Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 20:00:01 -0400
Subject: MacOSX-TeX Digest #127 - 10/17/01
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MacOSX-TeX Digest #127 - Wednesday, October 17, 2001
Re: [X-TeX] Tables in LaTeX?
by "Neal Parikh"
Double spacing a LaTeX document?
by "Neal Parikh"
Re: [Mac OS X TeX] Double spacing a LaTeX document?
by "Fredrik Wallenberg"
Re: [Mac OS X TeX] Double spacing a LaTeX document?
by "Dave McCollum"
Print and crash problems
by "Gerben Wierda"
email leakage?
by "J.Huelsmann"
Re: [Mac OS X TeX] Tables in LaTeX?
by "William Adams"
Re: [Mac OS X TeX] Tables in LaTeX?
by "Martin Stokhof"
Re: [Mac OS X TeX] Print and crash problems
by "Alessandro Languasco"
Re: [Mac OS X TeX] Print and crash problems
by "Gerben Wierda"
Re: [Mac OS X TeX] Print and crash problems
by "Alessandro Languasco"
Re: [Mac OS X TeX] Print and crash problems
by "Richard Koch"
Installing prosper?
by "Greg Starr"
Installing prosper?
by "Greg Starr"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: [X-TeX] Tables in LaTeX?
From: "Neal Parikh"
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 21:11:50 -0400
Thanks, that did *exactly* what I needed. Few questions:
(1) What does \label{labelname} do? I assume that this is a more
general TeX-ism and not something specific to tables, but I'm not sure
quite what it is and how to use it. I know it's optional, but if it's
useful I might want to take advantage of it. ;-)
(2) The argument where one says something like {|ccccccc|} or the
like -- is there any way of specifying the number of columns any other
way? If one had a 50 column table (for example), would one actually be
expected to write out "|c|" 50 times? My tables are usually small
enough that it generally does not matter, but I was curious anyway.
(3) I ran up against the same wall -- using tabularx with anything other
than "X" doesn't seem to work right. Strange...does anyone else have
any suggestions?
I have some other questions, but I'll put that in a separate email. =3D)
thanks again,
neal
On Tuesday, October 16, 2001, at 07:43 PM, Fredrik Wallenberg wrote:
> On Tuesday, October 16, 2001, at 04:05 PM, Neal Parikh wrote:
>
>> -----------------------------
>> | TITLE |
>> -----------------------------
>> | x | y | z | x | y | z | x |
>> -----------------------------
>> | x | y | z | x | y | z | x |
>> -----------------------------
>> | x | y | z | x | y | z | x |
>> -----------------------------
>>
>> Can anyone help me out with a few examples? Having a little trouble
>> getting the hand of the position and width specifications.
>>
>
> There are two general approaches, using either tabular or tabularx.
> tabular will make the table as small as possible while tabularx takes a
> width parameter.
>
>
> \begin{table}[h] % [h] for here
> \caption{Your Caption}\label{RefThisTable}
> \footnotesize
> \begin{center}
> \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|} \hline
> % alignment can be l,r or c
> % no partition indicator =3D space
> \multicolumn{7}{|c|}{TITLE} \\ \hline
> x & y & z & x & y & z & x \\ \hline
> x & y & z & x & y & z & x \\ \hline
> x & y & z & x & y & z & x \\ \hline
> \end{tabular}
> \end{center}
> \end{table}
>
>
>
> \usepackage{tabularx} % required in the preamble
> \begin{table}[h] % [h] for here
> \caption{Your Caption}\label{RefThisTable}
> \footnotesize
> \begin{center}
> \begin{tabularx}{4in}{|XXXXXXX|} \hline
> % alignment can be l,r, c OR X (left alignment w. fill)
> % no partition indicator =3D space
> \multicolumn{7}{|c|}{TITLE} \\ \hline
> x & y & z & x & y & z & x \\ \hline
> x & y & z & x & y & z & x \\ \hline
> x & y & z & x & y & z & x \\ \hline
> \end{tabularx}
> \end{center}
> \end{table}
>
> I have not figured out how to use tabularx and centered or right
> justified columns.
>
> Fredrik
--
You are not your signature.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Double spacing a LaTeX document?
From: "Neal Parikh"
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 21:15:25 -0400
Using:
\documentclass[11pt, doublespace]{article}
does not seem to properly doublespace my document. Any suggestions?
TIA
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: [Mac OS X TeX] Double spacing a LaTeX document?
From: "Fredrik Wallenberg"
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 19:18:28 -0700
\renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{1.3}
% set it to 1 gives you singlespace...
On Tuesday, October 16, 2001, at 06:15 PM, Neal Parikh wrote:
> Using:
>
> \documentclass[11pt, doublespace]{article}
>
> does not seem to properly doublespace my document. Any suggestions?
>
> TIA
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, send email to with
> "unsubscribe macosx-tex" (no quotes) in the body.
> For additional HELP, send email to with
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> messages posted by third parties.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: [Mac OS X TeX] Double spacing a LaTeX document?
From: "Dave McCollum"
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 21:07:56 -0600
Neal,
If you are using LaTeX, which appears to be the case, use the
"setspace.sty" macro file (included in the LaTeX distribution under
contrib->supported).
It will allow you to switch in and out of "double-spacing" and should
allow you to easily define the actual spacing amount.
-Dave
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Print and crash problems
From: "Gerben Wierda"
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 09:59:38 +0200
On Tuesday, October 16, 2001, at 06:50 , Alessandro Languasco wrote:
> It seems to me that the problem is in the .ps -> .pdf operation
> performed by the tetex package.
Both the printing problem and the crash problem seem to be very nasty
bugs in Apple's PDF code since 10.1.
The fact that they do not show up in some other ways of displaying (or
printing) PDF has to do with the fact that these ways do not use Apple's
PDF implementation (Acrobat, macGSView, everything X11-based).
I urge you all to put non-working PDF on a ftp or http site somewhere
and tell Apple using the feedback on their web site. This *must* be
fixed. A great amount of bug reporting may help.
Gerben
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: email leakage?
From: "J.Huelsmann"
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 12:58:03 +0200
Hi Folks.
I wonder if I maybe do not get every posted message??
For example I got 50 messages from
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 17:06:10 +0200
Subject: Re: [Mac OS X TeX] atchange
From: Gerben Wierda
to
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 09:59:38 +0200
Subject: [Mac OS X TeX] Print and crash problems
From: Gerben Wierda
including these two.
Can somebody tell me if 50 is all right?
--Jan--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: [Mac OS X TeX] Tables in LaTeX?
From: "William Adams"
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 08:23:36 -0400
npparikh asked:
>I need some help making Excel-type tables in my LaTeX documents (using
>TeXShop). Basically I need tables that will give me the horizontal and
>vertical rules to delineate rows and columns, and I also need options
>for things like captions and a title cell that would be the equivalent
>of a merged cell that spans the width of the entire thing.
Belike everyone is tired of hearing this sort of thing, but there is a
nifty app (TexTables.app) which is a part of the InstantTeX package for
NeXTstep which allows one to visually / interactively lay out a table
and then generate either Plain TeX, or LaTeX code to render the table.
The ideal here for Mac OS X would be an app which provides a Service
entrypoint for the formatting. Anyone know if any of the Mac OS X
spreadsheets do Services of any sort? Any that export to TeX?
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: [Mac OS X TeX] Tables in LaTeX?
From: "Martin Stokhof"
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 17:28:40 +0200
If translating actual Excel spread sheets in LaTeX code is what you
are after, there is a small program called "Excel Tables" by Benjamin
Thoma that does that. I have used it a number of times and it works
quite well, at least for relatively small files.
Martin Stokhof
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: [Mac OS X TeX] Print and crash problems
From: "Alessandro Languasco"
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 18:22:00 +0200
Gerben: thanks for the infos.
I tried to post a message to the Apple feedback and to the Apple=20
support....
now I'm waiting...
But I have two questions for the TeXShop-tetex developers:
1) why don't you add the possibility to choose a previewer different
from the apple one?
I don't know if it's an hard thing to do, but since there's a bug in the=20=
apple machinery...
2) the .pdf generation you use is quite different from the one used
by macps2pdf. The dimension of the files is very different (8KB with
macps2pdf against 52KB with the translation used in texshop-tetex)
and also the displaying speed is very different (in Acrobat reader;=20
using
preview the os 10.1 always crashes). why?
It's a very strange thing, isn't it ?
Thanks again (also to Nick Warner and William Adams)
Alessandro
On Mercoled=EC, ottobre 17, 2001, at 09:59 , Gerben Wierda wrote:
> On Tuesday, October 16, 2001, at 06:50 , Alessandro Languasco wrote:
>
>> It seems to me that the problem is in the .ps -> .pdf operation
>> performed by the tetex package.
>
>
> Both the printing problem and the crash problem seem to be very nasty=20=
> bugs in Apple's PDF code since 10.1.
>
> The fact that they do not show up in some other ways of displaying (or=20=
> printing) PDF has to do with the fact that these ways do not use=20
> Apple's PDF implementation (Acrobat, macGSView, everything X11-based).
>
> I urge you all to put non-working PDF on a ftp or http site somewhere=20=
> and tell Apple using the feedback on their web site. This *must* be=20
> fixed. A great amount of bug reporting may help.
>
> Gerben
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, send email to with
> "unsubscribe macosx-tex" (no quotes) in the body.
> For additional HELP, send email to with
> "help" (no quotes) in the body.
> This list is not moderated, and I am not responsible for
> messages posted by third parties.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: [Mac OS X TeX] Print and crash problems
From: "Gerben Wierda"
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 22:25:58 +0200
On Wednesday, October 17, 2001, at 06:22 , Alessandro Languasco wrote:
> But I have two questions for the TeXShop-tetex developers:
Dick is swamped with real work at the moment, so I'll answer these.
> 1) why don't you add the possibility to choose a previewer different
> from the apple one?
TeXShop does not use a previewer, it *is* a previewer (in combination
with code to run tex and friends). TeXShop for instance does not use
Apple's Preview.app.
What is the case is that *all* Apple Cocoa apps share the code for PDF
display, this is because it is a nice OO system. That means that
applications like Mail.app, Create.app, etc. all use the same basic
mechanism which is somewhere in a 'Framework' in the system. This is
also a very simple mechanism, because it just sends the PDF on to the
display environment which does the actual PDF rendering into pixels.
This is also where Apple puts its effort to make stuff look right. Ever
wonder why Omniweb looks so much better than IE? That is because OW uses
those new display mechanisms with all the latest developments in display
algorithms (font smoothing for example) that are not available in IE,
which uses statically linked older QuickDraw code afaik).
Simply said: Applications like IE and Acrobatr create their own bitmaps
and then pack them in very simple PDF and send that to the display
environment. There the PDF is unpacked to the bitmap that is displayed.
(Sharing this framework code has big advantages amongst others, the
option to dynamically alter the behaviour of all apps without
recompiling them. On NEXTSTEP, there was only support for TIFF and EPS
in the TextView class, but someone wrote a filter that translated all
formats to tiff in the background. As a result, all applications that
use TextView suddenly can display JPG, BMP etc, but the applications
themselves have not changed. The framework in the background has. In
other words, NeXT never created a Mail.app on NEXTSTEP that can display
inline JPEG images, but my Mail.app on NEXTSTEP can display them anyway.)
> I don't know if it's an hard thing to do, but since there's a bug in
> the apple machinery...
Well, it can be done of course. One could, instead of creating a PDF
display window, open another application and tell it to open the pdf
file just created. There are drawbacks. For instance, as soon as you go
to your display window, your menu changes to that application, two
applications, remember? TeXShop would than only be a frontend to running
the TeX compile commands.
Actually if you're not afraid of the command line, you can do that. Use
your favourite command line editor, make Acrobat your default PDF viewer
and run pdflatex or altpdflatex by hand. Then, when the pdf file has
been created, run 'open pdf-file'.
> 2) the .pdf generation you use is quite different from the one used
> by macps2pdf. The dimension of the files is very different (8KB with
> macps2pdf against 52KB with the translation used in texshop-tetex)
> and also the displaying speed is very different (in Acrobat reader;
> using
> preview the os 10.1 always crashes). why?
TeXShop is a front end, you must remember that. It is entirely not to
blame for whatever output is generated. It just runs a command in the
background (either pdflatex or altpdflatex). Pdflatex immediately
compiles your tex code into pdf code. Altpdflatex first creates
DVI-ouput, then uses dvips to compile that into PostScript and finally
uses ghostscript 6.01 (an older version) to produce PDF from PS. The
older version is used because there is *another* bug in Apple's PDF
display that gives problems with displaying certain types of PDF files
with multiple types of fonts.
The later route is only there for older projects which include eps files
(which pdflatex cannot handle by itself).
Sizes of PDF files which look the same may vary. The code inside may be
compressed in a binary format. There may or may not be fonts in it, etc.
> It's a very strange thing, isn't it ?
No. It is rather simple.
Acrobat doesn't have these display problems because it does not use the
Mac OS X builtin shared Cocoa machinery, but it has its own. It just
sends bitmaps to the display. Apple's Cocoa PDF framework send PDF to
the display where it is rendered by the display server (Window Server).
This Window Server has the bug (as it is the one that crashes) which is
triggered by PDF sent to it by the Cocoa PDF image class.
Since this is a nasty bug (or bugs) in the *heart* of Apple Mac OS X's
display system we can hope that they will fix it fast. On the other
hand, the fact that the previous bug (not so nasty) was not fixed and
that the new bug appeared shakes my confidence in the quality of the
code of Mac OS X's display environment. That stuff should be written
such that it cannot crash.
A listing of processes reveals:
[dumbledore:local/src/INSTALL.TeX.macosx] root# ps axww
PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND
1 ?? SLs 0:00.02 /sbin/init
2 ?? SL 0:02.36 /sbin/mach_init
41 ?? Ss 0:01.11 kextd
65 ?? Ss 0:02.45
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Framewo=
rks/
ATS.framework/Versions/A/Support/ATSServer
67 ?? Ss 3:51.39 /System/Library/CoreServices/WindowServer
That last one probably is the process which has problems.
Gerben
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: [Mac OS X TeX] Print and crash problems
From: "Alessandro Languasco"
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 23:24:28 +0200
Gerben:
thanks a lot !!!
Now I understand better what's happen.
Thanks also for the work you and the other guys are doing with
TeXShop and TeTeX !
Hoping Apple fix whatever they have to fix ....
bye,
alessandro
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: [Mac OS X TeX] Print and crash problems
From: "Richard Koch"
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 14:42:41 -0700
On Wednesday, October 17, 2001, at 01:25 PM, Gerben Wierda wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 17, 2001, at 06:22 , Alessandro Languasco wrote:
>
>> But I have two questions for the TeXShop-tetex developers:
>
> Dick is swamped with real work at the moment, so I'll answer these.
>
>> 1) why don't you add the possibility to choose a previewer different
>> from the apple one?
>
> TeXShop does not use a previewer, it *is* a previewer (in combination
> with code to run tex and friends). TeXShop for instance does not use
> Apple's Preview.app.
>
> What is the case is that *all* Apple Cocoa apps share the code for PDF
> display, this is because it is a nice OO system. That means that
> applications like Mail.app, Create.app, etc. all use the same basic
> mechanism which is somewhere in a 'Framework' in the system. This is
> also a very simple mechanism, because it just sends the PDF on to the
> display environment which does the actual PDF rendering into pixels.
> This is also where Apple puts its effort to make stuff look right. Ever
> wonder why Omniweb looks so much better than IE? That is because OW
> uses those new display mechanisms with all the latest developments in
> display algorithms (font smoothing for example) that are not available
> in IE, which uses statically linked older QuickDraw code afaik).
>
> Simply said: Applications like IE and Acrobatr create their own bitmaps
> and then pack them in very simple PDF and send that to the display
> environment. There the PDF is unpacked to the bitmap that is displayed.
>
> (Sharing this framework code has big advantages amongst others, the
> option to dynamically alter the behaviour of all apps without
> recompiling them. On NEXTSTEP, there was only support for TIFF and EPS
> in the TextView class, but someone wrote a filter that translated all
> formats to tiff in the background. As a result, all applications that
> use TextView suddenly can display JPG, BMP etc, but the applications
> themselves have not changed. The framework in the background has. In
> other words, NeXT never created a Mail.app on NEXTSTEP that can display
> inline JPEG images, but my Mail.app on NEXTSTEP can display them
> anyway.)
>
>> I don't know if it's an hard thing to do, but since there's a bug in
>> the apple machinery...
>
> Well, it can be done of course. One could, instead of creating a PDF
> display window, open another application and tell it to open the pdf
> file just created. There are drawbacks. For instance, as soon as you go
> to your display window, your menu changes to that application, two
> applications, remember? TeXShop would than only be a frontend to
> running the TeX compile commands.
>
> Actually if you're not afraid of the command line, you can do that. Use
> your favourite command line editor, make Acrobat your default PDF
> viewer and run pdflatex or altpdflatex by hand. Then, when the pdf file
> has been created, run 'open pdf-file'.
>
>> 2) the .pdf generation you use is quite different from the one used
>> by macps2pdf. The dimension of the files is very different (8KB with
>> macps2pdf against 52KB with the translation used in texshop-tetex)
>> and also the displaying speed is very different (in Acrobat reader;
>> using
>> preview the os 10.1 always crashes). why?
>
> TeXShop is a front end, you must remember that. It is entirely not to
> blame for whatever output is generated. It just runs a command in the
> background (either pdflatex or altpdflatex). Pdflatex immediately
> compiles your tex code into pdf code. Altpdflatex first creates
> DVI-ouput, then uses dvips to compile that into PostScript and finally
> uses ghostscript 6.01 (an older version) to produce PDF from PS. The
> older version is used because there is *another* bug in Apple's PDF
> display that gives problems with displaying certain types of PDF files
> with multiple types of fonts.
>
> The later route is only there for older projects which include eps
> files (which pdflatex cannot handle by itself).
>
> Sizes of PDF files which look the same may vary. The code inside may be
> compressed in a binary format. There may or may not be fonts in it, etc.
>
>> It's a very strange thing, isn't it ?
>
> No. It is rather simple.
>
> Acrobat doesn't have these display problems because it does not use the
> Mac OS X builtin shared Cocoa machinery, but it has its own. It just
> sends bitmaps to the display. Apple's Cocoa PDF framework send PDF to
> the display where it is rendered by the display server (Window Server).
> This Window Server has the bug (as it is the one that crashes) which is
> triggered by PDF sent to it by the Cocoa PDF image class.
>
> Since this is a nasty bug (or bugs) in the *heart* of Apple Mac OS X's
> display system we can hope that they will fix it fast. On the other
> hand, the fact that the previous bug (not so nasty) was not fixed and
> that the new bug appeared shakes my confidence in the quality of the
> code of Mac OS X's display environment. That stuff should be written
> such that it cannot crash.
>
> A listing of processes reveals:
>
> [dumbledore:local/src/INSTALL.TeX.macosx] root# ps axww
> PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND
> 1 ?? SLs 0:00.02 /sbin/init
> 2 ?? SL 0:02.36 /sbin/mach_init
> 41 ?? Ss 0:01.11 kextd
> 65 ?? Ss 0:02.45
> =
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Framewo=
rks/
> ATS.framework/Versions/A/Support/ATSServer
> 67 ?? Ss 3:51.39 /System/Library/CoreServices/WindowServer
>
> That last one probably is the process which has problems.
>
> Gerben
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, send email to with
> "unsubscribe macosx-tex" (no quotes) in the body.
> For additional HELP, send email to with
> "help" (no quotes) in the body.
> This list is not moderated, and I am not responsible for
> messages posted by third parties.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Installing prosper?
From: "Greg Starr"
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 17:34:13 -0600
There was quite a discussion this summer about prosper, which I didn't
save. I would like to install it under OS 10.1, but I'm not a TeX
guru. Any help would be appreciated.
--greg
*******************************************************
* Gregory P. Starr, Professor and ASME Adviser *
* Department of Mechanical Engineering *
* The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131 *
* starr@unm.edu http://www.me.unm.edu/~starr *
*******************************************************
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Installing prosper?
From: "Greg Starr"
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 17:34:36 -0600
There was quite a discussion this summer about prosper, which I didn't
save. I would like to install it under OS 10.1, but I'm not a TeX
guru. Any help would be appreciated.
--greg
*******************************************************
* Gregory P. Starr, Professor and ASME Adviser *
* Department of Mechanical Engineering *
* The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131 *
* starr@unm.edu http://www.me.unm.edu/~starr *
*******************************************************
----------------------------------------------------------------------
End of MacOSX-TeX Digest
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"unsubscribe macosx-tex" (no quotes) in the body.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------