April 2007 - ntg-context - NTG Mailing Lists

Xypic
by Dirard Mikdad 27 Apr '07

27 Apr '07

Hallo, I want to convert my thesis (which I wrote in plain tex) to ConTeXt. Unfortunately the process fails because my documents contain some commutative diagrams made in Xypic. Is it possible to convert xy code to something that ConTeXt can understand? Thanks, Dirard

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cannot set "et al." to italic
by Roy Zuo 27 Apr '07

27 Apr '07

Hi all, When using the bibltx module, I want to make the otherstext "et al." italic. I have tried \setupcite[authoryears][otherstext={\it et al.}] but no luck. After looking in to the mailing list archive, I find that the italic style seems have been made default for most recent bibliography modules(am I right?). I just want to do that in my setup, can I? Or, do I have to update my bibliography modules? Thanks, Roy

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How to assign \MPstring before creating page?
by Zhichu Chen 26 Apr '07

26 Apr '07

Hi, everybody I want to use my titles as water marks. I've tried this small test file: ================================= \setupcolors[state=start] \setuppagenumbering[location=] \setMPtext{titleentry}{xxx} \setuphead [title] [textcommand=\TITLE, page=right, before=, after=\blank, inbetween=, header=, textstyle=, style=] \def\TITLE#1% {#1\setMPtext{titleentry}{#1}} \setupbackgrounds [page] [background=page] \defineoverlay[page] [\useMPgraphic{page}] \startuseMPgraphic{page} StartPage; save r; picture r; r := textext.rt(\MPstring{titleentry}); r := r shifted (.5Hsize[Text],.5Vsize[Text]); draw r withcolor darkred; StopPage; \stopuseMPgraphic \starttext \title{Some Title} Some texts. \page[yes] Some texts. \stoptext ================================= It seems it did not get the correct parameter. So I guess the \setMPtext inside \TITLE was not executed when the page was created. I also want to get chapter titles as water marks as well. What can I do? Thank you. -- Best Regards Chen ---------------------------------------------------------------- Zhi-chu Chen | Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility No. 2019 | Jialuo Rd. | Jiading | Shanghai | P.R. China tel: 086 21 5955 3405 | zhichu.chen.googlepages.com | www.sinap.ac.cn ----------------------------------------------------------------

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MetaPost 1.000 announcement
by Taco Hoekwater 26 Apr '07

26 Apr '07

The MetaPost team is happy to announce a new release of MetaPost: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MetaPost 1.000 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The sources and a win32 package can be downloaded immediately from https://foudnry.supelec.fr/projects/metapost/ The source package should compile normally on all systems that are capable of compiling a modern web2c-based TeX distribution. The win32 package is intended for texlive or a similar web2c-based installation, and has been tested only with TeXLive 2007. These executables will *not* work for miktex, sorry. Of course, we welcome any comments (either good or bad) that you may have. Simply replying to this message is fine, but see the bottom of the message for a more formal way to report bugs and feature requests. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- What is new in version 1.000: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * The use of DSC (document structuring) comments has been been cleaned up, thanks to comments by Michail Vidiassov. * By setting prologues to 2 or 3, you can ask MetaPost to reencode and include the used labels fonts in the output, thus creating proper Encapsulated PostScript files even if labels are present. * Support for greyscale and cmykcolor models is added. * The new drawing options "withprescript" and withpostscript" allow the user to attach PostSCript special text to a specific drawing object. * Setting the new internal "mpprocset" to 1 will make MetaPost create a somewhat extended preamble that defines shortcuts for the postscript commands (e..g "l" instead of "lineto"). For big images, this can help shrink the output a bit. * The pool file is now integrated in the executable, so there is not separate 'mp.pool' anymore, except at build time. * Groff support is redone, and dmp now uses kpathsea searching. Groff related changes are thanks to the efforts of Werner Lemberg and Michail Vidiassov * makempx is now a compiled executable on all systems, thank you Akira Kakuto * The error for 'special's longer then 255 characters is removed, so specials can now be of any length. * There is new turningnumber implementation that attempts to find the mathematically correct "turningnumber" of a path. The formulae are derived from a mailinglist discussion between (especially) Dan Luecking and Giuseppe Bilotta. * The manual is updated and modernized. It is currently maintained by Stephan Hennig and Troy Henderson. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Legal notice / license / bug reports ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MetaPost is a system for producing graphics developed by John Hobby at AT&T, based on Donald Knuth's Metafont. The MetaPost home page is http://tug.org/metapost. MetaPost and related programs are in the public domain. The MetaPost development project is currently hosted at Supelec, https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/metapost; please report bugs and request enhancements through there if possible. Alternatively, you can reach us through the <metapost(a)tug.org> mailing list as well. Have fun! Taco Hoekwater, for the MetaPost team, April 26, 2007

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Interesting interview
by Thomas A. Schmitz 26 Apr '07

26 Apr '07

Hi all, thought this might be of interest to some of you: the tug website has just published an interview with Will Robertson ( http://www.tug.org/ interviews/interview-files/will-robertson.html ), whom some of you may know from his work on XeLaTeX. Will is the author of the fontspec package which offers lots of very advanced options for choosing and switching fonts in XeTeX. There was one passage that I found quite interesting: > This leads me into a few words about where I think the big problems > of LaTeX lie. Because it's obvious that it is much harder to learn > than it could be. And the crux of the problem, the long and the > short of it, is that the LaTeX kernel has been intentionally > restricted to the functionality originally designed for it. Now, > this is a good thing, by and large. Standards need to be frozen in > order for them to be adhered to. But it's past time to move on and > create a new standard. There are fast approaching competitors that > will eventually overtake LaTeX if we continue to stagnate. (Not to > mention ConTeXt, which has surpassed LaTeX in essentially every > area. Maybe the solution is just for everyone to switch to that.) I mean, we all know that this is true, but it's great that a fairly well-known member of the LaTeX crowd says so as well. All best Thomas

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\AA cannot be uesed in math mode?
by fdu.xiaojf＠gmail.com 26 Apr '07

26 Apr '07

Hi, I want to get a sign of angstrom in an math formula, here is my example: %-------------------- \starttext $\AA$ \stoptext %-------------------- and the error message: %-------------------- systems : begin file d at line 1 ! Please use \mathaccent for accents in math mode. \dochar #1->\char #1\relax \dobuildtextaccent ...{\let \char \normalaccent #1 \let \char \normalchar #2} l.2 $\AA $ %-------------------- I can use \AA successfully in text mode. Is there anything wrong with my tex file? Thanks.

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Adjust spacing before and after figures
by Vyatcheslav Yatskovsky 25 Apr '07

25 Apr '07

Hello, How to adjust spacing before and after all figures placed by \externalfigure? I don't need captions, just figures. Now I use two commands in pair, like \blank[4ex] \externalfigure[lily03.png][scale=1000] -- Best regards, Vyatcheslav Yatskovsky

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crop pdf page via \externalfigure options
by Vyatcheslav Yatskovsky 25 Apr '07

25 Apr '07

Hello, I have pdfs containing small musical pieces, created with lilypond. To include them in my document, I must crop each pdf manually each time it is recreated. Is there a way to crop pdf page via \externalfigure options? (All the switches listed at TeXshow seem to scale an image, not to crop.) Best regards, Vyatcheslav Yatskovsky

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XeTeX image dimensioning bug
by Vyatcheslav Yatskovsky 25 Apr '07

25 Apr '07

Hello, I've found a bug in XeTeX image handling. Once it has created a .rli file for an image, it doesn't recalculate dimensions after the image is changed. I tested it with .png image, 1-bit (black-and-white). When I crop the image, both its size and datetime attribs are updated. Nevertheless, running xetex again produces distorted image, stretched to the old dimensions. I can only make xetex to rebuild .rlis by deleting them manually each time. Generally, I don't understand why XeTeX is so stupid that it relays upon the external tool (ImageMagic) to calculate image dimensions. ConTeX performs much better at this point. (How I'm longing for it supporting system fonts!). Best, Vaycheslav Yatskovsky

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beginner's question: interlinespace and definetyping
by Patrick Gundlach 25 Apr '07

25 Apr '07

Hi, it seems that I keep asking the beginner's questions... How do I combine \setupinterlinespace with \definetyping? I'd like to have a verbatim envrionment with less interlinespace then the rest of the document. \definetyping [befehl] [before={\startframedtext[width=.8\makeupwidth, before={\setupinterlinespace[line=10pt]}, background=screen, backgroundscreen=.9]}, after={\stopframedtext}] does not seem to have any effect. Putting the setupinterlinespace to the first 'before=' has no effect either. Patrick (I am pretty sure that I could have answered these kind of questions myself a few years ago - that's embarrassing)

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