olpa, OSS developer

In some configurations (for example, when using MacTeX), if you copy a TeX-related binary to non-standard location, the tool stops working. More precisely, if a tool uses kpathsea library, special setup is required. More practically, is you compile something like dvisvgm, it might not work.

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My paper “XML to paper publishing with manual intervention” is accepted for XATA 2010 (XML: Aplicações e Tecnologias Associadas), 19 and 20 May, Vila do Conde, Portugal. Abstract:

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In XeTeX, an unicode version of TeX, it’s logical to use unicode math. However, till now (march 2010) unicode math publishing doesn’t work directly out of the box. Here are two solutions, one is fast (and not so wrong) and one is probably the future standard.

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In the first part I wrote: “put to a template in your favourite text processor”. Attached is a template (class-file) for LaTeX and an example, the explanations are below.

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Bug (?) report: “after switching from LaTeX(pdflatex) to XeTeX(xelatex) as the PDF generator something has ceased to work. Mathematical operators given as unicode characters in math formulas do not show up in the final document.´´

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I’m experimenting with LaTeX and chess. As there is no “for dummies” information in internet, my notes (even if incorrect) could be useful for beginners.

So, the step 1. Print some game or some position.

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To put an image to a document, LaTeX provides the command “\includegraphics“. As it often happens, due to LaTeX was designed for manual typesetting, this command is a nightmare for automatic generation. For a long time, I use a wrapper to solve 99% of the problems.

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I’ve noticed that headers and footers of the documents, generated by XeLaTeX, use some other font instead of Helvetica. After digging into the LaTeX code, the problem is solved.

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Do you generate [La]TeX files using Python? If yes, do you escape the special characters. Haven’t you forgotten to escape also empty strings?

To avoid reinventing the wheel, I tried to use TeXML libraries. This is the right choice, but one has to use a little trick.

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I’m a bit furious. I spent a lot of time on getting EPS from LaTeX. Portability of PostScript and PDF is a great myth. This idea works only in theory. But in practice, one has to struggle with buggy software.

Finally, I’ve found a working sequence of conversion commands.

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* Indents: first, left, right
\parindent, \leftskip, \rightskip

* Space: above, below:
\addvspace

* Align: left, right, center, justified
ragged2e package
\Centering \RaggedRight \RaggedLeft

* Font, linespacing
\selectfont and family

* Keep with next or previous paragraph:
\nobreak or some penalty

In addition to my talk “Generative XPath” at XML Prague 2007, I decided to submit also a poster:

Title: XML to beautiful documents

Abstract: I’d like to present an alternative to XSL-FO. Using TeX to create PDF from XML is an old trick, but thanks to TeXML (an XML syntax for TeX) and Consodoc (a publishing server), the process is greately simplified and the produced documents are of high quality.

* http://getfo.org/texml/ — URL linking to a web page related to the poster.
* http://consodoc.com/

In the mailing list docbook-apps, I recently answered to the post titled “General questions about DocBook -> LaTeX“. I think my notes are interesting not only for the subscribers, but also for others.

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The symbols like “_” and “<SPACE>” are special for LaTeX, therefore using them for file names used by LaTeX isn’t a good idea. Anyway, we can’t control environment and a solution is required. A bookmark for me: Passing Underscore.

I’ve adapted the LaTeX bizcard package for the following:
* A4 page.
* Two columns of visit cards, each card is of the size 85×55 mm.
* Top and bottom margins are 10mm.
* The distance between columns is 10mm.
* Left and right margins are 15mm.
Download.

I’ve spent some time trying to nicely format an GPL excerpt in LaTeX. The problem is that the all-caps text of the “no warrantly” section doesn’t fit to the TeX rules well. Finally, I gave up and decided to find out how this problem is handled by other people. I found the GNU General Public License (GPL) in LaTeX format on the official site gnu.org. Surprise! They don’t have a solution, they have a workaround. The all-caps text is converted to normal text. I like it. The workaround is adopted.

Some TeX implementations or macro packages provide the facility to automatically include so-called “source specials” into a .dvi file. These contain the line number, eventually a column number, and the filename of the .tex source. This makes it possible to jump from a .dvi file to the corresponding place in the .tex source and back (also called “reverse search” and “forward search”). I’ve asked for the same for .pdf files, and have got an answer from Will Robertson in comp.text.tex:

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In mary cases, LaTeX should be run several times to get the correct result (for example, to resolve cross-references). The only way to detect if re-run is required is to analyze the log file. I haven’t found anything ready to use, so I’ve written it myself.

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I’m using LaTeX in batch scripts, and I need to detect if the result is successful. It seems the best way is to look into the log file. I wonder if an imaginery tool “texloginfo” exists to:

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Not a first time when I need to trace a LaTeX layout by digging into the details, and again I’ve spend time remembering how to do it. Fixing the magic in writing.

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