[texhax] help with bug in NAR.cls

[Vladimir Lomov]

Hello,
** Thomas Schneider [2012-06-25 18:26:31 -0400]:

> Dear TexHaxers:

> The journal Nucleic Acids Research, one of the Oxford Journals,
> accepts LaTeX files.  Recently Long-Sheng Kuo, a postdoc at National
> Taiwan University wrote to me with a problem.  I have confirmed the
> problem with the NAR.cls but I don't know enough of that kind of code
> to figure it out, so I ask for your help.

> Long-Sheng was working with the template linked to from this page:

> http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/nar/for_authors/msprep_submission.html

> namely

> http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/nar/for_authors/nar-latex2010.zip

> On downloading and unzipping this file one can run LaTeX:

> latex NAR-sample
> latex NAR-sample
> dvips NAR-sample
> ps2pdf NAR-sample.ps
> open NAR-sample.pdf

> Long-Sheng Kuo then substituted his name for 'Corresponding Author' in
> NAR-sample.tex.  Surprisingly the 'L' of his name is gone, coming out
> as 'ong-Sheng Kuo'.

> I suggested putting a math space in front of his name: $\;$Long-Sheng
> Kuo.  This works as a work-around and he can go ahead with submitting
> his paper.  Removing the call to NAR.cls (and removing things it
> defined) also fixes the problem, demonstrating that the bug is indeed
> in NAR.cls.

{L}ong-Sheng should work too (tried on my minimal example).

> It would be good to fix NAR.cls but I don't know enough of the
> commands in there.  Could someone please take a look and (hopefully)
> figure out how to fix this?

IMHO, it is best to report to package maintainers about that.

> Thanks,

> Tom

P.S. I'm not a TeX expert, there are more qualified persons on this ML
but seems that command: `\authorfont' causes the trouble. This its
definition in NAR.cls:

\def\authorfont{\reset at font\fontfamily{\sfdefault}\fontsize{12}{14}\fontseries{b}\selectfont\leftskip0pt\rightskip0pt
plus1fill}

because it is used like

{\authorfont\@author\par}

If I add `\relax' at end of command, right after `plus1fill' I get `L'
in output without tricks. But I'm not sure if it is the "right" way.

AFAIK, the l|L is gobbled by `plus1fill' (TeX looks for next letter sees
L and thinks it is for 'fill' instruction).

But there may be other solutions.

---
WBR, Vladimir Lomov

-- 
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