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Subject: MacOSX-TeX Digest #429 - 09/16/02
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MacOSX-TeX Digest #429 - Monday, September 16, 2002
Re: huge digests full of dreck
by "david craig"
Re: [OS X TeX] huge digests full of dreck
by "Michael Murray"
Re: [OS X TeX] huge digests full of dreck
by "Ross Moore"
Re: [OS X TeX] huge digests full of dreck
by "Adrian Heathcote"
Re: [OS X TeX] huge digests full of dreck
by "Ross Moore"
Re: [OS X TeX] huge digests full of dreck
by "Oliver Hardt"
Book, _Making TeX Work_ available on Sourceforge
by "William Adams"
please help me with pdftricks
by "Troy Goodson"
Re: [OS X TeX] Book, _Making TeX Work_ available on Sourceforge
by "Michael Murray"
Re: [OS X TeX] Book, _Making TeX Work_ available on Sourceforge
by "William Adams"
Re: [OS X TeX] Book, _Making TeX Work_ available on Sourceforge
by "Michael Murray"
Re: [OS X TeX] Book, _Making TeX Work_ available on Sourceforge
by "Jon Guyer"
Re: [OS X TeX] please help me with pdftricks
by "Ross Moore"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: huge digests full of dreck
From: "david craig"
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2002 02:49:01 -0400 (EDT)
I'm with Johan on this one -- and I appreciate his courage in being
brave enough to take on what's bound to be an unpopular role.
David Craig
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] huge digests full of dreck
From: "Michael Murray"
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2002 17:18:32 +0930
> I hate to sound like a broken record (or maybe a CD?) - but could
>people please take care when sending email messages to this mailing list
>(and others)? The most recent digests have been as much as 50% quoted =
list
>instructions, duplicate mime formatted messages, HTML formatted messages,
>pgp signature headers and footers, quoted extraneous content and
>excessively long signature files (not to name names: Ross, Edward,
>Donal...). These can be particularly troubling for those people who read
>the mailing list digest.
Just out of interest why do you use Digests?
I just let the MacOS-TeX stuff filter to a mail box and everynow and
again I scan over the Subjects read the few that interest me and
then Trash the contents of the folder when it starts get too big.
One problem with 4 lines signatures is that I am actually obliged by
my employer to include:
-----------------
This email message is intended only for the addressee(s)
and contains information which may be confidential and/or
copyright. If you are not the intended recipient please
do not read, save, forward, disclose, or copy the contents
of this email. If this email has been sent to you in error,
please notify the sender by reply email and delete this
email and any copies or links to this email completely and
immediately from your system. No representation is made
that this email is free of viruses. Virus scanning is
recommended and is the responsibility of the recipient.
-----------------
I don't because I think its silly! But if I took these
pronouncements from on high seriously, or if they put a
filter in the outgoing SMTP server to check I have a disclaimer
my signature would be seriously long.
Michael
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] huge digests full of dreck
From: "Ross Moore"
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2002 18:41:11 +1000 (EST)
> I hate to sound like a broken record (or maybe a CD?) - but could
> people please take care when sending email messages to this mailing list
> (and others)? The most recent digests have been as much as 50% quoted =
list
> instructions, duplicate mime formatted messages, HTML formatted =
messages,
> pgp signature headers and footers, quoted extraneous content and
> excessively long signature files (not to name names: Ross, Edward,
Since you list me first, I went back to see what prompted this, as =
usually:
1. I do not use a signature, apart from my name;
2. I never send in HTML form, or other formatted form --- just text-only
3. I don't have a pgp signature, in header or footer
4. usually I remove extraneous content, but leave enough to make
the context understandable, as in this email message.
But sure enough, in my previous email to this list I failed to follow item =
4.
above, by leaving in a large amount of quoted source code and .log =
message.
I apologise profusely for this.
that message was sent from India, where the line was rather slow =
connecting
via ssh to my usual mail machine in Australia.
Most likely I was under some time pressure to get the message finished.
> Donal...). These can be particularly troubling for those people who read
> the mailing list digest.
Does your mailer not allow you to jump to the start of each message
when you think that you've come to the useful end of the previous one?
If so, then even the message that I mentioned above would not have
caused you any trouble.
> If more than 50% of the content of your message that gets sent to
> the list is not actually typed by you - you are probably doing something
> wrong.
I've no intention of changing my habits; but do apologise for any slip-ups
that can occur, with respect to my item 4. above.
Hope this helps,
Ross
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] huge digests full of dreck
From: "Adrian Heathcote"
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2002 23:03:29 +1000
I have a sense of deja vu here. I am pretty sure that this very same
message---word for word---was sent out about six months ago. I can
recall the same listing of 'most useful contributors being the worst
offenders', and the same un-likening of postings to rocket science.
Could this be the reason Ross feels unfairly singled out? He is being
reprimanded (a second time!) for something he may (or may not) have done
six months ago!!
I don't know about rocket science, but this is pretty fishy. And more
than a bit unfair.
HTH
Adrian Heathcote
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] huge digests full of dreck
From: "Ross Moore"
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 00:12:56 +1000 (EST)
> I have a sense of deja vu here. I am pretty sure that this very same
> message---word for word---was sent out about six months ago. I can
The dates are 8 Feb, and 22 May of this year.
There may have been one even earlier, too.
> recall the same listing of 'most useful contributors being the worst
> offenders', and the same un-likening of postings to rocket science.
>
> Could this be the reason Ross feels unfairly singled out? He is being
> reprimanded (a second time!) for something he may (or may not) have done =
> six months ago!!
Thanks for the support Adrian, but let's not blow this up unduly.
In neither of the earlier ones were specific names mentioned.
> I don't know about rocket science, but this is pretty fishy. And more
> than a bit unfair.
We all make mistakes from time-to-time.
So let it be this time, and everyone try to put a positive slant on this
exchange and examine some of the options available in our email software.
That includes Johann Beda, who surely can do something to avoid the
aggravation that he feels at some of the redundancy in some messages.
Remember that every email comes with about 20 lines of header,
showing how the message was routed to your machine, and much other info.
Software can, and usually does, hide this. So there *are* ways to avoid
unwanted stuff.
BTW, in case anyone is interested in finding out about what happened
at TUG2002 in India, week before last, you can (try to) download
a report from my site:
http://www.maths.mq.edu.au/~ross/kerala.pdf
But before you do this, beware that it is ~32 Mbytes,
due to many embedded images (~40 of them).
And no, I will not consider posting it to the list. :-)
(Yes, it was made with TeXShop, so maybe the preamble will be
of use to someone.)
All the best,
Ross
> HTH
>
> Adrian Heathcote
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] huge digests full of dreck
From: "Oliver Hardt"
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2002 07:20:09 -0700
I, too, have the feeling that this email has been send before -- the
"rocket science" phrase was very familiar to me ...
in any case, i agree with the sender in only one point:
quoting discipline. and here i only agree for the reason of
readability -- sometimes people quote an entire message in a RE that
only contains 1 or 2 lines of new text. that is pretty lazy and
makes not much sense to me: this level of redundancy is
counter-productive in regards of the communicative goal.
on the other hand, to me it makes also more sense to create a
mailbox "MaxOSXTex" in which all the msgs of this list are filtered.
then just go by the subject line and don't even open what you don't
want to read. a digest is probably not the most effective way to
read this list -- especially if you want to respond to one mail and
want to quote.
and at least for the american list members the equation
cost=3DMsgSize*RatePerMin doesn't compute in most, if not all, cases:
you pay 20 bucks or so per month and can be online as much as you
like to.
so, although i think that sometimes these inefficient quoting
techniques are actually a way to prevent communication, i do think
that the dreck that has been produced by this thread (to which i
contributed as well ... sorry) is much more of a nuisance than those
messages that actually addressed a tex-related topic. we have a
listowner to take care for the discipline.
olli.
9/15/02, Adrian Heathcote wrote:
>I have a sense of deja vu here. I am pretty sure that this very same
>message---word for word---was sent out about six months ago. I can
>recall the same listing of 'most useful contributors being the worst
>offenders', and the same un-likening of postings to rocket science.
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Book, _Making TeX Work_ available on Sourceforge
From: "William Adams"
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 14:39:40 -0400
Apparently it's been there since at least 23 August---didn't see any
announcement on it, if it's old news, sorry, but it's new to me (that
it's freely available) and it caught my eye during a search.
http://makingtexwork.sourceforge.net/mtw/
William
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: please help me with pdftricks
From: "Troy Goodson"
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 15:16:45 -0700
I thought I try out pdftricks. I went over to
and copied the example on
that page (it's kinda long so I won't list it here)
{short story: it didn't work, I don't know why, and I'm hoping
somewhere here might help me. the following is some info on what
happened...}
I saved it in a file named "pdftricks_example.tex"
I went into Terminal and typed
pdflatex -shell-escape pdftricks_example.tex
{Problem is, the resulting "pdftricks_example.pdf" doesn't seem to
include the graphic created with pdftricks. I can open
"pdftricks_example-fig1.eps.pdf" with Preview and I see it there. }
My log includes
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159-1.00b-pretest-20020211 (Web2C 7.3.7x)
...[snip]
(pdftricks) Using \write 18 capability
(pdftricks) for producing PDF-figures.
... [snip]
Opening PDFStream=3Dpdftricks_example-fig1.texThis is TeX, Version
3.14159 (Web2C 7.3.7x)
This is dvips(k) 5.90a Copyright 2002 Radical Eye Software =
(www.radicaleye.com)
' TeX output 2002.09.16:1454' -> pdftricks_example-fig1.eps
.=
[1]
... [snip]
Output written on pdftricks_example.pdf (1 page, 10720 bytes).
Transcript written on pdftricks_example.log.
I ended up with these files:
-rw-r--r-- 1 tdg staff 11294 Sep 16 14:54 pdftricks_example.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 tdg staff 10720 Sep 16 14:54 pdftricks_example.pdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 tdg staff 334 Sep 16 14:54 pdftricks_example.aux
-rw-r--r-- 1 tdg staff 771 Sep 16 14:54 =
pdftricks_example-fig1.eps.pdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 tdg staff 667 Sep 16 14:54 pdftricks_example-fig1.tex
-rw-r--r-- 1 tdg staff 22 Sep 16 14:54 tmp.inputs
-rw-r--r-- 1 tdg staff 5148 Sep 16 14:54 pdftricks_example.tex
Problem is, "pdftricks_example.pdf" doesn't seem to include the
graphic created with pdftricks. I can open
"pdftricks_example-fig1.eps.pdf" with Preview and I see it there.
** Any ideas as to what went wrong?
** Also, if I try and run this in TeXShop, I get this message:
(pdftricks) No \write 18 capability.
(pdftricks) You'll have to run a script by yourself!
what's up here? I thought I could avoid this with a
~/Library/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf, containing "shell_escape =3D t"
** Finally, if the personal texmf.cnf won't work, does anyone a
script I can use in TeXShop as my "personal script" that will handle
this?
Thanks,
Troy.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] Book, _Making TeX Work_ available on Sourceforge
From: "Michael Murray"
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 08:21:56 +0930
--=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D_-1179905776=3D=3D_ma=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=3D"us-ascii" ; format=3D"flowed"
>Apparently it's been there since at least 23 August---didn't see any
>announcement on it, if it's old news, sorry, but it's new to me (that
>it's freely available) and it caught my eye during a search.
>
>http://makingtexwork.sourceforge.net/mtw/
>
>William
>
\begin{quote}
I wrote Making TeX Work in 1994. It has not been updated and is
unquestionably out-of-date. In fact, the TeX sources are still in
LaTeX 2.09.
It is provided here for the benefit of those readers who would like
to read it (it has been out of print for several years) or its TeX
sources.
I have no plans to update it.
\end{quote}
Nothing about OS X :-(
Michael
--=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D_-1179905776=3D=3D_ma=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
Content-Type: text/html; charset=3D"us-ascii"
Re: [OS X TeX] Book, _Making TeX Work_ available on
So
Apparently it's been there since at least
23 August---didn't see any
announcement on it, if it's old news, sorry, but it's new to me
(that
it's freely available) and it caught my eye during a search.
http://makingtexwork.sourceforge.net/mtw/
William
\begin{quote}
I wrote Making TeX Work in 1994. It has not been updated and is
unquestionably out-of-date. In fact, the TeX sources are still in
LaTeX 2.09.
It is provided here for the benefit of those readers who would like to
read it (it has been out of print for several years) or its TeX
sources.
I have no plans to update it.
\end{quote}
Nothing about OS X :-(
Michael
--=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D_-1179905776=3D=3D_ma=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] Book, _Making TeX Work_ available on Sourceforge
From: "William Adams"
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 19:07:23 -0400
Michael quoted Norman Walsh's forward for this:
>I wrote Making TeX Work in 1994. It has not been updated and is
unquestionably out-of-date.
>In fact, the TeX sources are still in LaTeX 2.09.
>It is provided here for the benefit of those readers who would like to
read it (it has been out of
>print for several years) or its TeX sources.
>I have no plans to update it.
\end{quote}
and replied:
>Nothing about OS X :-(
If you feel a general bit of information regarding TeX is off-topic,
then consider this a challenge for everyone to contribute to this open
source (though I can'f figure out how to get at the TeX source...)
document and up-date it to reflect developments in TeX for Mac OS X.
:/
William
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] Book, _Making TeX Work_ available on Sourceforge
From: "Michael Murray"
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 08:47:54 +0930
>Michael quoted Norman Walsh's forward for this:
>>I wrote Making TeX Work in 1994. It has not been updated and is
>unquestionably out-of-date.
>>In fact, the TeX sources are still in LaTeX 2.09.
>
>>It is provided here for the benefit of those readers who would like to
>read it (it has been out of
>>print for several years) or its TeX sources.
>>I have no plans to update it.
>\end{quote}
>
>and replied:
>>Nothing about OS X :-(
>
>If you feel a general bit of information regarding TeX is off-topic,
>then consider this a challenge for everyone to contribute to this open
>source (though I can'f figure out how to get at the TeX source...)
>document and up-date it to reflect developments in TeX for Mac OS X.
>
>:/
>
>William
>
Hi William
Sorry if my post came across as a complaint about your post being
off-topic. I didn't mean that at all ( I posted here about MatLab !)
I was just disappointed it didn't have anything about OS-X in it.
Michael
--
_________________________________________________________
Assoc/Prof Michael Murray =
School of Pure Mathematics Fax: 61+ 8 8303
3696
University of Adelaide Phone: 61+ 8 8303 4174
Australia 5005 Email: mmurray@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
University of Adelaide CRICOS # 00123M
________________________________________________________
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] Book, _Making TeX Work_ available on Sourceforge
From: "Jon Guyer"
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 19:22:39 -0400
At 7:07 PM -0400 9/16/02, William Adams wrote:
>(though I can'f figure out how to get at the TeX source...)
--
Jonathan E. Guyer
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] please help me with pdftricks
From: "Ross Moore"
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 09:41:31 +1000 (EST)
>
> I ended up with these files:
> -rw-r--r-- 1 tdg staff 11294 Sep 16 14:54 pdftricks_example.log
> -rw-r--r-- 1 tdg staff 10720 Sep 16 14:54 pdftricks_example.pdf
> -rw-r--r-- 1 tdg staff 334 Sep 16 14:54 pdftricks_example.aux
> -rw-r--r-- 1 tdg staff 771 Sep 16 14:54 =
pdftricks_example-fig1.eps.pdf
=
^^^^^^^
Why the double extension ?
You won't have a GraphicsRule for handling files with this suffix,
so surely it should be just pdftricks_example-fig1.pdf
Alternatively, if that was generated automatically,
then look at \DeclareGraphicsRule and \DeclareGraphicsExtension
from graphicx.sty to define the correct actions.
> -rw-r--r-- 1 tdg staff 667 Sep 16 14:54 pdftricks_example-fig1.tex
> -rw-r--r-- 1 tdg staff 22 Sep 16 14:54 tmp.inputs
> -rw-r--r-- 1 tdg staff 5148 Sep 16 14:54 pdftricks_example.tex
>
> Problem is, "pdftricks_example.pdf" doesn't seem to include the
> graphic created with pdftricks. I can open
> "pdftricks_example-fig1.eps.pdf" with Preview and I see it there.
>
> ** Any ideas as to what went wrong?
Just guessing that the file name isn't so good.
Cheers
Ross
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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