[Mac OS X TeX] Some clarification

Ross Moore ross at ics.mq.edu.au
Sun Nov 4 06:49:33 CET 2001



> Gerben, Ross, and All,
> 
> I'm feeling a little frustrated with the present situation and the odd
> misunderstanding of what I've said. My fault, I'm sure---so I'll try now
> to state more analytically what has caused me to be concerned. If I'm 
> wrong
> then someone will be able to tell me clearly where.

Margin kerning was introduced into pdfTeX with version  0.14h.
The latest version is v1.00a-pretest .

In the directory at my site:
  http://www-texdev.mpce.mq.edu.au/protcode/

you can find relevant information, including

 A.  Han The Thanh's paper, delivered at TUG 2001.
     (in preprint form)

I've typeset it using the margin-kerning that it describes,
using those versions of pdfTeX that support it:

landau.ics.mq.edu.au> ls *.pdf
THAN-100a.pdf   THAN-14h++.pdf  THAN-14h.pdf

All three look fine to me; but others may think differently.

(The 14h++ version is a private build, using incomplete patches
 for the font-fix, before Thanh did it completely.)



 B.  Thanh's  original  PROTCODE.TEX
     as well as my modified version:  protcode.tex

 The examples above show that my mods work with a valid version
 of pdfTeX.
 
Note, however, that neither mine nor Thanh's original version work 
with earlier versions of pdfTeX. The fail with a message:

! Undefined control sequence.
\setprotcode #1->\rpcode
                         #1`\!=200 \rpcode #1`\,=700 \rpcode #1`\-=700 \rpco...
l.19     \setprotcode \font


since the \rpcode  primitive is unknown in these earlier versions.
Clearly the coding in  protcode.tex should be redesigned to prevent
this, by skipping all margin-kerning commands.

I'll write a (further) modification to protcode.tex  that fixes this.


 
> On 28/10 teTeX was rereleased with margin kerning included. I found that

teTeX is just a wrapper for TeX applications;
in a similar way to TeXShop being a wrapper for teTeX.

The *real* executable code is  pdfTeX  (and  kpsewhich for finding
files within teTeX's  TDS directory hierarchy).

Provided you have the correct version of pdfTeX (v1.00a  fixes some
of the Acrobat font problems) and the correct input files are being
found, then versions of teTeX and/or TeXShop are quite irrelevant.


On the more TeXnical side:

 ... currently version testing is done in *my* protcode.tex
as follows:

\def\adjustprotcode#1{%
    \needadjustprotcodefalse
    \ifnum\pdftexversion > 14
        \needadjustprotcodetrue
    \else\ifnum\pdftexversion > 13
        \ifnum \expandafter`\pdftexrevision > `g
            \needadjustprotcodetrue
        \fi
    \fi\fi
    \ifneedadjustprotcode


which says:  set \ifneedadjustprotcode to \iftrue
if either  pdfTeX version is > 14  (e.g. currently 1.00a  --> 100 )
or if pdfTeX version  > 13  and subversion > g  (i.e. only  14h)

Unfortunately, this is not enough to stop earlier versions
>from encountering  the use of the  \rpcode  instances.


Hopefully this information will help you to adjust your own
installation to get margin-kerning working properly.

If you still have problems, can you please provide accurate
information about the version of pdfTeX  (1st line in any .log file)
and the contents of the  protcode.tex  file that is being read.



Hope this helps,

	Ross Moore



> 
> Adrian Heathcote


-----------------------------------------------------------------
To UNSUBSCRIBE, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
"unsubscribe macosx-tex" (no quotes) in the body.
For additional HELP, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
"help" (no quotes) in the body.
This list is not moderated, and I am not responsible for
messages posted by third parties.
-----------------------------------------------------------------





More information about the macostex-archives mailing list