quotes) in the body.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
__________________________________________________
Joseph C. Slater, PhD
Associate Professor
Dept. of Mechanical and Materials Engg, Wright State University,
3640 Colonel Glenn Highway, Dayton, OH 45435
Phone: (+1) 937-775-5040, Fax: (+1) 937-775-5009,
http://www.engineering.wright.edu/~jslater


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: PDF presentations /again/ [was Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service]
From: "Ross Moore" <ross at ics.mq.edu.au>
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 08:22:29 +1100 (EST)

> At 8:57 PM +0100 3/21/02, U. Steiner wrote:
> >why don't you use Acrobat to do presentation.  Works very well and
> >you can use LeTeX typesetting to make the entire presentation,
> >including equations.
 
> Mac OS X, 'doze, etc.). What should be smooth lines come out all 
> clumpy looking. Complex graphics (like a particular logo used here in 
> the lab) could actually be seen rendering element-by-element (I think 
> because they were using gradients) on every flipping slide. Rather 
> than quick transitions with the same logo remaining static at the 
> bottom of the page, every page rerenders the stupid thing. I've tried 
> ps2pdf with a variety of gs implementations and Distiller; all with 
> the same results.
> 
> A graphic arts friend here in the business affairs unit of the lab 
> said she had the same problem and that, after /much/ prodding, Adobe 
> engineers eventually admitted to her that this was their problem and 
> that they weren't going to fix it. Ironically, Preview.app displays 

Report it on:  http://www.tug.org/twg/tfaa/
Provide a description and an example (or two).

> everything just the way I want, but it's not (yet? ever going to be?) 
> an adequate app to do presentations with. Rendering the ps to a 
> bitmap produces a reasonable screen appearance, but makes the process 
> of creating a PDF presentation even more cumbersome than it already 
> is.

If your logo is built up as a vector graphic, with many elements,
why don't you just render it as a JPEG at a resolution suitable
for your presentation slides. 
Then put this .jpg as the logo that repeats on every page.

Besides, the result obtained this way will be useful also for web pages.

Take care with the resolution, otherwise font characters may
be blocky, rather than being nicely anti-aliased.
Adobe products like Photoshop and Illustrator should do a good job,
else use GhostScript with its JPEG device, or its PNG device.
 

> As much as I preferred the look of the textual and mathematical 
> output (and the pleasure of not using PowerPoint), I eventually gave 
> up and went to the Dark Side. I /do/ ultimately have work to do. I'd 
> love to find out this isn't necessary. Am I delusional? Does anybody 
> else see this? Was this all covered in earlier discussions and I just 
> missed it?

Logos can be annoying, since they look like single graphics,
but are usually constructed from smaller pieces that need high-quality
rendering to show the desired information.
Expect to have to spend time getting it looking the best.


> 
> [*] These are generally Encapsulated PostScript figures generated 
> from Igor Pro, either directly or with the LW8 driver. I pretty much 
> went through this hell and gave up on it before Mac OS X was a 
> credible platform, so perhaps this issue is moot now. Igor Pro is now 
> Carbon, so I can print directly to PDF and thus use pdflatex, 
> skipping ps->pdf translation altogether. I'll have to try it and see. 
> Also, I often decide it's not worth the trouble, but it can be nice 
> to be able to label graphs with TeX. Is there a "pdffrag" equivalent 
> to psfrag?

Yes. It's called WaRMreader, built on top of Xy-pic.
Visit  http://www-texdev.mpce.mq.edu.au/WARM/ 
Look at the examples of labelled mathematics; in particular
the ones done using  pdfLaTeX .
There are links to the necessary files, and Xypic driver for pdftex.


Hope this helps,

	Ross Moore

> 
> -- 
> 
> 
>    Jonathan E. Guyer
>    <http://www.his.com/jguyer/>
> 
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
> "unsubscribe macosx-tex" (no quotes) in the body.
> For additional HELP, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
> "help" (no quotes) in the body.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: PDF presentations /again/ [was Re: [OS X TeX] Equation Service]
From: "Enrico Franconi" <franconi at cs.man.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 00:58:36 +0000

On March 21, Jon Guyer writes:
> figures look horrible [*]. Anything rendered from PS vector files 
> gets scaled and rendered horribly by Acrobat (reader or full, Mac, 
> Mac OS X, 'doze, etc.). What should be smooth lines come out all 
> clumpy looking. 

I don't know whether this could be the cause of your problem, but some
similar bad behaviour of gs can be fixed by avoiding the automatic
encoding in jpeg of internal figures. I use the following settings:

 -dAutoFilterColorImages=false -dColorImageFilter=/FlateEncode
 -dAutoFilterGrayImages=false -dGrayImageFilter=/FlateEncode

This will make your pdf files larger than usual.

> Alpha will let you do this now (i.e., it takes care of the clumsy
> solutions for you)
>
> TeX -> Process -> Typeset Selection
>
> Moreover, it does everything within the context of your document's preamble.

Exactly the very same thing is already possible with mac-emacs, and,
in general with any emacs equipped with auctex.

cheers
-- e.

Enrico Franconi                     - franconi at cs.man.ac.uk
University of Manchester            - http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~franconi/
Department of Computer Science      - Phone: +44 (161) 275 6170
Manchester M13 9PL, UK              - Fax:   +44 (161) 275 6204

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