This is an automated FAQ site, established on 30-Aug-2001 (but based on a previous version hosted by Dick Furnstahl). Members of the Physics Department (and friends) are invited to participate in the development and maintenance of these FAQ lists.

Contact Dick Furnstahl (furnstahl.1@osu.edu) to propose topics and questions or to volunteer as a topic moderator.

To find a specific topic, try using the "Search" link at the bottom left of this (or any) page.

Physics Department

Computing (general)

Library

Linux

Mathematica

Physics

Teaching

Web stuff

Windows

General questions:
What is an FAQ?
What is a Faq-O-Matic?
Is there a users guide for the Faq-O-Matic?
How do I add a question/answer?
How do I get "authenticated" to contribute to the Faq-O-Matic?
How can I make my answers look better?
How do I link directly to a topic or question in the faq-O-matic?

Society of Physics Students (SPS)

Travel

General Questions:
How do I get a reimbursement for a seminar visitor?
How do I get an announcement placed in the Physics Department newsletter?

Graduate Schools and Graduate Students

General Questions:
Who the heck are you?
Where can I track you down?
When are your meetings?
How do I join your Majestic Pantheon?
Why should I join the SPS?
What can you do for me?

General Questions:

General Questions:
Pretty Cool! But isn't there a fee?
I knew it!!!
Am I required to join the national organization?

General Questions:

General Questions:
Where do I go for Math help?
What about computing?

Answers in this category:
Where do I find per diem rates for travel?

2001-Oct-04 7:38am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

Any information that you would like to include can be sent to Susan via E-mail at mcgarvey@mps.ohio-state.edu. This information should be received no later than 4:30pm Tuesday the week before it is to appear. This schedule allows the newsletter to be in the mail by the close of business Wednesday.

For the most up-to-date schedule, check the Physics Department homepage http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/ for the upcoming week's events and also the Monthly Calendar of Events page http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/calendar/.

2001-Oct-12 2:06pm furnstahl.1@osu.edu

Answers in this category:
Where can I find the best graduate schools in a particular field?

Check out the Linux category for questions specific to Linux and the Mathematica category for Mathematica questions.

Email

Graphics

Macintosh

Numerical Analysis

Printing

Scanning

TeX and LaTeX

Utilities

General Questions:
How do I get help on university computing questions?
How do I get my OSU account (name.nn@osu.edu) to forward mail to my Department account?

An email message said I should change something on my computer and forward the warning to everyone I know. What should I do?
Wireless access in PRB

Pine mail program

General Questions:
How can I read my Unix (fox) or VMS (mps) mail from a web browser?
How can I send a fax by email?
How do I uuencode a file?

How do I deal with spam and viruses?
How do I send vacation email notifications automatically while I'm away?
Processing many messages in pine

Answers in this category:
How do I get help on the Pine mail program?
How can I change my Elm folders to folders in Pine?
How do I convert my old Elm alias list to a Pine address book?
How do I read my Unix email when running Pine on another computer?
What are some useful Pine options to set?

One option you can choose is to move all of your folders that are in your 'Mail' directory into your 'mail' directory. You can do this by typing in this command at your mail prompt:

  mv ~/Mail/* ~/mail/*

Then, when you go into PINE, and list your folders, you should see all of your folders listed on the screen.

The other option you can choose is to change Pine's setup using these directions:

  Go into Pine
  Hit 's' for setup
  Hit 'c' for configuration
  Go down to the option for 'folder-collections' 
   and highlight that row.
  Hit 'c' for change value.
  Put in the following:   
       Mail/[]
   and hit RETURN.
  Hit 'e' to exit and then hit 'y' to save your changes.
  Then, exit out of pine, and re-enter pine.  You should 
  see your mail folders appear in your folder list.

If you wish to get more in-depth information regarding PINE, you can check out the PINE information center at: The University of Washington (http://www.washington.edu/pine).

1999-Dec-22 2:08pm furnstahl.1@osu.edu

  elm-to-pine ~/.elm/aliases.text > ~/.addressbook

The script is available from </~ntg/scripts/elm-to-pine> (just save this file with the name elm-to-pine in a convenient directory).

2001-Dec-14 10:14am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

To have Pine access your mail on Unix we'll use imap. You don't need to know what it is doing, you just need to change a few lines in your .pinerc file. (You can also do this within mail using the Setup facility, but I find it easier just to explain how to edit .pinerc). You will find .pinerc in your home directory. Bring it up in an editor. There will be lines starting with #, which are comments, and other lines that specify options. The option lines start in the first column unless it is a continuation line, in which case the second, thrid, etc. lines are indented at least with one space. This is explained in comments at the top of the file.

Let us suppose that your name is John Doe and your username on your own computer is john while your username on Unix is jdoe. Find the following items in .pinerc and change them analogously:

 personal-name=John Doe

 user-domain=pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu

 smtp-server=delos.mps.ohio-state.edu/user=jdoe

 inbox-path={delos.mps.ohio-state.edu/ssl/user=jdoe}inbox

A sample .pinerc (mine), which is used to access Pine on Campbell from remote machines via imap and ssh, is available here: </~ntg/scripts/.pinerc>

2001-Dec-14 2:40pm furnstahl.1@osu.edu

Here are the facts:

 * You need to use an ssl-enabled web browser, which is one that can interact
    with "https" (as opposed to the usual "http") pages.  If you are using a
    recent version of Internet Explorer or Netscape, you should be fine.  
    If you are using Mozilla, make sure that mozilla-psm is installed.  
 * Go to https://twig.physics.ohio-state.edu/twig/ to get started.
    Select the Server from the pulldown menu (VMS or unix), then enter
    your username and password.  Click on "Log in".
 * If you login successfully, you should reach a screen with options.
    that include "Mail".  Click on the link to Mail.
 * On the unix side, this should display your INBOX.  You can use the Prefs
    link to change how the list is sorted (oldest first or last).
 * Use the Help link to learn more!

Things to remember:

 * Always go through the login screen at   
    https://twig.physics.ohio-state.edu/twig/
    instead of bookmarking a page further on.
 * Always "Logout" at the end of the session to clear the cache.
 * Always "Logout" before leaving twig for a different website in the same
    browser window. If you go to another website and then come back to twig,
    without logging out, new mail you send will probably fail to be sent.

 

The basic idea is that your fax message is composed as an email message and you send it to a special address that includes the phone number to which you are faxing. The form of the address is:

        First_Last%phone@faxgate.acs.ohio-state.edu

     Long Distance               Toll-free
     1UUUUUUAAAPPPPPPP           91800PPPPPPP

     Local                       Campus Extension
     9PPPPPPP                    [2|3|4|5]PPPP

For example, to send a campus fax to OSURF purchasing at x2-6870, use the address:

      OSURF_purchasing%26870@faxgate.acs.ohio-state.edu

      Jane_Doe%1123459167436322@faxgate.acs.ohio-state.edu

Suppose we have the file test.doc that we want to encode as test.doc.uu (it is standard practice to append .uu to the name of the file) so that it has the filename newtest.doc when uudecoded.

On a unix system:

  uuencode test.doc newtest.doc > test.doc.uu

  UUENCODE TEST.DOC/OUT=TEST.DOC.UU/NAME=NEWTEST.DOC

The utility script uufiles (available on Campbell) will tar, gzip, and uuencode a group of files. The command:

  uufiles -gz

An extensive discussion of uufiles and sources for all platforms (unix, vms, dos/windows, MacOS) can be found at (http://xxx.lanl.gov/help/uufiles). This includes a detailed example (http://xxx.lanl.gov/help/uuexample.html).

1999-Dec-30 2:17pm furnstahl.1@osu.edu

We don't have an effective way to *stop* it.  We do have some ways to
help manage it.

Brian Keller points out that you can get yourself removed temporarily
from some of the spam lists by actually following their unsubscribe
instructions.  I find this risky - some of them use that as
confirmation of a real address and send more, and a couple times we've
seen retaliation in the form of viruses sent in response to an
unsubscribe attempt.  However, this is the strategy Brian uses.

On Unix, we have a utility called SpamAssassin, which is run via
procmail.  This tool is unavailable on VMS (the VMS server quarantines
spam and viruses using a system called Precisemail).  To use 
SpamAssassin, follow these instructions on Unix:

Create a file named ~/.procmailrc containing the following (what is
in between the "cut here" lines, not including them):

--cut here--

PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin
MAILDIR=$HOME/mail
LOGFILE=$MAILDIR/.from
INCLUDERC=/usr/local/share/procmail-include

--cut here--


Now, email will come in, and procmail will run on it.  Procmail will
use SpamAssassin to filter mail into 3 files:

~/mail/spam:  This is where the messages that spamassassin identifies
as spam will go.  Sometimes legitimate email that happens to contain 
"spammy" words or maybe HTML tags will end up here, so you want to check
this file to make sure you don't lose something you care about.

~/mail/virus:  Now that we are filtering viruses at the server with
Clam Anti-Virus, this mailbox receives the notifications from ClamAV,
which tell you which virus was detected and who the purported sender
was.  Note well that the viruses fake the sender, so that part is 
usually a lie.

Your regular inbox: Very little spam should make it through to this
one. 

Since these files are in ~/mail, pine will see them in the folder list.
If you use a different mail program or a different subdirectory to
store email messages, you can change the setting for this directory in
your .procmailrc.

It's important to check these mailboxes in case of false positives.
It is also very important to clean out these files periodically so that
they do not grow to an unmanageable size or fill up your disk quota.
However, I find that categorizing the email lets me optimize my time a
bit.

CUSTOMIZATION:

SpamAssassin reads a file named ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs.
You can edit this file to tailor spamassassin's behavior.  Three very useful 
directives you can put in this file are

  required_score  3.00
  whitelist_from  user@address.com
  blacklist_from  spammer@badneighbor.org

"required_score" defines the numeric score at which a message is identified
as spam.  The default is 5.00.  A higher required_score means more spam will 
reach your regular mailbox; a lower required_score may mean that more 
legitimate mail is placed in the spam box.

"whitelist_from" defines an address from which email will always be tagged 
as non-spam.  "blacklist_from" defines an address whose email will always be
tagged as spam.  This is useful in cases that you find are frequently 
mis-identified.  Each of them takes one argument, but can be repeated:

  whitelist_from  dad@home.org
  whitelist_from  mom@home.org

There are lots more things you can do in the user_prefs file; for 
more information see `man Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf' on fox but 
beware: you can easily configure it into not working right at all, so
use caution.

On Unix:

1) create a file named ~/.vacation.msg, containing exactly the text you
   want in your outgoing message.  For example, the file might contain 
   the following:

  From: YOURUSERNAMEHERE@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu (via the vacation program)
  Subject: away from my mail

  I am away from the office until next Thursday.  Your mail will be
  read when I return. If you have an emergency, call my personal assistant
  at 555-1212.



2) create a file named ~/.forward, containing the line

   \YOURUSERNAMEHERE,"|/usr/local/bin/vacation YOURUSERNAMEHERE"

   NOTE WELL that it is important to include the backslash and double
   quotes exactly as shown.

2a) if you already have a .forward, and it looks something like this

    "| /usr/local/bin/procmail #YOURUSERNAMEHERE"

     then instead of the first example, yours should combine them thus:

    "| /usr/local/bin/procmail #YOURUSERNAMEHERE", "| /usr/local/bin/vacation YOURUSERNAMEHERE" 

    Note well the exact quotes and the comma.

3) Change the string YOURUSERNAMEHERE to your username (in lowercase).

4) Run the command 

   chmod 644 ~/.forward

5) Run the command 

   /usr/local/bin/vacation -I

   to initialize the vacation database (so it knows to whom it has already
   replied).  This works best if done on fox.

6) Remember to remove or rename the .forward file when you return!

Grace (or xmgrace)

The GIMP

Drawing Feynman Diagrams

General Questions:
How do I rotate a postscript document or figure by 90 or 180 degrees?

Is there a way to convert a postscript (eps) file into a pdf clipped at the bounding box?

General Questions:
Is there an FAQ for Grace or xmgrace?
When I include an EPS file generated by Grace into my (La)TeX document, the graphic hides some of the surrounding text.
Printing to my old PostScript printer produces an error.

LaTeX does not do hard clipping of EPS files unless instructed to do so. Use \includegraphics*{} and NOT \includegraphics{}. If using the epsf package, remember to include the \epsfclipon flag.

The erasing comes about because Grace fills the background with the page size and not the bbox size. The background filling can be disabled from the "Plot/Plot appearance" popup.

2000-Jan-24 7:51am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

By default, the PS driver uses Level 2 features, while your printer may not be PostScript Level 2 compliant. You can force the use of PS Level 1 only features in the PostScript device setup, though output may be not exactly as expected (there will be no pattern fills, for example).

2000-Jan-24 7:52am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

In short, The Gimp is a program like Adobe Photoshop, only open source (which means, in this case, it is free and you can extend/hack it). It is distributed with all major Linux distributions, but there are also versions available for other unixes, for Windows [(http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/)], and for Mac OS X [(http://www.macgimp.com/) but not free].

See (http://www.rru.com/~meo/gimp/faq-user.html) for the GIMP User FAQ and (http://www.gimp.org/tutorials.html) for Gimp tutorials (and pointers to others).

Answers in this category:

If you have alternative approaches, please contact Dick Furnstahl at furnstahl.1@osu.edu.

Feynmf

Answers in this category:

Answers in this category:
What do I need to run Feynmf?
Is there documentation for Feynmf?
Can you show me some examples of Feynmf?
How do I make Feynman diagrams using Feynmf with colors?

You also might want to use (or adapt) this simple csh script </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fmf_make> for processing diagrams and popping up xdvi with the revised version. (It kills old intermediate files, to avoid confusing xdvi and dvips.) This other script </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fmf_make2> uses Metapost instead of Metafont. You'll want to use it to make Feynman diagrams with colors.

2001-Sep-11 5:00pm furnstahl.1@osu.edu

  Part 1: </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/textproc1.ps.gz>
  Part 2: </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/textproc2.ps.gz>
  Part 3: </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/textproc3.ps.gz>

The manual and tutorials have many examples.

2001-Sep-11 7:56am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

 * A simple QED vertex correction </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/qedtest.ps> and the
    LaTeX file that generated it </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/qedtest.tex> 
 * Hugenholtz diagrams </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_hugenholtz.ps> and the 
    LaTeX source </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_hugenholtz.tex> (you'll also 
    need hugenholtz.tex </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/hugenholtz.tex>)

 

The instructions are given in the comments of the examples' source code:

  * to typeset XXX.tex with Feynmp: [e.g., fig_rmf.tex]
      $ latex XXX                   [latex fig_rmf]
      $ mpost fmfXXX                [mpost fmffig_rmf]
      $ latex XXX                   [latex fig_rmf]
  * to generate a postscript file:
      $ dvips -o XXX.ps XXX.dvi     [dvips -o fig_rmf.ps fig_rmf.dvi]
  * you may need to delete the fmfXXX??? files to make sure the fonts
      are updated

 Description                     postscript / source                           

   single gluon          </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_gluon.ps>                
                         </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_gluon.tex>

   single photon         </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_photon.ps>                
                         </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_photon.tex>

 several qed/qcd         </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_em_vs_color.ps>                
  diagrams               </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_em_vs_color.tex>

 one-boson exchange      </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_contact.ps>                
                         </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_contact.tex>

 three-body diagrams     </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_three_body.ps>                
                         </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_three_body.tex>

 various chiral eft      </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_chiral1.ps>                
     diagrams            </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_chiral1.tex>
                         </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_chiral2.ps>                
                         </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_chiral2.tex>
                         </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_chiral3.ps>                
                         </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_chiral3.tex>
                         </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_chiral4.ps>                
                         </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_chiral4.tex>
                         </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_chiral5.ps>                
                         </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_chiral5.tex>
                         </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_chiral6.ps>                
                         </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_chiral6.tex>
                         </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_chiral7.ps>                
                         </~furnstah/temp/feynmf/fig_chiral7.tex>

2001-Sep-14 1:32pm furnstahl.1@osu.edu

To rotate by 180 degrees, add the postscript command:

  180 rotate -612 -792 translate

  %%BoundingBox: Lx Ly Ux Uy  --> %%BoundingBox: 612-Ux 792-Uy 612-Lx 792-Ly

To rotate by 90 degrees, add the postscript command:

  90 rotate 0 -612 translate

  %%BoundingBox: Lx Ly Ux Uy  --> %%BoundingBox: 612-Uy Lx 612-Ly Ux

Comments:

* If you put the command earlier, e.g. immediately after %%EndComments, then the page will be rotated when initially viewed by a postscript viewer (such as gv), but will revert to the original form when you "reopen" or "redisplay" the file.

* If your page or figure fills a full letter-sized page, then the bounding-box mapping for a 180 degree rotation takes

  %%BoundingBox: 0 0 612 792 -->  %%BoundingBox: 0 0 612 792

* If your document has more than one page, then you have to add

  180 rotate -612 -792 translate

If you put a

  << /PageSize [ xsize ysize ] >> setpagedevice

From an answer found by a google search:

  Add some code to resize the page. If the bounding box
     is 50 50 450 450
  gs -c "<< /PageSize [400 400] >> setpagedevice 50 neg 50 neg translate>> -f yourfile.ps

   

General Questions:
New Item
Where are public Macintosh's in Smith Lab?

Physics Students:
Undergraduate Majors: 1011 has several PowerMacs.
Graduate Students: 1021 has at least one old Powermac.

1999-Dec-27 9:41am kylin@mps.ohio-state.edu

A general guide to routines is GAMS ("Guide to Available Mathematical Software") maintained by NIST at http://gams.nist.gov/. Particularly useful is the Problem Decision Tree http://gams.nist.gov/serve.cgi. Also off the GAMS page is a good list of links to other sources of math software http://gams.nist.gov/OtherSources.html.

2001-Oct-17 7:44pm furnstahl.1@osu.edu

General Questions:
Where can I find out about Monte Carlo methods?

Answers in this category:
What printers are available?
How do I print double-sided?
How do I set up printing on my Linux machine in the Physics Dept.?
Where is the documentation on printing commands and options?

   lpstat -p

  lpr -Psmith2097/duplex abstract.ps

Not all printers support duplex printing. If you believe a printer is capable of duplexing, but there is no /duplex instance for it in the list produced by the command

  lpstat -p

The /duplex instance used above is really just a shorthand for a command like:

  lpr -Psmith2097 -o sides=two-sided-long-edge abstract.ps

See http://localhost:631/documentation.html for complete documentation (CUPS Software Users Manual).
2001-Sep-26 1:48pm bcd@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu

General Questions:
How do I scan a drawing or figure for a document to be printed out (Windows)?
How do I avoid huge scanned files?
How do I scan notes or text on linux?

1. Select "Sharp Black and White Drawing" (or equivalent) as the scan type. You may need to re-select this as you iterate the scan, because the software will sometimes change it to another selection.

2. Select a (relatively) high resolution, such as LaserWriter or PhotoShop or 300dpi printer. There's probably no point choosing 600dpi, but it won't kill you (just makes your file larger than it needs to be).

3. Use the "Preview" and "Zoom" functions to isolate the drawing or figure that you want to scan.

4. Choose the "Scaling" to be greater than 100%. Make it large enough to still fit on letter-size paper, but as large as possible.

5. Choose "Final" and select something like tiff as the format. Complete the scan.

6. Now you need to convert the tiff file to a postscript file. There are many utility programs to do this. I recommend xv, which is available on the alpha unix, linux, and vms systems. On a mac, GraphicConverter is a good choice.

Using xv, load the tiff file and choose save. Select postscript as the type of file and adjust the size so that the dpi (which will initially be 72dpi) is something around 150dpi. You can choose "center" to keep the drawing centered on the page. When you're ready, choose "ok" and you're done.

2000-Jan-14 9:04am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

The solution, then, is to change the defaults! Examples:

 * For scanned notes, a resolution of 150 dpi (dots per inch) is fine.

The assumption is that you have handwritten notes or printed text (we'll assume you are covered under copyright fair use!) that you want to combine into a single PDF file. Aside: PDF is the best choice at present for distributing via the web, since the viewers are free (Acrobat Reader or Ghostview) and available on all platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix) and ghostscript can convert postscript to pdf.

1. Prepare your notes by xeroxing them (at least if they are written in pencil). Xerox fairly dark; they may look gray and ugly, but they'll be fine after scanning (which will turn the gray to white and keep the black). I usually reduce notes a bit (95-98%) to make sure that writing in the margins and close to the bottom is captured.

2. Go to the directory where you want to save the files (I create a new directory for each new batch). Start xsane in the background (that's what the "&" is for):

   xsane &

  * under the View menu (in the main control panel), turn off "Show histogram",
     "Show standard options", and "Show advanced options"
  * under View, turn on "Show tooltips" and "Show preview"
  * under Preferences, turn on "Show resolutions list"

3. Place the first page of the document to be scanned in the upper right corner of the scanner. On the Preview screen, choose the paper type (pull down menu); usually "letter port." (letter-size portrait) is what you want.

4. On the control panel, select "Viewer", "Line art", "Normal", and either 160 or 320 dpi. I find 160 is fine for notes and 320 is excellent for printed text. The file sizes are roughly (note that the postscript is just an intermediate step, so it's ok to be large unless disk space is really tight):

  material           dpi       pdf         postscript 
  handwritten notes  160   25-40KB/page    ~500K/page
  text 2up           320   60-90KB/page   ~2200K/page 

5. Click on "Acquire Preview" at the bottom of the Preview screen to make the first scan. You will only do this for the first page. Adjust the dashed box with your mouse to select the area to be scanned. Remember that this will be the same for all pages (unless you want to adjust it, which would really slow you down!). The "Autoselect scanarea" and "Select visible area" buttons at the top of the Preview panel may be useful in positioning the dashed box. The "Zoom into selected area" button (magnifying glass with +) will show just the content of the area to be scanned.

6. On the Control panel, select Xsane mode->"Save", "Line art", "Normal" enter a filename: notes1.ps, "step +1", "by ext", "320" or "160". Here's what these mean:

  * "Save" means you're scanning to a file;
  * "Line art" means black and white only (handwritten or printed text, or
      figures);
  * "Normal" means normal (I need to look up this option!)
  * The filename specifies the name of the first file.  You don't need to call   
      it "notes1.ps" of course, but include a "1" in the name and end it with
      ".ps" (for postscript).  The first file will actually be saved as
      notes0001.ps.
  * "Step +1" means that the filename will automatically
      increment with each scan.  So the second scanned page will be              
      notes0002.ps and so on, without your having to enter anything else.
      This is very convenient and efficient!
  * "by ext" means to select the file type by the extension of the filename.
      Here ".ps" means to save it as postscript.  (Pull down this menu
      for other file formats such as png and tiff.) 
  * "320" or "160" is the resolution in dots per inch.

7. Press "start" on the Control panel to start the scan. A green bar will grow on "Receiving gray data" and then another one on "Converting image". When these are complete, the scan is finished and you can put the next sheet of paper in the scanner. The scan head will still be lit up and slowly moving back to its initial postion, but that's ok.

8. Repeat step 7. until all pages are scanned. If you need to do a page over, just change the filename back by hand (and click on "ok" to overwrite the file).

9. Run the pdfmerge script to combine the postscript files into a single pdf file. This is a Perl script to run gs with the appropriate options. It is available at http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~ntg/scripts/pdfmerge.pl (link pdfmerge.pl to pdfmerge and make it executable [chmod +x pdfmerge.pl] for the following to work). If your files are notes0001.ps, notes0002.ps, up to notes0024.ps, then type:

   pdfmerge notes*.ps

10. Transfer the PDF file to the desired computer and location using scp:

   scp notes1.pdf ntg4004:public_html/880/notes

11. Use File->quit to exit xsane. There is nothing to turn off on the scanner (the light stays on).

2003-Mar-27 7:30am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

Powerpoint-Style Presentations using LaTeX

General Questions:
How do I include postscript figures in a TeX file?
How do I figure out the bounding box (BoundingBox) for an encapsulated postscript file?
Can I include a JPEG (jpg) graphic file directly into TeX or LaTeX?
Is there a way to automatically figure out and insert the bounding box in a postscript file?
How can I convert a TeX or LaTeX file to a text (ascii) file?
Where do I get RevTeX?
How do I reduce the size of postscript figure files?
How do I find out the LaTeX page layout parameters?

The best solution at present is to take advantage of Adobe's Acroread PDF viewer, which is available at no charge for all of the major platforms (although not all platforms have the most up-to-date version available). The basic idea is to convert your LaTeX presentation to a PDF file and then to display it using Acroread. The features are:

 * full-screen mode (so all you see is your talk projected on the screen)
 * transition effects including
    * bullet items revealed one-by-one
    * figures revealed step-by-step
    * fancy page (or partial page) transitions, such as left-to-right wipes
 * hyperlinks in your document so you can click them to go to other parts of 
    your talk or to external web pages

To incorporate transition effects, there are at least three choices at present: the TeXPower bundle by Stephan Lemke, the PPower4 postprocessor, and the Prosper package. Descriptions and links are given in the resource pages listed below.

Some resource pages for such presentations are:

PDF Classroom Demonstrations: http://www.math.uakron.edu/~dpstory/pdf_present.html

Screen presentations: http://www.miwie.org/presentations/ (This site is kept up to date.)

Prosper (LaTeX class for writing transparencies): http://prosper.sourceforge.net/

2002-Jun-17 9:05am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

TeXPower package

Using Acrobat or Acroread for Presentations

Answers in this category:
How do I create a presentation with PDFLatex?
How do I start another program from within a PDF presentation?
How do I automatically start a PDF presentation in full-screen mode?

You still need to use a package (or the slides class) to format your slides. Possibilities are foiltex, seminar, the LaTeX2e slides class, prosper, pdfslide, pdfscreen, ...

The features of texpower are implemented entirely using TeX and LaTeX, but the final output file must be a pdf file. There are several options, including:
* pdfLaTeX to directly create pdf files from LaTeX
* LaTeX + dvips + pstopdf
* LaTeX + dvips + Acrobat Distiller

I favor the pdfLaTeX approach, but your mileage may vary.

2002-Oct-22 7:53am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

Demonstrations and Examples

Answers in this category:
Where do I get TeXPower?
Is there a manual for TeXPower?

Here are some of the demonstration pdf files included in the TeXPower bundle:

* fulldemo.pdf (http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~ntg/pdf/texpower/fulldemo.pdf), which demonstrates most of TeXPower's capabilities.

* FAQ-display.pdf (http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~ntg/pdf/texpower/FAQ-display.pdf), which is the display version of the TeXPower FAQ.

2002-Oct-22 7:58am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

Answers in this category:

There is also an FAQ, available in display form: </~ntg/pdf/texpower/FAQ-display.pdf> or printable form: </~ntg/pdf/texpower/FAQ-printout.pdf>.

2002-Mar-31 9:48am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

Answers in this category:
Where do I get an up-to-date version of the Acrobat PDF Reader (Acroread)?
How do I enter/exit the Acrobat Reader (Acroread) full-screen mode?
What "Full Screen Preferences" are useful for Acrobat Reader?

 * under the View menu, select "Full Screen"
 * or use the short-cut, which is usually Ctrl+L (it is listed next to 
    "Full Screen" under the View menu) or Command+L (on Macs)

 * use the "escape button" (usually marked "Esc" in upper left of keyboard)
 * use the short-cut, which is usually Ctrl+L (it is listed next to 
    "Full Screen" under the View menu) or Command+L (on Macs)

 * Advance On Any Click if you have a remote control (e.g., RF) mouse
 * Loop After Last Page takes you back to the beginning
 * Escape Key Exits --- Esc leaves full-screen mode

-------------- begin excerpt -------------

Herman Bruyninckx submitted the following macros to start up movies or other programs from within a PDF presentation made with LaTeX:

The key is to write a little shell-script and launch it from within pdflatex. In the shell-script you should simply call a standard unix tool for viewing video files, e.g.:

 mpeg_play -controls off -dither color -position +128+96 video.mpg

 \newcommand{\pdflaunch}[1] {\pdfpageattr{/AA << /O << /S /Launch /F (#1) >>>>}}
 \newcommand{\pdflaunchlink}[2]{%
      \pdfannotlink attr{/Border [0 0 0]} user{/Subtype /Link /A << %
        /S /Launch /F (#1) >>}%
      \pdfliteral{0 1 0 0 k}%  
      {#2}\pdfliteral{0 0 0 1 k}\pdfendlink%
      }

 \pdflaunch{videoscript.sh}
     

 \pdflaunchlink{videoscript.sh}{Start video}

 killall mpeg_play
     

------------------ end excerpt ------------------

2002-Jun-17 8:59am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

  \usepackage[plainpages=false]{hyperref}

  \hypersetup{pdfpagemode=FullScreen}

   ------------ begin excerpt -------------

By convention, the first line of a PostScript file specifies the type of PostScript and is then followed by a series of comments called the header or preamble. (Like LATEX, PostScript's comment character is %). One of these comments specifies the BoundingBox. The BoundingBox line contains four integers:

1. The x-coordinate of the lower-left corner of the BoundingBox.
2. The y-coordinate of the lower-left corner of the BoundingBox.
3. The x-coordinate of the upper-right corner of the BoundingBox.
4. The y-coordinate of the upper-right corner of the BoundingBox.

For example, the first 5 lines of an eps file created by gnuplot are

  %!PS-Adobe-2.0 EPSF-2.0
  %%Creator: gnuplot
  %%DocumentFonts: Times-Roman
  %%BoundingBox: 50 50 410 302
  %%EndComments

Thus the gnuplot eps graphic has a lower-left corner with coordinates (50, 50) and an upper-right corner with coordinates (410, 302). The BoundingBox parameters have units of PostScript points which are 1/72 of an inch, making the above graphic's natural width 5 inches and its natural height 3.5 inches. Note that a PostScript point is slightly larger than a TEX point, which is 1/72.27 of an inch. In TEX and LATEX, PostScript points are called "big points" and abbreviated bp while TEX points are called "points" and abbreviated pt.

3.3 Converting PS files to EPS

Single-page PostScript files without any improper commands can be converted to eps by using one of the following methods for adding a BoundingBox line. Since these methods do not check for illegal PostScript operators, they do not produce usable EPS files unless the PS files are free of forbidden operators.

1. The most convenient option is to use the ps2epsi utility distributed with Ghostscript (see Section 5), which reads the PostScript file, calculates the BoundingBox parameters, and creates an eps file (complete with a BoundingBox) which contains the PostScript graphics. The resulting file eps file is in epsi format, which means it contains a low- resolution bitmapped preview at the beginning of the file. Since this preview is ascii-encoded, it does not cause the Section 4.1 bufsize errors. However, this epsi preview increases the file size.

2. Alternatively, the BoundingBox parameters can be calculated and inserted in the PostScript file's BoundingBox line or specified in the graphics-insertion command (e.g., the \includegraphics command's bb option). There are several ways to calculate the BoundingBox parameters

(a) Use Ghostview/GSview to display the PostScript graphic. As the pointer is moved around the graphic, the pointer's coordinates (with respect to the lower-left corner of the page) are displayed. To determine the BoundingBox parameters, record the pointer coordinates at the lower-left corner of the graphic and the upper-right corner of the graphic.

(b) Print out a copy of the PostScript graphics and measure the horizontal and vertical distances (in inches) from the lower-left corner of the paper to the lower-left corner of the graphics. Multiply these measurements by 72 to get the BoundingBox's lower-left coordinates. Likewise, measure the distances from the lower-left corner of the paper to the upper-right corner of the graphics to get the BoundingBox's upper-right coordinates.

(c) The bbfig script uses a PostScript printer to calculate the BoundingBox. bbfig adds some PostScript commands to the beginning of the PostScript file and sends it to the printer. At the printer, the added PostScript commands calculate the BoundingBox of the original PostScript file, printing the BoundingBox coordinates superimposed on the PostScript graphic.

   ---------------- end excerpt -----------------

   gs -sDEVICE=bbox -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH file.ps

I have written a perl script that will automatically find the bounding box and correct the postscript file (or add the info if there is none). The script is

    </~ntg/scripts/bbox_add.pl>

    chmod +x bbox_add.pl

    bbox_add.pl --help

The source code (it's in C) for jpeg2ps is available from http://www.pdflib.com/jpeg2ps/.

Here is a Linux executable (right-click on the link and save it to a file called jpeg2ps): </~ntg/download/jpeg2ps> (of version 1.8; check the link above for updates).
Remember to "chmod +x jpeg2ps" to make it executable.

To create file.eps from file.jpg, the command is:

  jpeg2ps -o file.eps file.jpg

  jpeg2ps file.jpg > file.eps

  jpeg2ps

    </~ntg/scripts/bbox_add.pl>

    chmod +x bbox_add.pl

    bbox_add.pl --help

 The script bbox_add.pl adds a tight bounding box to postscript files.
  It uses gs with the bbox option.
  
 The only mandatory command-line arguments are the names of the files
  to be processed.  Wildcards are allowed (e.g. *.tex will process all
  of the TeX files.)
  
 The options are
   --help                print this help
   --version             version number
   --keep                keep original file, with ".orig" appended to name
   --padding=i           add an "i" point border around box (default is 3)

Maybe the best solution is to generate a postscript file and then use ps2ascii to convert from postscript to ascii. From the man page:

       ps2ascii uses gs(1) to  extract ASCII text from PostScript(tm) or
        Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files. If no files are specified
        on the command line, gs reads  from  standard input; but PDF input 
        must come from an explicitly-named file, not standard input.  
        If no output file is specified, the ASCII text is written to 
        standard output.

       ps2ascii doesn't look at font encoding, and isn't very good at dealing 
        with kerning, so for PostScript (but not currently PDF), you might
        consider pstotext from     
        http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/virtualpaper/pstotext.html
        You need at least version 1.8g for compatibility with Ghostscript 6.0.
        It is available from http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/pstotext.html
        (pick the most recent version).

The homepage for REVTeX 4 is http://publish.aps.org/revtex4/, which includes documentation and the files you'll need (the latter are available as http://publish.aps.org/revtex4/revtex4.tar.gz or http://publish.aps.org/revtex4/revtex4.zip or on CTAN at http://www.ctan.org).

Basically, you just need to unzip the distribution file and put all of the LaTeX files somewhere pointed to by your TEXINPUTS environment variable (e.g., /usr/local/lib/tex/inputs is frequently used).

2001-Sep-24 11:07am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

 ------------------------ begin answer ---------------------------------

You can usually reduce or eliminate Postscript bloat if you understand your Postscript. Computers cannot understand Postscript well enough to do it automatically, because Postscript, like TeX, is a full-fledged programming language. However, two Unix utilities can often fix the problem:

 * convert is a bitmap-based image conversion program which is part of the 
    ImageMagick graphics package. It interconverts nearly 100 different image 
    formats, including several kinds of Postscript. 
 * eps2eps, which is part of the ghostscript package, converts fancy Postscript    
    to simple Postscript. The output is frequently much shorter than the input, 
    even though it is functionally identical. However, it does not help much 
    with bitmaps.

    * The file is a huge bitmap. This is usually because the resolution is  
 substantially higher than necessary, because it is a black-and-white diagram 
 saved as a full-color photograph, or because it is encoded inefficiently (using 
 as many as 12 bytes per pixel). If you include the figure in your TeX document 
 without rescaling it, then you should try:

      convert -density 300x300 fig.old.eps eps2:fig.new.eps

      With these options, convert produces 300dpi output in Postscript Level 2 
 format. Occassionally 600dpi is necessary for fine detail or 150dpi is 
 necessary to further save space; resolutions other than these three are rarely 
 the best choice. If you rescale the figure when you include it in your TeX 
 document, you should change the parameters in convert so that the scaled 
 resolution matches one of these values, or at least so that it's in a 
 reasonable range.

    * The file has a huge header with a lot of macros or fonts. This is typical 
 for commercial illustration programs such as Adobe Illustrator. Try the  
 following conversion:

    eps2eps fig.old.eps fig.new.eps

      You should check the size of the output (preferably after compressing both 
 the old and new figures) to make sure that it really is smaller.

    * The file is an extremely complicated figure with tens of thousands of 
 vertices, each given with many digits of precision. Sometimes you can fix the 
 problem by changing the settings of the program that generated the figure. For 
 example, a 3D plotting program might have an option to omit points that are 
 hidden from view. Alternatively, you can convert it to a bitmap.

 Note that if you create the Postscript judiciously a priori, you might not need 
 to convert it all. For example, the free illustration program xfig produces 
 very lean Postscript output. As another example, it is easy to produce huge 
 files with commercial photography software such as Adobe Photoshop, but more 
 careful use may produce better results. You can also first produce some other 
 format (such as TIFF or JPEG) and then use convert to make the Postscript.

To use it, put

  \usepackage{layout}

  \layout

  \setlength{\textwidth}{13cm}

General Questions:
How do I remove <cr>'s or ^M's from a file?
What can I do with Microsoft Office documents on Linux?
File Permissions on Unix

A simple program to remove these extraneous characters is cr_strip.pl, which is a Perl script written by Dick Furnstahl. It is available here as http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~ntg/scripts/cr_strip.pl. If you use it on another system, you may need to edit the first line to specify the correct path to Perl.

Another way to remove them is to edit the file and do a substitution of these "characters" with a null string (blanks, essentially). This can be tricky if you don't know how to represent this character. In some editors it is \r.

2003-Feb-18 6:30pm furnstahl.1@osu.edu

In emacs, you can use query-replace, if you quote the ^M with ^Q:

M-X query-replace ^Q^M carriage-return carriage-return!

(^Q means hold down the CONTROL key and strike the q key)

On Redhat Linux systems, dos2unix and unix2dos utilities are standard.

To edit and otherwise manipulate MS Office files in more detail, including also Excel and PowerPoint files, you can use OpenOffice, which is installed on the Linux hosts. To initialize it for your own use, run

 

 /usr/local/OpenOffice/program/setup

and then, from the same directory, you can run

  swriter (Word)
  scalc (Excel)
  simpress (PowerPoint)

These programs are usually but not always successful at reading MS files.

Another alternative is Crossover Office, available from codeweavers.com. This product runs the actual Microsoft programs under wine under Linux. It is a licensed commercial product. The price is reasonable but you must also purchase a license for the Microsoft software you are running. Please contact the PCF staff if you think you are interested in this, and we can help you.

2004-Aug-19 10:08am bcd@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu

  man chmod

You can see file permissions with the -l option to ls. 'ls -l' lists the permissions symbolically as I'm about to describe.

The chmod command recognizes two methods of specifying a permission, symbolic and numeric.

FIRST THE SYMBOLIC METHOD:

There are 3 fields in a Unix file permission. From left to right they apply to user (the owner of the file), group (members of the group which owns the file) and other (everyone else). Symbolically, these are represented by the letters u, g and o respectively. Also, the letter a may be used to refer to all 3 fields at once.

In each field there are 3 possible permissions which may be on or off: read, write and execute. Symbolically, these are represented by the letters r, w and x respectively.

There are also 3 operators which may be used: =, which sets a field explicitly, +, which adds permissions to a field, and -, which removes permissions from a field.

Some examples of using the symbolic notation:

  chmod o-w filename                      remove write permission from other
  chmod g+w filename                      allow group members to write a file
  chmod u=rwx filename                    allow owner full access
  chmod go-rwx filename                   remove all access for non-owners

read: files in the directory may be listed, such as with the ls command
write: files may be created or deleted in the directory
execute: files may be accessed according to the file's permission

So, some examples for directories:

  chmod go+rx directoryname           allow everyone to list and access files
                                      (but not create or delete them)
  chmod g=rwx directoryname           allow group members full control of dir

NEXT THE NUMERIC METHOD:

Unix file permissions are stored as a string of 9 bits. This is divided into 3 fields of 3 bits, which we represent as a 3-digit hexadecimal number, with each digit in the range of 0-7. The order is the order given above; from left to right user, group and other, and within each field from left to right read, write and execute. Read, being the first bit, is 4, write is 2 and execute is one. So all permissions turned on for a field is 4+2+1=7. Read and execute only is 4+1=5. Read and write is 4+2=6.

Here are some common examples:

  chmod 750 executable-file            let my group and me run it, nobody else
  chmod 644 index.html                 web files MUST be world readable!
  chmod 755 directoryname              let everyone see the files in directory
  chmod 600 file                       this file is private, nobody but me

NEVER DO THESE THINGS:

You can use chmod to remove access from the owner. If you do that, you cannot fix it yourself because you no longer have access! So don't do anything like these:

  chmod u-rwx file
  chmod 077 directory
  chmod 77 directory (same as above!)

The Office of Information Technology (UIT) web pages (http://www.oit.ohio-state.edu/) have lots of useful information about your OSU account. For example, you can find out About Your OSU Internet Username (http://www.osu.edu/units/uts/publications/security_help/username.html).

See How do I get help on university computing questions? for links to additional help on your OSU account.

2002-Apr-02 7:38am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

You can check on such things at a number of helpful websites:

http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/ - The Hoaxbusters Homepage

http://www.snopes2.com/ - The Urban Legends Homepage

http://vil.mcafee.com/hoax.asp? - McAfee's Virus Hoax Homepage

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/ - Symantec's Computer Virus Alerts Homepage

And of course, you can always ask the PCF staff by email to `action' or calling 2-4269.

2004-Aug-19 9:51am bcd@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu

There are a lot of special cases that I will not cover here. Let's start with the most general case: Windows XP on a laptop using "Wireless Zero Configuration", (I guess they had to call it something).

I'll assume you know what things look like on the desktop when an XP laptop detects a wireless access point... You'll get a "bubble" pop-up off the system tray, and/or you can view available wireless networks by right-clicking the wireless icon in the system tray. We have a number of access points in the PRB, arranged so that we get coverage over all of the atrium, most of the office side, and about a third of the lab side of the building. The access points have the naming convention "prb-ap-physics-rm#". When you view available wireless networks, you'll probably see more than one of the access points. Choose the one that has the strongest signal; (WZC doesn't order them by signal strength). Hit the Connect button, and you'll get a prompt for a netowrk key. the network key is:

 0FE32D8EBB067AEFECB8599A62

I suggest you save the key above to a text file in notepad that you save to your desktop. Then you can cut-n-paste the key from the text file into the prompt window.

After you enter the key, hit the Connect button. You ought to get a connection. Unfortunately, you're not done. Now you need to open a browser, and go to wireless.physics.ohio-state.edu. Enter your physics email username and password. *Now* you have an authenticated connection, good until the next Sunday midnight.

Short version: type commands like these as root:

  /sbin/iwconfig eth1 essid any key 0FE32D8EBB067AEFECB8599A62
  /sbin/dhclient eth1

  yum -y install wireless-tools

  iwconfig

  killall dhclient

Once you have associated with the AP, you must (and may only) connect with a web browser to

  http://wireless.physics.ohio-state.edu

General Questions:
How do I request a book or journal from the OSU Book Depository?

  1. Follow the search procedure until you end up with a list of volumes 
      that includes the one you want.
  2. Click on "Click here to REQUEST THIS ITEM" (at the top or bottom).
  3. Enter your name and ss# when prompted and "Choose a Pickup Location".
  4. You will then get to choose the individual volume from a long list
      (by toggling a radio button at the left).

Installing Linux

Security

Backing up

Applications and Utilities

Linux for Physics Majors

Printing

Linux on laptops or notebooks

General questions about Linux:
How can I ftp a large file without getting a "file too large" error?
How do I avoid getting large core files?
How do I find out the screen resolution?

Skype: microphone doesn't work

Questions:

ssh (secure shell)

General Questions:
How do I know if my password (/etc/passwd) file has been compromised?
How do I find all of the SUID and SGID files?
How can I tell if my machine has been cracked?
How can I automatically keep track of my system log files?

General Questions:
How do I set up passwordless RSA/DSA authentication with OpenSSH?

Here are the basic steps for DSA, which is relevant for ssh2 (which is what you should use!):

1. Set up a pair of keys (public and private) on one of your machines.

   ssh-keygen -t dsa

2. Copy the public key over to the any remote machines you want to access into the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 (the 2 is for ssh2). (You can just append it to the end of the file.)

3. Protect the private key! IMPORTANT: You need to have the correct file protections on the ~/.ssh directory AND on the files. The ~/.ssh directory, the authorized_keys2 file, and the id_dsa file must be only accessible to you. These commands will do this:

  chmod 700 ~/.ssh
  chmod 600 ~/.ssh/id_dsa
  chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2

4. At this point, we still need to use the passphrase. If you check the second reference at the top, however, you'll find instructions for how to avoid typing the passphrase all the time.

2003-Apr-08 8:19am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

* the last field in a passwd entry is the shell. Nothing should have a shell except for root and any user accounts that you have set up (and possibly a database like postgres). These things have something else in that entry: sync (/bin/sync), shutdown (/sbin/shutdown), xfs (/bin/false).

* check the UID, which is the number in the third field (delimited by :'s). Only root should be UID 0.

* look for user names you don't recognize.

2000-Mar-23 9:19am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

   # find / \( -perm -004000 -o -perm -002000 \) -type f -print

* Look for /.bash_history linked to /dev/null
2000-Mar-23 9:31am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

Some steps in the installation:

  1. Change the protection of the log files so that they are
      only readable by root.

rdist

rsync

General Questions:

General Questions:

There is an rsync Faq-O-Matic (http://rsync.samba.org/cgi-bin/rsync.fom), with answers to many of your questions.

Rsync Tutorial: (http://everythinglinux.org/rsync/)

General Questions:
What is rsync?

rsync is a replacement for rcp that has many more features.

rsync uses the "rsync algorithm" which provides a very fast method for bringing remote files into sync. It does this by sending just the differences in the files across the link, without requiring that both sets of files are present at one of the ends of the link beforehand. At first glance this may seem impossible because the calculation of diffs between two files normally requires local access to both files.
More info is available on the homepage (http://rsync.samba.org/rsync/) and the FAQ (http://rsync.samba.org/rsync/FAQ.html)

1999-Dec-27 9:03am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

Graphics

MySQL

Netscape

PDF

Printing

General Questions:

How do I synchronize my clock to a network (atomic) clock?

General Questions:
What are the available programs for making plots (graphics) in Linux?
How do I convert postscript to PDF for NSF proposals (on linux)?
How do I generate pdf output from LaTeX (including figures)?

Examples of graphs generated with xmgrace (postscript files converted to gif files):

* Diagram with shading </~ntg/examples/xmgrace/fermispheres.gif>
[input file </~ntg/examples/xmgrace/fermispheres.plot> ]

* XY plot with arrows and legend </~ntg/examples/xmgrace/fig_vt_ca40.gif>
[input file </~ntg/examples/xmgrace/fig_vt_ca40.plot> ]

* Log-log plot </~ntg/examples/xmgrace/delEoverA-CR.gif>
[input file </~ntg/examples/xmgrace/delEoverA-CR.plot> ]

2001-Sep-09 3:41pm furnstahl.1@osu.edu

  1. Make sure you have Ghostscript 6.0 or later 
        and tetex-dvips 1.0.6 or later.
  2. Make sure that any figure postscript files use Type 1 fonts only
      (I don't have a conversion plan yet if they don't!).
  3. To convert file.dvi to an appropriate file.ps:
       dvips -Ppdf -j0 -G0 -o file.ps file.dvi
  4  To convert the resulting file.ps (large!) to file.pdf:
       ps2pdf -dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dCompatibilityLevel=1.2 \ 
            -dSubsetFonts=true -dEmbedAllFonts=true file.ps file.pdf 

The general NSF instructions are: http://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/a1/pdfcreat.htm.
The Linux alternative to using Adobe Distiller on a PC is using the script ps2pdf, which runs Ghostscript to do the conversion from postscript to pdf. It seems to be essential to have up-to-date versions of ps2pdf and Ghostscript (at least 6.0) and tetex-dvips (at least 1.0.6). To check your versions (assuming they were installed from rpm's):

   rpm -q ghostscript
   rpm -q tetex-dvips

Here is what NSF has to say about Ghostscript: <http://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/a1/pdfcreat.htm#Ghostscript 6.0 or higher>
The recommended ps2pdf command is:

  ps2pdf -dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dCompatibilityLevel=1.2 \ 
      -dSubsetFonts=true -dEmbedAllFonts=true

It is important to configure dvips to use Type 1 fonts. The NSF instructions to do this are http://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/a1/pdfcreat.htm#DVIPS.
The basic trick for Linux is to use dvips -Ppdf. So to convert file.dvi to file.ps, use (the -j0 and -G0 options make sure that subsetting and character shifting are turned off):

   dvips -Ppdf -j0 -G0 -o file.ps file.dvi

I've tried this on Linux with Ghostscript 6.0 and it produces pdf readable by the Adobe acroread viewer (AND by xpdf) with what appear to be embeddable type 1 fonts (there is still a discrepancy I'm checking).

Ghostscript 6.0 rpms for Linux are available as ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/aladdin/gs601/linux/ghostscript-6.01-1.i386.rpm and ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/aladdin/gs601/linux/ghostscript-fonts-6.0-1.noarch.rpm (these links will no doubt be out of date by the time you read this; check http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/aladdin/ for the latest versions).

The ps2pdf page is http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/aladdin/doc/Ps2pdf.htm.

2000-Apr-21 3:25pm furnstahl.1@osu.edu

"Effective Scientific Electronic Publishing" at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/publ-tips.html

"Using LaTeX to Create Quality PDF Documents for the World Wide Web" at http://www.math.uakron.edu/~dpstory/latx2pdf.html

2000-Mar-30 8:25am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

A good discussion of options is a support page from the University of Minnesota http://www.msi.umn.edu/software/tex/help/pdf.html, which lists three possibilitiies:

 1. LaTeX -> dvips -> ps2pdf  [not recommended]
 2. LaTeX -> dvipdfm  [works with embedded eps figures]
 3. pdflatex [most reliable; requires conversion of [e]ps figures to postscript]

Find out more about dvipdfm at http://gaspra.kettering.edu/dvipdfm/. There are Linux RPM's available on this page.

2001-Oct-19 8:15am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

Answers in this category:
Where do I find documentation/tutorials for MySQL?

Of the books listed on http://www.mysql.com/portal/books/html/book-1-1.html, I can vouch for MySQL by Paul DuBois. Great book on MySQL and good details on using the database with PHP and Perl.

Of the articles listed on http://www.mysql.com/articles/index.html, I can vouch for "Building a Database-Driven Web Site Using PHP and MySQL," whic is concise yet very helpful.

2001-Sep-23 1:32pm furnstahl.1@osu.edu

General Questions:
How do I get rid of the Shop button in Netscape?
Why do apostrophes on some web pages appear as question marks in Netscape?
How do I get Netscape to automatically pop up gv (or ghostview) when I click on a postscript file?

           Netscape*toolBar.myshopping.isEnabled: false 

           Netscape*toolBar.destinations.isEnabled: false 
           Netscape*toolBar.numUserCommands: 1 
           Netscape*toolBar.userCommand1.commandName: findInObject 
           Netscape*toolBar.userCommand1.labelString: Find 
           Netscape*toolBar.userCommand1.commandIcon: Find 
           Netscape*toolBar.search.isEnabled: false 

           user_pref("browser.chrome.disableMyShopping", true); 

Answer 1:
It's people writing web pages with Windows software that uses the wrong character for apostrophes. Instead of the ' character, it uses a Windows specific character set that pretends to be iso-8859-X compatible but has characters in the "non printable control code" part of the ISO character sets. That's why you see them as question marks.

Answer 2 suggests sending a letter to the page owner:
Dear XXX:
In reading over your otherwise fascinating and useful website, I noticed documents that your web server alleges to be of content-type "text/html", but which in fact are not. The HTML standard uses the 8-bit ISO Latin-1 character set, but you include characters that are outside of that, such as those whose decimal values are in the 146-149 range. This renders your pages in an illegal, non-standard, proprietary HTML variant, and consequently illegible to millions of your readers.

I doubt your goal is to limit your audience, but this is what you have in effect done. My guess is that you are using an on-line publishing tool provided by Microsoft, or at least running on their systems. In so doing, you have unwittingly fallen prey to Microsoft's recently revealed stated goal of killing HTML by the "embrace/extend/extinguish" method. Illegal characters are just the start of these intentional incompatibilities. See http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/demoroniser/ for details.

2000-Mar-22 2:02pm furnstahl.1@osu.edu

  1. Under the Edit menu, select Preferences.
  2. When the Preferences window pops up, select Navigator (you need
      to click on the triangle to the left) and then Applications.
  3. You can scroll through the application list.  Find the one that 
      says "postscript document".  Click on it and push the "edit" button.
      (If there isn't one, choose "new" and fill in the info in step 4.)
  4. The information at the top should be something like:
        Description:  postscript document
        MIME Type:  application/postscript
        Suffixes:  ai, eps, ps
  5. Select "Handled by" and put 
             gv %s
      in the box (the %s passes the file to gv).
  6. Click ok until you're back to where you started!

Acrobat Reader ("acroread")

Answers in this category:
How do I read PDF files on a linux machine?

Answers in this category:
How do I set a default printer for Acrobat Reader (acroread)?
How do I make Acroread start up with a larger window?

To change your default printer to "/usr/bin/lpr -Psmith4035/duplex", which will print on the Smith4035 printer using duplex mode (this assumes you are using CUPS to print), add this line anywhere in your .Xdefaults file (which is just a text file):

  *acroread*lprCommand:/usr/bin/lpr -Psmith4035/duplex

A list of X "resources" (like *lprCommand) should have come with your Acroread installation. On my system, this file is:

  /usr/local/Acrobat5/Reader/intellinux/app-defaults/AcroRead

To adjust the default size of the window in which the text appears (which is called the "document shell", add these lines anywhere in your .Xdefaults file (which is just a text file):

   *acroread*documentShell.width:800
   *acroread*documentShell.height:950

If you're not sure what numbers to use, start up Acroread and manually resize the window to the size you want. Then, in a terminal window, type:

  xwininfo

A list of X "resources" (like *lprCommand) should have come with your Acroread installation. On my system, this file is:

  /usr/local/Acrobat5/Reader/intellinux/app-defaults/AcroRead

xpdf --- which should already be on your machine

acroread --- the official pdf viewer from Adobe.

 You can find RPM's from http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=acroread.

 To get acroread from Adobe and then set it up:
  1. Go to http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html 
      and choose "LINUX" as the platform under Step 1.  
      This will let you download 
      a 6MB "tarball" with a name like linux-ar-405.tar.gz.  
  2. Open the archive:
           zcat linux-ar-405.tar.gz | tar xfv -
  3. In some subdirectory like ILINXR.install you'll find an INSTALL script.
      Run it as root:
          ./INSTALL
  4. By default, acroread will be installed as
          /usr/local/Acrobat4/bin/acroread
     You will probably want to put a link in /usr/local/bin:
        ln -s /usr/local/Acrobat4/bin/acroread /usr/local/bin/acroread

General Questions:
How do I print to a remote printer?

On the machine hosting the remote printer, you need to add the names of machines allowed to print to the /etc/hosts.lpd file (you may need to create it). Just put one address (e.g., campbell.mps.ohio-state.edu) on each line.

2000-Mar-23 11:20am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

 * get a current ntp rpm (e.g., ntp-4.0.99k-4.i386.rpm)
    and install it
 * in /etc/ntp.conf, comment out the server entries and replace with
    local server ip addresses.  The lines (near the top) should be:
         #server 127.127.1.0     # local clock
         #fudge  127.127.1.0 stratum 10
         server 128.146.37.10
         server 128.146.38.12
 * make sure that /etc/rc.d/init.d/ntpd points to the correct function
    library (/etc/rc.d/init.d/functions instead of /etc/rc.d/functions).
    This may be distribution/version dependent.  Just check that it points
    to the correct place.
 * /etc/rc.d/init.d/ntpd restart   
 * check /var/log/messages to see if it is working

What is Linux?

What is Linux used for?

How Do I Use Linux?

Answers in this category:

Answers in this category:
Is Linux an application like MS Word?
What's the difference between Linux and other OS's?
What distribution of Linux do we use?
So what's the deal with all the different distributions of Linux?
How do I pronounce 'Linux'?

Answers in this category:
What's the difference between Linux and MS Windows (NT, 2000, 9x, etc.)?
What's the Difference Between Linux and Windows NT/2000

Answers in this category:
What's the Difference Between Linux and Windows 9x?

On the downside, Windows has a tendancy to crash. It does not respond quickly to users who find bugs. It often has problems with networking even when putting a 98 machine into a 2000 network.

Linux is gaining popularity and more applications are becoming available for it. There are a couple of popular GUI's (Graphical User Interfaces) available for Linux which make it similar to using Windows. Linux is considered to be more stable than Windows; it rarely crashes. Networking is one of its greatest strengths. Bug support is often found and corrected quickly by the large number of developers who form the Linux community. Also, Linux uses the entire x86 processor and many applications run faster on Linux than on other OS's.

On the other hand, Linux is best used by learning some Unix commands and using a command line interface now and then. As an OS for hackers, there may be a better turn around time for support, but it also requires a certain amount of desire to learn.

If you don't mind tinkering, exploring, and learning and are willing to put up with developing issues, Linux might be for you. On the other hand, if you would prefer a simple OS and don't mind the occasional crash or the fact that bugs will take longer to iron out, Windows might be your cup of tea.

The methods used to do these things are different in the different operating systems. It should be noted however that the stability of Linux has convinced many people to use Linux for the server of a network of Windows machines. This is often accomplished through use of a program called Samba.
Thus the network gains stability and ease of modification while the users are able to use a familiar operating system.

Answers in this category:

Quite simply, this is the result of the "open source" and "free software" movements. The Linux kernel is distributed by such companies as Debian, SuSe, and Red Hat and they sell it with a number of applications and technical support. The GNU Public License says that people are perfectly free to do this as long as they realize that other people may sell the exact same kernel for less or even nothing. In fact, it is quite easy to get the Linux kernel for free. Remember however that it will not necessarily come with any sort of guarantee or technical support like ones from major companies.

The networking aspects of Linux are especially of interest to many big businesses and scientific communities. It is easy to log in from remote machines, share files, and run remote applications. It is easy to program on Linux in a variety of languages, and text editing with the TeX language is often done using Linux.

What application should I use?

Answers in this category:

Answers in this category:
What do you have similar to MS Office?
What do you have similar to Photoshop?
What would I use to write a program?
What would I use to write a scientific paper?
What would I use to solve a mathematical problem?

There is a caveat, however. While there seems to be little to no problem reading items which were written in MS Office applications, there is a definite problem writing to a format that is readable by MS Office. Still, as long as you are not attempting to switch formats, KOffice is a very good application.

The GIMP can be used as a paint program, to edit photos, change formats of images, and batch processing among other things.

Another application used on Linux is caled ImageMagick. ImageMagick is actually a suite of tools and applications run from the command line. To run a graphical front end to ImageMagick, type the command 'display'. ImageMagick is considered to be extremely flexible by its proponents. It does, however take some time to become used to and acquainted with the many command-line options.

If on the other hand you are using the GUI, click on the start application button (it's a "K" for KDE and a foot for GNOME). From there go to Applications and select Emacs.

Mathematica is a very powerful tool which can be used to solve mathematical problems of course, but since it has mathematical symbols and notation and since it is very good at producing graphs, figures, and images, it is often used to write scientific papers. It has the entire text of the handbook in the help file so it is relatively easy to use.

LaTeX is a language whose syntax is similar to HTML. It is used to format text and can produce results of publishable quality. In fact, most papers in the serious scientific journals are produced using LaTeX or a version thereof. A good reference for LaTeX is A Guide to LaTeX 3: Document Preparation for Beginners and Advanced Users, by Helmut Kopka and Patrick W. Daly.

groff is a text processing system in the same vein as LaTeX. It is used to make the same types of documents for the most part. However, groff is better for producing documents which will be viewed online. This is because LaTeX is unable to produce plain-ASCII output while groff excels at this. Hence, groff is often used to write and to edit man pages.

You can access that application by typing 'mathematica' on your shell console screen. If you merely want to run the kernel, simply type 'math' instead of mathematica. For more information on running Mathematica, check the FAQ-O-Matic entry, go to www.wolfram.com, or read the help file in the application.

I should also let you know that there is a wonderful tutorial on Linux at www.linux.org/lessons/ which goes through many of the important functions and commands in Linux.

Later, you can explore the GUI environment which is made to be familiar to Windows and MacOS users.

Ready? Set? Here we go!

Answers in this category:
How Do I use the Command Line Interface?
How do I use the GUI (Graphical User Interface)?

You should see something to the effect of [yourname@arran ~]$. You are now at the command line.

What if I don't remember what command to use?

What is a shell and how do I use it?

How do I control printing on Linux?

What is job control?

Answers in this category:
How Do I Access My Files?
How do I change directories?
How do I copy/move/rename a file?
How do I change my password?
How do I shut down Linux?
How do I suspend/kill jobs?

Answers in this category:
What is the "man" command?
What is the "apropos" command?

The "man" command. Live it, learn it, love it!

The shell is a program that reads and executes user commands. It controls which processes get run and at what time. Much of flexibility (and the fun) of Linux comes from the ability to write programs called "shell scripts" to customize your workspace.

There are many different shells available for Linux. They include but are not limited to: C shell, the Bourne Again shell, Z shell, and the Korn shell.

Answers in this category:
Which shell should I use?
How do I change shells?

On the other hand, another popular shell is bash or the Bourne Again shell. Tcsh and bash have many similar features such as job control, command history, and filename completion. They differ in syntax and commands.

A poll of the shells of preference for the Physics Computer Facility reveals that variety is the spice of life. Each person has a different favorite. Bash, zsh, and tcsh seem to be the three favorites. Each offer similar ways to do the same jobs.

There are many good books on shells available. I recommend any published by O'Reilly. Check out http://www.oreilly.com. Also,the university offers a class on shell programming under the CIS dept.

Let's suppose that you want to learn a bit of bash. Just type 'bash' at the command prompt; you'll be in the bash shell! To switch back to your original shell, just type 'exit'. Feel free to explore shells to your heart's content!

Answers in this category:
How do I control which printer gets my print request?
How do I see which printer is the default printer?
How do I change the defaul printer selection?

     export PRINTER = name

Different shells will have different syntax so if you are unsure which command to use, check with your systems administrator or use a text shell scripting which applies to your shell.

To bring the job back to the foreground, type 'fg %1' or 'fg 10500'. Job numbers always take %. To stop the background job, you can type 'kill %1'.

A listing of the files and folders in your current directory will appear on your screen. There are several subcommands you can add to 'ls' to make it even more useful. Two of the ones I use the most are '-a' and '-l'. They stand for 'all' and 'long' respectively and the syntax would be 'ls -a' or 'ls -l'. The all command will show the hidden files in your directory. The long gives more information about the files and folders you can see. I'll get back to both of these concepts later.

What if I want to write something?

Answers in this category:

Answers in this category:
Yeah, that sounds like what I want! Tell me more about text editors!

Linux comes with several types. Emacs, vi, pico, and joe are a few of the more popular ones. Emacs and vi are the most commonly used among these four. Simply type which one you want to use and the name of the file you are writing, and you will be all set. For example, you can type 'vi bob' and you would thus commence working on a file called bob in the vi text editor.

For more information on any of the above, consult the man pages. Also, emacs has a handy tutorial available in its program. Simply type 'Ctrl-h' for the help menu then type 't' to go to the tutorial.

Desktop, public_html, and homework are directories in this case. We can go into public_html by typing 'cd public_html'. If you want to go back to your previous level, simply type 'cd ..'.

This is all nice and good if you are only going up and down one level at a time, but there will be times whem you want to make bigger leaps. If you happen to know the exact address, you can specify it. For example, you could type 'cd /net/campbell/01/your_name/homework/quantum' to take you to the quantum directory in your homework directory in your home directory. The first "/" takes you to the root directory and everything else specifies where to go from there.

Hence, if you want to simply go to the root directory, you can type 'cd /' and you'll immediately go there.

Now suppose with all of this bouncing around and changing directories, you've forgotten where you are working. This can be an important thing to know after all. All you need to do is type 'pwd' for "print working directory". It's like having your very own GPS!

Answers in this category:
How do I copy a file?
How do I move a file?
How do I rename a file?

Be careful though. If something is already at the location "filename_2", it will be overwritten without warning!

The format for the two commands are as follows:
cp filename_1 filename_2
mv filename_1 filename_2

In either case, you simply put the new name in the place of "filename_2". cp will have the result of keeping a copy of your old file while mv will move the file to the new address and delete the old copy.

For the record, you should choose a password that is a combination of lower and uppercase letters. Throwing in a few numbers is a good idea too. Don't use whole words. Not even in other languages. You never know who might try to compromise the security of a network.

Know which computer it is (the name of the Linux boxes is written on the machines beneath the CD-ROM drive. It will be either ARRAN or MULL followed by mps.ohio-state.edu). You should also be able to describe the problem precisely and be able to tell us what you were doing when whatever problem you are having occurred.

If you are using a version of Linux at home, check the documentation which came with your computer.

To suspend the job, type 'Ctrl z'. To kill it, type 'Ctrl \'.

Answers in this category:
Which GUI should I use?
How do I create a shortcut on my desktop?
Where else can I turn for help?

GNOME is part of the GNU project. It stands for GNU Network Object Model Environment. You can see more info about them at http://www.gnome.org/. It seems to aim for good looks and maximum configurability. We have experienced some crashing problems with GNOME, however, so be warned.

KDE on the other hand is more stable. KDE stands for K Desktop Environment. It is easy to use and strives to make users coming from Windows feel right at home. You can see more info on KDE at http://www.kde.org/.

The Physics Computer Facility recommends KDE for your choice of GUI. Subsequent answers will assume use of KDE.

Hence, if you wanted to create a shortcut to Mathematica on your desktop, you would type 'ln -s mathematica Desktop/Mathematica'. This would create a symbolic link called Mathematica in the Desktop folder. A graphical shortcut will appear on the desktop.

Answers in this category:
Downloading and installing CUPS

Download the latest CUPS rpm from RedHat and install it similarly to this:

  rpm -Uvh cups-1.1.9-linux-2.2-intel.rpm

(you might need the `--force' option also, if it complains of
conflicts with lpd files)

Get the local config files:

ftp://ftp.physics.ohio-state.edu/pub/linux/cups-1.1.9-config.tgz

Replace the config files to talk properly to the local server:

  cd /etc/cups
  tar zxvfp /whatever/path/cups-1.1.9-config.tgz

Edit /etc/cups/lpoptions to change the Default entry to a printer of
your choice.  This will become the default printer for anyone on this
particular host.

Make sure cupsd isn't running (you don't need it, and every daemon 
you don't run helps reduce your security vulnerability):

  /etc/rc.d/init.d/cups stop
  /sbin/chkconfig -level 0123456 cups off

That's it.  Wait 30 seconds or so, and type 

  lpstat -p

to see a list of printers.

To change the system default printer, as root type

  lpoptions -d printername

For documentation, see http://lpd.physics.ohio-state.edu:631/documentation.html

The Linux Laptop HOWTO <http://www.mobilix.org/howtos.html (which is now called the Linux-Mobile-Guide), is also worth checking out.

Answers in this category:
How do I restore my network connection after a suspend/restore?
How do I keep my laptop from freezing or otherwise screwing up when I suspend?

For example, I changed

 PCMCIARESTART="no"

 PCMCIARESTART="yes"

To start up the pcmcia card by hand, use (as root):

  /etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia restart

You can see and change your filesize limit and other limits. The command will depend on the shell you use.

If you use tcsh, then the "limit" command gives the info:

  ==> limit
  cputime       unlimited
  filesize      50000 kbytes
  datasize      unlimited
  stacksize     8192 kbytes
  coredumpsize  1000000 kbytes
  memoryuse     unlimited
  descriptors   1024 
  memorylocked  unlimited
  maxproc       256 
  openfiles     1024 

  ==> limit filesize 1000000

If you use bash, then the corresponding command is "ulimit -a" (the "-a" is for "all").

  [furnstah@ntg4004 furnstah]$ ulimit -a
  core file size (blocks)  1000000
  data seg size (kbytes)   unlimited
  file size (blocks)       50000
  max memory size (kbytes) unlimited
  stack size (kbytes)      8192
  cpu time (seconds)       unlimited
  max user processes       256
  pipe size (512 bytes)    8
  open files               1024
  virtual memory (kbytes)  2105343

  [furnstah@ntg4004 furnstah]$ ulimit -f 1000000

You can see and change your core file size limit and other limits. The command will depend on the shell you use.

If you use tcsh, then the "limit" command gives the info:

  ==> limit
  cputime       unlimited
  filesize      50000 kbytes
  datasize      unlimited
  stacksize     8192 kbytes
  coredumpsize  1000000 kbytes
  memoryuse     unlimited
  descriptors   1024 
  memorylocked  unlimited
  maxproc       256 
  openfiles     1024 

  ==> limit coredumpsize 0

If you use bash, then the corresponding command is "ulimit -a" (the "-a" is for "all").

  [furnstah@ntg4004 furnstah]$ ulimit -a
  core file size (blocks)  1000000
  data seg size (kbytes)   unlimited
  file size (blocks)       50000
  max memory size (kbytes) unlimited
  stack size (kbytes)      8192
  cpu time (seconds)       unlimited
  max user processes       256
  pipe size (512 bytes)    8
  open files               1024
  virtual memory (kbytes)  2105343

  [furnstah@ntg4004 furnstah]$ ulimit -c 0

  $ xdpyinfo | grep resolution

  $ xdpyinfo | grep dimensions

General Questions:

Second, run alsamixer in a terminal window. Make sure the gain for the Mic is a reasonable level, and it is set for capture (space). Also, make sure that Capture is set to a reasonable level, and is also set to capture (!). Don't see Capture? That's because it's to the right, off of the screen. Keep using right arrow until you find it.

2007-Jan-10 2:04pm bcd@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu

Input and output from files

Simplification (Simplify and FullSimplify)

Common Errors and Debugging

General Questions:
What is Mathematica?
How do I use command completion in Mathematica?
Where can I find Mathematica tricks?
Where can I find sample Mathematica notebooks with examples?
Is there a way to get nicely formatted input without using the palattes?

General Questions:
How do I output results in fortran-readable form?

Answers in this category:
How do I get Mathematica to simplify (m^-2)^(1/2)?
Can Mathematica simplify Sin[n Pi] when n is an integer?

  Simplify[(m^-2)^(1/2)]

  Simplify[(m^-2)^(1/2),{m>0}]

  Simplify[(m^-2)^(1/2),{Element[m,Reals]}]

2001-Nov-12 8:03am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

  Simplify[Sin[n Pi]]

  Simplify[Sin[n Pi], Element[n,Integers]]

Answers in this category:
How do I avoid errors where a denominator expression ends up in the numerator?

  1/2 m 

  1/2(m)

  1/(2 m)

In the first two instances, Mathematica interprets the input as m/2 rather than 1/(2m). You can avoid this problem by entering your expression from a palette, so that the fraction is manifest. If you've made an input error, it will be obvious! However, this is often slow and awkward.

An alternative is to enter the expression as usual but then to check your result by converting it to "Traditional Form". Here's what you do:

  * Select the expression to convert by highlighting it using the mouse or
     by highlighting the corresponding square bracket at the far right.
  * Select from the menu bar:  Cell -> Convert To -> TraditionalForm
  * You may want to switch back to "Standard Form" after the conversion;
     Cell -> Convert To -> Standard Form will leave the fractions converted.
  * It is quicker to use the keyboard shortcuts (given on the pulldown menu
     when you get to the TraditionalForm menu).  For Linux they are
     shift-Alt-T and shift-Alt-N for converting to Traditional and Standard
     forms, respectively.
  * This will also convert other elements, such as integrals, to a nice form.

On Linux, if you start typing a name then press Alt+k (that means hold down the Alt key and press k), then you'll get a popup menu with all of the possible commands that start with the letters you've typed. Select one and you're ready to go!

2001-Oct-16 12:13pm furnstahl.1@osu.edu

 Ted Ersek's Mathematica Tricks
 http://www.verbeia.com/mathematica/tips/Tricks.html

 Morrison's Mathematica Resources
 http://www.nhn.ou.edu/%7Emorrison/Mathematica/index.shtml

There is also a general list of Mathematica Related URL's at http://mc.vnet.net/mathsite.html.
2001-Oct-16 12:41pm furnstahl.1@osu.edu

  * Select the expression to convert by highlighting it using the mouse or
     by highlighting the corresponding square bracket at the far right.
     (Actually, just putting the mouse at the end of the line usually works!)
  * Select from the menu bar:  Cell -> Convert To -> TraditionalForm
  * You may want to switch back to "Standard Form" after the conversion;
     Cell -> Convert To -> Standard Form will leave the fractions converted.
  * It is quicker to use the keyboard shortcuts (given on the pulldown menu
     when you get to the TraditionalForm menu).  For Linux they are
     shift-Alt-T and shift-Alt-N for converting to Traditional and Standard
     forms, respectively.
  * This will also convert other elements, such as integrals, to a nice form.

2001-Nov-19 7:59am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

Sources of physics data

Answers in this category:

Answers in this category:
Where do I find online information on particle properties?

 * Specific particle listings at http://pdg.lbl.gov/2001/contents_listings.html

Courses

Physics Educational Resources

General Questions:
How do I get a multiple choice test scanned?

Where can I find physics jokes?

H132

Demonstrations

General questions about Physics courses:

General Questions:

Computer Simulations

General Questions:

General Questions:
Why won't the CUPS simulations run on my PC ("runtime error")?

A quick and dirty solution is to use a program that slows down your computer. One such program is "Mo 'Slo v.1.32", which is the (free) demo version. Here is the program in a self-extracting archive: </cups/moslo132.exe>. Here's what to do:

   1. Save moslo132.exe and run it (double-click if in windows explorer).
       It will install itself (by default into c:\moslo).  The program
       you'll use is called moslo.com.
   2. To run c:\cups\cupqm.exe (quantum mechanics package) by slowing down
       your machine 60%, use the command:
           c:\moslo\moslo.com /60 c:\cups\cupsqm.exe
       (I'll assume you can figure out how to change this to a different
       speed or different CUPS programs!)
   3. You should run it as fast as possible, so you might try 90% and stepping
       down until it works.

   1. Go to c:\cups and drag cupqm.exe to the desktop, creating a shortcut.
   2. Right-click on the shortcut and select "Properties".
   3. Select the "Program" tag.
   4. In the "Cmd line:" box put the command:
           c:\moslo\moslo.com /60 c:\cups\cupsqm.exe

Lists:

 * Particle Physics Education Sites 
    http://particleadventure.org/other/othersites.html

 * Astronomy Sites 
    http://www.physlink.com/Education/Astronomy.cfm

 * History of Physics and Astronomy
    http://www.physlink.com/Education/History.cfm

 * Science and Society
    http://www.physlink.com/Education/Essays.cfm

 * 

Educational Software

Answers in this category:

 * PhysLink.com http://www.physlink.com/Education/Software.cfm

Answers in this category:
Where can I get good physics (java) applets?

 * Physlets from Wolfgang Christian.
    http://webphysics.davidson.edu/Applets/Applets.html

 * Physics 2000 [These are great!]
    http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/index.pl

Highlights:
* It's free!
* Available 7:30am to 5:00pm, Monday through Friday.
* In most cases, 24 hour turn around and you can have the results sent to you via email.

2001-Sep-08 9:12am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

Making Web Pages for Courses

Mozilla

Physics Department Web Pages

Searching

Physics Resources on the Web

Phys-Quiz Project

General Questions:
What is the official URL (web address) for the Physics Department?
How do I get symbol fonts to work in Netscape under X windows?

How do I password protect a web page or a directory of web pages?

Answers in this category:
How do I allow anonymous comments on my web page?
How do I make a web page for a course?

--------------------------- begin here --------------------------------

  <FORM METHOD="POST" 
    ACTION="http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/anonymous_comments.php">
  <INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="email" VALUE="xxx">
  <INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="course" VALUE="yyy">

  <H3 >Anonymous Comments about yyy</H3 >
  <P >
  Type your comments in the space below
  and then "press" Send Comments. <BR >
  Your identity will not be recorded.  (If you doubt
  this, use a public machine where you don't need to log in.) <BR >
  You are, of course, welcome to include your name in the message.
  [Please include your name and email address if you'd like a reply!]
  </P >

  <TEXTAREA NAME="student_comments" ROWS=6 COLS=60></TEXTAREA >
  <BR >
  <INPUT TYPE="submit" VALUE="Send comments">
  <INPUT TYPE="reset" VALUE="Clear comments">

  </FORM >

Comments:

 * You can change the instructions ("Type your comments ...") to whatever
    instructions are appropriate for your page.
 * The name of the script invoked is anonymous_comments.php.
    The VALUE of the first "hidden" variable sets the email address of the 
    recipient and the VALUE of the second "hidden" variable sets
    the name of the course.
 * The mail messages you receive will be from user "Nobody", and should
    give the URL address for your web page (this is to alert you if someone
    inserts this FORM on a different page). 
 * The extra spaces in the <H3 >, <P >, etc. tags are not needed.  They
    are just there to make the example display correctly here.

To use sample.html as a template, save it by right-clicking the link (that means to point to the link with your mouse and clicking with the right button on a PC; on a mac ???) and saving the file as text (on Netscape, select "save link as . . .", choose where you want the file to go, and switch the file format popup menu to "text".)

Any file you want the world to be able to access should be placed in your public_html directory on Campbell (or the corresponding place on ohstpy). Create this directory if it doesn't exist. If your user name is doe, and you put sample.html in ~doe/public_html, then the web page is accessed by the web address ("URL") http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~doe/public_html/sample.html (if you click on this link, it will tell you that it doesn't exist, since John Doe doesn't have an account!).

2000-Mar-29 3:48pm furnstahl.1@osu.edu

See http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/general/general02.php for a discussion of the differences between Mozilla and Netscape.

Answers in this category:
Is there an FAQ for Mozilla?
How do I Googlify (tie in the google search engine) Mozilla on Linux?

To set Google as your primary search engine.

  * go to Edit -> Preferences -> Navigator -> Internet Search
  * select "Google" from the pulldown menu under Default Search Engine

Now you should be able to search using Google from the sidebar or simply type the search query into the location box at the top and press Search.

2001-Sep-06 8:49am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

Answers in this category:
How do I add a Physics Department banner to the top of my web page?

* If your web page is called mypage.html, rename it to mypage.php (everything will still work the same except possibly server-side includes, which need to be dealt with in php).
* Immediately after the beginning of the BODY section (i.e., before any H1 or other headings), add the following lines:

 <?
    include ("physics/common_short.php");
    physics_header("","");
 ?>

General Questions:
What search engine should I use?
How do I search old postings to newsgroups?

Google is fast, it is extremely effective in tracking down what you are looking for, and it is closely tied to the linux/open source world (e.g. the Open Directory project).

Here are some comments about Google from a couple of <salon.com> articles:

"It's fast and accurate, with an uncanny ability to put the thing you most wanted to find directly under your nose. The technology that makes this happen is equal parts rocket science and peer review. Google's hypertext-based system for ranking search results uses a mathematical algorithm to rate Web sites based on the number of other sites linking to them, then factors in how heavily linked those sites are. The result is a form of objectivity that springs directly from the Internet community, translating its distributed judgments into a quick, precise read of what matters and what you can do without."

"The result is a kind of automated peer review that sifts sites based on the collective wisdom of the Web itself. ... its site-ranking approach is nearly impossible for devious webmasters to trick or "spam," since it's based on links and judgments made by other respected sites: `You have to actually convince someone who's important that you're important.' "

2001-Sep-06 9:33am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

 * number of results
 * date range
 * image searching

You might want to start with the "advanced search" page, which is http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search, where you can tailor your search in detail.

2001-Sep-06 8:38am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

Answers in this category:
Where do I advertise (or look for) postdoc positions online?

 Physics Jobs On-Line at http://physicsweb.org/TIPTOP/FORUM/JOBS/
  (No charge.)

 AIP Job Opportunities at http://www.aip.org/careersvc/jobsearch.html
  (the relevant category for postdocs is "Academic"). Post your openings
  at https://webster.aip.org:443/forms/jobpost.html.
  (This is NOT a free service.)

 Physics Today Online lets you post ads at
  https://webster.aip.org/forms/jobpost_pt.html
  for a fee. The ad is posted within one business day on the AIP site;
  the deadline for Physics Today magazine is the 25th of the second month
  preceding the issue date (so January 25 for the March issue). 

 "JOBMENU: Academic and Research Positions in Physics" is a web site 
  maintained by Prof. Y.S. Kim of the University of Maryland.  The URL is:
  http://www.physics.umd.edu/robot/jobs/jobmenu.html
  Send your ad to yskim@physics.umd.edu (no charge).

 PhysicsJobs at http://physicsweb.org/jobs/info/advertise is operated by
  Physics World magazine.  (This is NOT a free service.)

2001-Sep-26 8:45pm furnstahl.1@osu.edu