August 2004 - ntg-context

Re: [OS X TeX] trim pdf figures
by Nigel King 06 Aug '04

06 Aug '04

>> (I wish there was a way to command the epstopdf bit from within >> Mathematica to automate the process further.) >> > > I don't know anything about ConTeXt, but does \usepackage{epstopdf} > work? (Or something similar?) You then don't need to worry about > explicitly converting all the eps files, it's automated within the TeX > process. Alan, thanks for this-I didn't know. Unfortunately I don't think ConTeXt includes this feature. But I will cross post to the ConTeXt list to see. Nigel

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How to change the page size for single pages within a document
by Stefan Wachter 06 Aug '04

06 Aug '04

Hi all, is there a possibility to change the page size of single pages in a document. Reason: I have a document that contains some large tables that do not fit on normal pages. Therefore I would like to output such tables on a page of their own having the neccessary size. (Of course the documents are not ment to be printed. They are to be viewed with Acrobat.) Thanks for your attention, --Stefan

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EPS/PDF import and \underbrace in metaplay
by Mojca Miklavec 05 Aug '04

05 Aug '04

I have two questions cencerning metapost/metaplay: 1.) EPS/PDF import How do I make an existing EPS or PDF image a part of some other meta[post/play] graphic? 2.) \underbrace I wrote the following two macros for drawing braces in graphics: \def\underbracedescription#1#2{$\underbrace{\hbox{\vrule width#1 height 0bp}}_{\hbox{\strut #2}}$} \def\rightbracedescription#1#2{$\displaystyle{\left.\vphantom{\hbox{\vrule width0bp height#1 depth#1}}\right\}\hbox{\strut #2}}$} However, the width has to be given manually - it doesn't care about the actual size of the object it has to be applied to. How is it possible to give the command some more flexibility? (say, to be able to simply use \underbracedescription{pict}{description}, perhaps even without the need of specifying the coordinates explicitly, but) Thanks a lot, Mojca Miklavec

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DIN sizes
by Peter Rolf 05 Aug '04

05 Aug '04

Hallo Hans! As I defined a few envelope formats I realized that some predefined paper sizes differ from my DIN copies. DIN 476, Dez 1976 DIN 476 Part 1, Feb 1991 (A/B variants) DIN 476 Part 2, Feb 1991 (C variants) differ (1mm) B3: 353x500 % width*height B4: 250x353 B5: 176x250 B6: 125x176 B8: 62x88 B9: 44x62 C1: 648x917 C2: 458x648 C3: 324x458 C6: 114x162 C7: 81x114 missing 4 A0: 1682x2378 2 A0: 1189x1682 A10: 26x37 B10: 31x34 C10: 28x40 DIN 678-1, Jan 1998 DIN 680, Jan 1995 switched DL: 110x220 missing C6/C5: 114x229 E4: 280x400 That's all :) If you are interested, I can mail you copies of this boring DIN stuff. Greetings, Peter

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RE: [NTG-context] Re: new stuff for brave users
by ishamid 05 Aug '04

05 Aug '04

Hi Patrick, One suggestion for TeXshow-web:-) The commands are all listed in alphabetical order, which is great. But one good help would be an option ordering them by topic. For example, a while back I needed a rotation command, and the manual does not discuss many of the graphics capabilities of ConTeXt. I finally found \rotate combing through the base files (it's not in cont-eni.pdf). It would be very useful to know all such graphics commands in ConTeXt. The organization of the Reference Manual of Lamport's book on LaTeX, or even the end-of-chapter command summaries of cont-eni.pdf, is a good model for this. So if I am looking for a graphics command I can look purely alphabetically as it is now, as well as topically, which is sometimes more useful. A related point; in ConTeXt the bar <|> is an active character, which is not Plain behavior. A list of these little special characters would be useful as well, especially for macro writers, etc. In any case, this list of commands is a great contribution, and a topical organization would make it greater:=) All the best Idris

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ConTeXt vs. LaTeX
by Mojca Miklavec 05 Aug '04

05 Aug '04

At the very first moment I saw some manuals I was highly impressed of what ConTeXt was able to do and decided to switch from LaTeX to the new typesetting system. I've put (probably to much) effort to typeset my first presentation and a couple of other documents in ConTeXt after which I realised that it takes me far less time if I continue using LaTeX for some documents (no need to redefine styles for headings, simple tables easier to typeset there, ...). I'm not sure if these are only the problems at the beginning (since I have to look for almost any command I use) and would soon disappear or would the general advice be "don't use ConTeXt if LaTeX suits your needs". What are your opinions about that? I guess I could be missing something. \usemodule[pre-'something'] could be a quick solution for presentations (and I needed quite some time to realise that, but I've made up my own style anyway) - does anything similar exist also for "LaTeX-like" documents? I can write something for myself, but it still doesn't solve the problem if I want to convince someone to start using ConTeXt as a substitute for simple LaTeX documents as long he's unable to achive nice default formatting in one or two lines. Thanks a lot, Mojca Miklavec

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"Animation" in slides (\presentationstep, metafun)
by Mojca Miklavec 05 Aug '04

05 Aug '04

I would first like to apologise for this "flooding" of the mailing list with some questions I can't tackle with alone. It's just a mixture of opinions and questions I came accross in the last month while making first steps into ConTeXt and I wrote them all at once. I'll appreciate any suggestion, hint or solution to any of these problems. *** *** *** *** *** After some failed experimets with \presentationstep (I'm still not sure why it doesn't work) I've browsed through the archives a bit, but still didn't find any satisfying and elegant solution for what I need. 1.) line-after-line ... just as what \presentationstep was intended for. Is there an elegant way to achive this "standard PowerPoint trick" of showing the content of the same page stepwise? I've found a presentation of Patrick Gundlach (Keine Angst vor (runden Klammern)), 22.1.02 with \StartItem ... \StopItem, and it more or less solves the problem, but for some non-expert, not reading the archive and without the need of this pretty, fascinating "shadowed" effect, some easier solution should be (and maybe already is) provided. In http://www.sfu.ca/~cdlinkle/jan23.htm there's an example of a nice ans simple usage in Prosper: \fromSlide{[slideNr]}{...text...} makes the portion of text or graphics available only from a certain slide number on. \onlySlide{[slideNr]}{...text...}) makes the portion of text only on a certain slide and it would be nice to be able to achive the same effect in ConTeXt with the same simplicity of the usage. Maybe it is possible already, but I'm looking for suggestions how (this feature should be a part of the standard distribution since it is often needed). 2.) filling-up a table This is a more complicated example and probably "playing with TeX" may be the only solution, but I'll ask anyway. I need to make something similar as, say, multiplication table or a table for dynamic programming calculation of minimum editing distance. There is a n*m table, whose fields have to be filled step-by-step (sometimes the last entries in bold or in red) on consecutive slides. Copy-pasting and correcting the table ten or twenty times makes no sense. I would be grateful on any suggestion about how to solve this problem. 3.) graphics manipulation Sometimes not only the text alone, but also the graphics should change a bit. itdemos/internal/calculat/calculat.pdf (without the first page) can explain exactly what I mean. http://www.theorie.physik.uni-wuppertal.de/~rainer/talks/sample3.pdf is also an example, although I believe I would stil prefer using PowerPoint (I never did until now) if I was forced to make something similar in the way they did (using the same tools, tricks and complexity). I think I would be able to solve this anyhow, but with way too much effort and without some dirty trick. Can please someone provide me some minimalistic example of how to do this in metaplay? It would also be nice to include it in metafun manual or at least put it into wiki. 4.) Page numbering Suppose I have now "my perfect presentation" :) and I want to number the pages or achieve some visual effects such as in any of the following: general/manuals/example.pdf (dots on the bottom of the page) pre-funny (dark red spot in the frame) pre-colorful (bottom line) Introduction `a ConTeXt, Denis Roegel, 29th May 02 How do I make the pages belonging together also possess the same page number? (for example pages 2-9 of collect/present/pre-ntsd.pdf could theoretically be assigned the same page number, 10-14 the second, 15-17 the third, ...) In the above mentioned example in Prosper this kind of page numbering is solved exactly the way I like. *** *** *** *** *** Thanks a lot, Mojca Miklavec

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Bug report, \frac as redefined in m-newmat.tex
by Brooks Moses 04 Aug '04

04 Aug '04

The following simple file works fine if I comment out the \usemodule[newmat] line, but crashes if I put it in. \usemodule[newmat] \starttext \placeformula \startformula \eqalign{\frac{1}{2} \cr} \stopformula \stoptext - Brooks

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Re: [NTG-context] Re: Best source of ConTeXt documentation?
by Paulo Ney de Souza 03 Aug '04

03 Aug '04

Patrick, Maybe we should move this discussion off the list to not bother others that may not be so interested in it. What I am trying to say (answering your question) is that learning by example is natural to human behaviour and extremely efficient. If you attend any of my classes here in Berkeley you will see examples from begining to the end, no matter what the subject is: math or programming. Even with learned programmers, examples do work well, I took, for example (no pun intended) an MSDN CD for C++ I have here by my side, 80% os the space in the disk is taken by examples, the rest is shared between the software, SDK, and manuals ... You promptly assumed that the guy wanted to copy the examples at hand. I don't think that this is right! He may indeed end up copying it, but you can't assume it. Paulo Ney >From ntg-context-bounces(a)ntg.nl Mon Aug 2 23:40:12 2004 >From: "Patrick Gundlach" <patrick(a)gundla.ch> >To: ntg-context(a)ntg.nl >Subject: [NTG-context] Re: Best source of ConTeXt documentation? > >Hello Paulo, > >> Everyone learns a language by example, if you try to teach one you >> will see, even Patrick, when he was a baby learned his first language >> by example (real language), it is only natural, it is only human. To >> argue the contrary is just lack of experience in teaching. > >Right, but what do you want to say? Typography and design is not a >matter of learning a language. > >Patrick >-- >ConTeXt wiki: http://contextgarden.net >texshow-web: http://texshow.contextgarden.net >List archive: http://archive.contextgarden.net >_______________________________________________ >ntg-context mailing list >ntg-context(a)ntg.nl >http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context >

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Metapost variable problem
by Michal Kvasnicka 03 Aug '04

03 Aug '04

Good afternoon. I am sorry that I bother you with this offtopic but I don't know where else I can ask. I want to prepare a better interface for my metapost macros. I want to use the record-like variables to store "object" information. But I don't know how to copy such records. More precisely, let's suppose I have string a.type; a.type:="ecicsqrt"; string a.name; a.name:="indifference curve number 1"; string a.A; a.A:="1"; string a.B; a.B:="1"; ... And I want to copy it to a record b. But b:=a; doesn't work (now b is equal to some unknown token a). Is there some simple way to do it, or have I to copy it manually like this: string b.type; b.type:=a.type; ... Many thanks for your help. With wishes of nice summer Michal Kvasnicka

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