[texhax] shapepar

[dch]

Hi Philip,

Thanks for helping out.

>>I'm trying to get shapepar working, and have just tried the the
>>canada.shape example. (see at the end of my mail for the example text -
>>taken from the README) and this is the output I got with LaTeX:
>>[snip]
>>! Undefined control sequence.
>>l.6 \newshapepar
>>                {some long text that will be shaped into your foo-shape}
>>?
>>    
>>
>
>Not surprising, I just wonder where you got \newshapepar from.
>  
>
I got it from the README file in shape-patch.3.2.4

>>[snip]
>>! Shaped Paragraph Error: Error in specification. Check carefully!.
>>\SH at sperror ...in specification. Check carefully!}
>>
>>l.6 ...xt that will be shaped into your foo-shape}
>>    
>>
>
>Well, looking at the code you attached and _reading the manual_ (page 1 is
>sufficient), it's obvious why: as the manual explains, the syntax is
>
> \shapepar{\candle} some long text that will be shaped into your foo-shape
>
>where \candle is defined in the file candle.def (my up-to-date MiKTeX
>installation does not have a canada.shape but a number of .def files).
>  
>
OK - I tried that and get a different error:

david at localhost tex]$ latex canada.tex
This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.4.5)
(./canada.tex
LaTeX2e <2001/06/01>
Babel <v3.7h> and hyphenation patterns for american, french, german, 
ngerman, n
ohyphenation, loaded.
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/article.cls
Document Class: article 2001/04/21 v1.4e Standard LaTeX document class
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/size10.clo))
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/misc/geometry.sty
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/graphics/keyval.sty)
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/config/geometry.cfg))
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/misc/shapepar.sty) (./canada.shape) 
(./canada.aux)
! Undefined control sequence.
<argument> \canada
                   
l.6 \shapepar{\canada}
                      some long text that will be shaped into your foo-shape

>>I'm not very clever with TeX, so any tips will be highly appreciated.
>>    
>>
>
>Try reading the manuals and maybe the wish you expressed at the top of your
>posting may even come true.
>  
>
Indeed - if I knew which manual(s) to read.   I started with the README 
in shapepatch, which is probably wrong, but I could find anything else.  
A find on my system did not produce any other files called shape in the 
tex directories:  'find /usr/share/texmf -name "*shape*"' just produces 
the shapepar.sty file - I looked in there, and backed out - not 
experienced enough to read that code.

I found http://www.math.upenn.edu/tex_docs/latex/shapepar/shapepar.dvi 
and have read most of it but I  currently can't work out what is wrong...

>Cheers,  Phil Ratcliffe
>
>P.S. My system gives me the following LaTeX package message:
>     Package: shapepar 2002/12/30 v 2.0, Shaped paragraphs
>  
>
How did you generate that?

Thanks,
David.