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