September 2008 - ntg-context - NTG Mailing Lists

Has anybody used asymptote without LaTeX?
by Zhichu Chen 27 Sep '08

27 Sep '08

Hi, It is said that Asymptote has supported PRC format 3D file: http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/gallery/3D%20graphs/ I really wanna give it a try, but once I was building from the svn source, I was told that I don't have LaTeX in my $PATH. I haven't really been using LaTeX for a long time, and I prefer I don't need to install a bunch of LaTeX programs and packages just for a drawing program which, IMHO, only use LaTeX to make nice labels. Is there any workarounds? And how to embed .prc files into the .pdf document? -- 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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bug in mkiv - paragraph column in tables
by Chen Shen 27 Sep '08

27 Sep '08

Hi all, The following simple table doesn't work right under mkiv. The baseline of the paragraph (2nd) column is much lower than other columns. The same code works fine under mkii. "\showstructs" shows the difference between the two, but I wasn't too sure how this should be fixed. Thank you. shenchen ================= \starttext \starttables[|lw(1cm)|lp(5cm)|lw(2cm)|] \HL \NC 101 \NC This is ConTeXts oldest table module. It uses the same formatting as Tabulate (see Tables Overview). \NC haha \FR \HL \stoptables \stoptext =================

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Context & TeXLive 2008
by Brian R. Landy 27 Sep '08

27 Sep '08

Hi, I wanted to share some observations from enabling the latest MkIV code (2008.09.24, compiled luatex from svn just now) to run on a new installation of TeXLive 2008 on 64bit Linux. This is my first time trying MkIV. First -- a comment on installing using TeXLive 2008, which hopefully is helpful to others. In my installation I noticed that x86-64/bin/luatools was symlinked to texmf-dist/scripts/context/stubs/unix/luatools. The rsync update process as outlined on garden does not update this file; it updates texmf-dist/scripts/context/lua/luatools.lua. So this needs to be copied (or linked) over to make the update work. The same issues exists with mtxrun. The symptom was a broken "context --make". Now, on to my issues. I am listing anything that used to work in my TeXLive 2007 installation of MkII but fails in 2008 (MkII or MkIV). Items 1-3 were tested on garden as well to ensure it was not an issue in my setup -- 1. \placefloat[here]{none} fails. \placegraphic works instead. This works on MkII. See test_placefloat.tex. 2. MkIV fails due to the \startcolor...\stopcolor sequence embedded in a natural table (see test_color.tex). A working alternative is commented in that file. 3. MkIV will not typeset the file test.tex. It is due to using {style=\switchtobodyfont[tt]} in the table setup. Using [modern,tt] works fine, but this is not necessary with MkII. 4. This is a MkII issue (or maybe it is a pdftex problem?) MkII on 2007, texexec --dvi on 2008, and MkIV all work. The problem is with pulling in an external figure like this -- \externalfigure[/tmp/testfigure] The files /tmp/testfigure.eps and /tmp/testfigure.pdf exist. This should use the full path to find the file, and will pick the eps when creating dvi and the pdf when creating pdf's. As mentioned, this works with every combination I tested except 2008 MkII. Some (not very usable for me) workarounds are -- - use the filename without the path and add the path using \setupexternalfigures[directory=] - specify the .pdf extension (means I cannot typeset to dvi if I want to; I find this useful for previewing with xdvi's auto-reload) - use \setupexternalfigures[directory=/] and use a relative path 5. Just a comment on performance -- I noticed that using MkIV on a complicated document I have took 23 minutes vs. 12 minutes with MkII. I didn't know if MkIV is expected to be slower/comparable/faster at this stage. Anyway, I hope this is useful to other users and to the developers. Best Regards, Brian

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Flaky pdf file.
by John Culleton 27 Sep '08

27 Sep '08

Recent texlive 2008 installed on Linux Slackware 12.0 system. I have a file that I can process via texexec and which shows up fine on my Acrobat Reader, kpdf or xpdf. However another person using (probably) Windows keeps getting corrupt file errors when he tries to read it. And when I try to run the output pdf through pdf2ps it blows up with this message: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- **** Warning: An error occurred while reading an XREF table. **** The file has been damaged. This may have been caused **** by a problem while converting or transfering the file. **** Ghostscript will attempt to recover the data. ERROR: /undefined in /BXlevel Operand stack: 1 --dict:6/6(ro)(G)-- 8¬ÎµÈ¶dm Execution stack: %interp_exit .runexec2 --nostringval-- --nostringval-- --nostringval-- 2 %stopped_push --nostringval-- --nostringval-- --nostringval-- false 1 %stopped_push 1 3 %oparray_pop 1 3 %oparray_pop 1 3 %oparray_pop --nostringval-- --nostringval-- --nostringval-- --nostringval-- --nostringval-- --nostringval-- false 1 %stopped_push --nostringval-- %loop_continue --nostringval-- Dictionary stack: --dict:1119/1686(ro)(G)-- --dict:0/20(G)-- --dict:107/200 (L)-- --dict:107/200(L)-- --dict:104/127(ro) (G)-- --dict:241/347(ro)(G)-- --dict:18/24(L)-- Current allocation mode is local ESP Ghostscript 815.04: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1 --------------------------------------------------------------- Other pdf files on my system, built on other computers etc. process fine through pdf2ps. I took out all the advanced stuff, such as bookmarks, interaction and urls but I still get the same kind of error. An old pdf version of the file, dating back to February, also blows up. The preamble to the file plus dummy text looks like this: -------------------------------- \setupoutput[pdftex] \setupindenting[none] \setupwhitespace[medium] \frenchspacing \setupcolors[state=start] \setuphead[chapter][head=nomarking,number=no] \setuphead[section][number=no,textcommand=\bf] \setuphead[subsection][number=no] \setuphead[subsubsection][number=no] %\setupinteraction[state=start,color=blue] \setuplist[section][alternative=f,style=bold,interaction=no] \setuplist[subsection][alternative=f,interaction=no] \setuplist[subsubsection][alternative=c,interaction=no] \starttext foo \stoptext -------------- This blows up on pdf2ps also. I just created a dummy pdftex file, compiled it, then converted it with pdf2ps with no problem. Either there is an error in my preamble or something fishy with Context. Thoughts? -- John Culleton

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switching (named) layouts?
by Jelle Huisman 26 Sep '08

26 Sep '08

Hi, Is it possible to give a layout definition a name? It would be really helpful to be able to say \definelayout[name=one][...] \definelayout[name=two][...] and then to be able to say: \setuplayout[one] and somewhere else in the document \setuplayout[two] (This would mirror the way it is possible to switch papersizes.) Or is there another way to have different collections of \definelayout settings that can be switched on or off at specific places? What is the best approach? Thanks, Jelle

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Can we make font loading much faster?
by Yue Wang 26 Sep '08

26 Sep '08

Hi: The following cases all use second run of context. So there is no font cache time. I use a new installed Windows XP SP3 on a Core 2 Duo 1.68GHz with 1GB mem machine. Only TeXWorks and ConTeXt are installed and running on the machine. I close all pre-installed software (like MSN, IE, etc.) and leave all extra memory for LuaTeX. Only 3 big chinese font, AdobeSongStd-Light, AdobeHeitiStd-Regular, AdobeKaitiStd-Regular are loaded. However, different approaches have different runtime, here, two cases are tested (zhfonts is attached in the mail): \usetypescriptfile[zhfonts] \usetypescript[myfont] \setupbodyfont[myfont,rm,11pt] \starttext 你好 {\it 你好} {\bf 你好} \stoptext MtxRun | total runtime: 194.156 \definefontfeature[zh][mode=node, script=hang, lang=zhs] \definefontsynonym[song][AdobeSongStd-Light][features=zh] \definefont[song][song at 12pt] \definefontsynonym[hei][AdobeHeitiStd-Regular][features=zh] \definefont[hei][hei at 12pt] \definefontsynonym[kai][AdobeKaitiStd-Regular][features=zh] \definefont[kai][kai at 12pt] \starttext {\song 你好}{\hei 你好}{\kai 你好} \stoptext MtxRun | total runtime: 13.797 This also applies to file which only one big font, AdobeSongStd-Light, is used, two cases are tested: \definefontfeature[zh][mode=node, script=hang, lang=zhs] \definefontsynonym[song][AdobeSongStd-Light][features=zh] \definefont[song][song at 12pt] \definefontsynonym[hei][AdobeHeitiStd-Regular][features=zh] \definefont[hei][hei at 12pt] \definefontsynonym[kai][AdobeKaitiStd-Regular][features=zh] \definefont[kai][kai at 12pt] \starttext {\song 你好} \stoptext MtxRun | total runtime: 5.609 \usetypescriptfile[zhfonts] \usetypescript[myfont] \setupbodyfont[myfont,rm,11pt] \starttext 你好 \stoptext MtxRun | total runtime: 135.125 If no Chinese fonts are used, three cases are tested: \usetypescriptfile[zhfonts] \usetypescript[myfont] \setupbodyfont[myfont,rm,11pt] \starttext Hello \stoptext MtxRun | total runtime: 89.938 \starttext Hello \stoptext MtxRun | total runtime: 2.594 \definefontfeature[zh][mode=node, script=hang, lang=zhs] \definefontsynonym[song][AdobeSongStd-Light][features=zh] \definefont[song][song at 12pt] \definefontsynonym[hei][AdobeHeitiStd-Regular][features=zh] \definefont[hei][hei at 12pt] \definefontsynonym[kai][AdobeKaitiStd-Regular][features=zh] \definefont[kai][kai at 12pt] \starttext Hello \stoptext MtxRun | total runtime: 2.734 In a typical chinese science book, usually 4 to 10 chinese truetype/opentype font are used. Magazines might use twenty or more. So if we want to use the standard way (use chinese font as body font, use virtual fonts mechanism to mix the font with latin fonts, use different alternatives for single chinese font) as the zhfonts.tex is presented, the running time here is usually intolerable (more than 3 minutes' loading time with very simple text for three fonts). A simple XeLaTeX file with three font embeding using XeCJK or zhspacing for interchartoken font switching usually runs less than 8 seconds. In this case, all the family (rm, ss, tt) parts (like bf, it, etc) in NFSS are defined. So, I think there should be a way to improve the font loading procedure. Maybe we had made deep copy to every fontsynonym defined here which made the loading time terribly long? Are there some way to mirror all the unchanged part of a new loading font B from a loaded time A and only leave the modified table when A and B points to same physical font? Thanks. Yue Wang

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Fonts: Minimals v. Texlive 2007
by Erich R Fickel 26 Sep '08

26 Sep '08

Thanks to everyone who helped me get the minimals installed. I am having a little trouble. At my home computer, I have the Context installation for Ubuntu 7.04 from the sanjoy tex-live backports. At work I now have the minimals, --context=current, not beta. I expected that the output of these two systems would be nearly identical. They are not. I do not use any special font handling. I let Context handle it all. I use whatever the default fonts are, and use \setupbodyfont only to set fontsize. The same source run on both machines produces slightly different margins and slightly different font sizes. The minimals are smaller (shorter) for the same font size (11 pt). I really would like to get the same output for both systems. Can anyone help with this? -Erich Fickel

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force figure placement on this page
by Jelle Huisman 26 Sep '08

26 Sep '08

[it looks like this mail didn't make it to the list, sorry if double posted] Hi again, I try to get a picture on a page using \externalfigure[name.pdf][width=\textwidth] The image is pushed to the next page, even though there is no text on the current page and the height of the image itself is smaller then \textheight, so it should fit. How do I force image placement *here*? Thanks again, Jelle

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Descriptions ... I wish I understood them
by Mojca Miklavec 25 Sep '08

25 Sep '08

Hello, I have some weird problems with descriptions, but let's start at the beginning. (I have more problems with understanding how they work, but more about the rest later.) 1.) How do I get some space between "title" and "abc"? (I currently put the space there manually.) If I set distance=1em, weird things start happening. 2.) What exactly does "hang=1" do? I have no idea what it does there, but that was the only way to get the desired result, else everything gets indented. width=fit makes problems. With width=5cm everything is OK. \definedescription [ma] [headstyle=bold, style=italic, align=left, location=left, width=fit, distance=0pt, margin=0pt, hang=1, indenting=never, ] \starttext \input tufte \startma{title} abc. \input tufte \stopma \input tufte \stoptext Thanks a lot, Mojca

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How to get rid of space around itemize?
by Mojca Miklavec 25 Sep '08

25 Sep '08

Hello, I'm trying to remove space before (and after) items in the following example, but the only way I have managed to do that was by using \vskip-\lineheight, which I'm not particulary proud of. Any ideas? \setupwhitespace [big] \setupitemize [joinedup] \setuplayout [grid=yes] \showgrid \starttext How to reduce the space here? \startitemize \item a \item b \stopitemize And here? \stoptext Thanks a lot, Mojca

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