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