[Textures] The present and new future of Textures (was Re: The future of Textures)

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 9 août 2013 à 23:50, Bruno Voisin <bvoisin at me.com> a écrit :

> In particular, the technical news pages' most-up-to-date versions seem to be
> 
> http://web.archive.org/web/20121023154339/http://www.bluesky.com/news/news.html
> http://web.archive.org/web/20121014163446/http://www.bluesky.com/news/220a.html
> http://web.archive.org/web/20121013232707/http://www.bluesky.com/news/220b.html
> 
> The last two pages list the syntax of some \special commands, together with some hidden prefs, for those who did not write them down at the time.

Based on these pages, a quick summary, originally for my own use but which may be useful to others as well. Very rapidly tested, so there may be errors.

The square brackets have the same meaning as in the Textures User Guide, namely they indicate an optional argument but are not meant to appear in TeX input. Scale factors are in mils. For example

\special{illustration Capture.png scaled 500}

means inclusion of the image file Capture.png at half size.

BTW, one bug which may be met by book writers: EPSF images stop being displayed or printed after reaching the 256th image in a document. This is an OS X bug, not a Textures one. It was identified by Gordon Lee in May 2010, for Snow Leopard. Gordon wrote:

> I believe I've identified the problem; the OS X PostScript converter fails after converting 256 images. (One or two less, depending on how one counts, but I'm guessing there's something internal limited to eight bits.)
> 
> You can verify this in Textures by typesetting [the book file displaying the bug], skipping rapidly via Page Select to the end of the book, and scanning backwards; the missing images will then fall on the early pages of the book.
> 
> I've also verified this by dumping the folders of EPS images from the book onto Preview; it rapidly converts the mass up to 253 or so, then all subsequent conversions fail. (I'm glad to find this example, as it's an easy one to explain to Apple.)  I haven't found a workaround; I tried creating multiple PS converters, but that doesn't change the failure point.

I've no idea whether this bug is still around.

Bruno


Preferences
===========

defaults write com.bluesky.Textures TextFontFace 'Monaco'
defaults write com.bluesky.Textures TextFontSize 16
defaults write com.bluesky.Textures DefaultViewMagnification 1440
defaults write com.bluesky.Textures DefaultTeXFormat LaTeX
defaults write com.bluesky.Textures CircleMagnifier [true/false]
defaults write com.bluesky.Textures ReadClassicDVIResources [true/false]

defaults write com.bluesky.Textures DefaultFlashMode [true/false]


\special commands
=================

Inclusion of external files
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

\special{illustration <filename> [scaled <xscale> [<yscale>]]}

Support of EPSF, PICT, and PDF graphics, but no facility to draw pages other than the first from EPSF or PDF files

Support of PNG, JPEG, and TIFF images

Inclusion of pictures from the Pictures window
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

\special{picture <name> [scaled <xscale> [<yscale>]]}

Only for existing Classic Textures documents 

Color
~~~~~

\special{color rgb <r> <g> <b>}
\special{color cmyk <c> <m> <y> <k>}
\special{color gray <k>}
\special{color <name>}
\special{color define <name> <color>}
\special{color push}
\special{color pop}

Unsupported
~~~~~~~~~~~

PostScript, HTML, etc. extensions