Wanting to learn plain TeX

Wanting to learn plain TeX

[Robert F. Beeger]

Hello!

I'm reading this mailing list since April, but I must confess that I'm not 
understanding a whole bunch of the postings that were made on it.

I asked myself for the reason and found out that all this posting that I 
don't understand make a great use of plain Tex, which I don't really know.
I used LaTeX and then converted to ConTeXt, which both in their own ways 
take away the pain to cope with plain TeX from the user.

But as I see it, the really cool things in ConTeXt have to be done with 
plain TeX or with ConTeXt and plain TeX.
So I decided to learn TeX at its roots.

Does someone know a good hands-on book about TeX. Or is the TeX-Book by 
Knuth still the best one available?

Thanks in advance and happy conTeXting
      Robert

Re: Wanting to learn plain TeX

[Hans Hagen]

Hi Robert,

>I'm reading this mailing list since April, but I must confess that I'm not 
>understanding a whole bunch of the postings that were made on it.
>
>I asked myself for the reason and found out that all this posting that I 
>don't understand make a great use of plain Tex, which I don't really know.
>I used LaTeX and then converted to ConTeXt, which both in their own ways 
>take away the pain to cope with plain TeX from the user.
>
>But as I see it, the really cool things in ConTeXt have to be done with 
>plain TeX or with ConTeXt and plain TeX.
>So I decided to learn TeX at its roots.
>
>Does someone know a good hands-on book about TeX. Or is the TeX-Book by 
>Knuth still the best one available?

I think that most of the questions you refer to have to deal with specific
wishes and features. In most cases not so much plain tex is needed. But,
because you can hook in your own macros, in order to make your own designs,
a bit of low level tex does not hurt. You can already do a lot when you
know what a hbox, vbox, hfil, vfil, hskip and vskip is. I could encapsulate
those in macros but that will not change the basics. 

I can recomment 'the beginners book of tex from levy and seroul', from
'springer verlag', since it covers what you need to know if you want to go
beyonds context (and latex) basic functionality. A copy of the tex book is
always worth its money while tex by topic from victor eijkhout is a good
reference. 

Hans 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                  Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
                      Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
 tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Wanting to learn plain TeX

[Robert F. Beeger]

Hi!

Thanks for the tips to Hans and Marcus.
I'll take a look on some of this books in the near future.

And maybe I'm also going to read the TeX-Book itself.
I've read some positive reviews of it at amazon.de.
I'd thought Knuth's books to be full of ununderstandable math and 
typesetting Chinese.
Maybe I'll give it a try.

Greets
     Robert

At 14:03 31.08.00 +0200, Hans Hagen wrote:
>Hi Robert,
>
> >I'm reading this mailing list since April, but I must confess that I'm not
> >understanding a whole bunch of the postings that were made on it.
> >
> >I asked myself for the reason and found out that all this posting that I
> >don't understand make a great use of plain Tex, which I don't really know.
> >I used LaTeX and then converted to ConTeXt, which both in their own ways
> >take away the pain to cope with plain TeX from the user.
> >
> >But as I see it, the really cool things in ConTeXt have to be done with
> >plain TeX or with ConTeXt and plain TeX.
> >So I decided to learn TeX at its roots.
> >
> >Does someone know a good hands-on book about TeX. Or is the TeX-Book by
> >Knuth still the best one available?
>
>I think that most of the questions you refer to have to deal with specific
>wishes and features. In most cases not so much plain tex is needed. But,
>because you can hook in your own macros, in order to make your own designs,
>a bit of low level tex does not hurt. You can already do a lot when you
>know what a hbox, vbox, hfil, vfil, hskip and vskip is. I could encapsulate
>those in macros but that will not change the basics.
>
>I can recomment 'the beginners book of tex from levy and seroul', from
>'springer verlag', since it covers what you need to know if you want to go
>beyonds context (and latex) basic functionality. A copy of the tex book is
>always worth its money while tex by topic from victor eijkhout is a good
>reference.
>
>Hans
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
>                                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
>                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
>  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Wanting to learn plain TeX

[HoHo]

Hi,

you don't need to be afraid of reading The TeXBook. Knuth wanted it to be
a book for beginners too. In advance, I merely have seen more
understandable books than Knuth's ones.

Good luck.

  | |  _  | |  _
  |-| | | |-| | |
  | | |_| | | |_|
http://www.fi.muni.cz/~xholecek
http://www.physics.muni.cz/~hoho

Side by side images

[Tom Sobota]

Hi,

I just subscribed to this list. Downloaded and started working with Context a week or so ago, so I'm full of doubts and incertainties! I have previous experience with LaTeX and a little TeX.

My (first...) question is, is there a way to place two (or more) images side by side, each having its own caption? I have seen side by side figures in the manuals, but sharing a single caption.

Thanks
Tom

Tom Sobota
tsobota@teleline.es
Madrid, España

Re: Side by side images

[Hans Hagen]

At 08:23 PM 9/4/00 +0200, Tom Sobota wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I just subscribed to this list. Downloaded and started working with
Context a week or so ago, so I'm full of doubts and incertainties! I have
previous experience with LaTeX and a little TeX.
>
>My (first...) question is, is there a way to place two (or more) images
side by side, each having its own caption? I have seen side by side figures
in the manuals, but sharing a single caption.

\startbuffer
\startcombination[2*1]
  {\externalfigure[a.png]} {the first one}
  {\externalfigure[b.png]} {the second one}
\stopcombination
\stopbuffer

\placefigure{two figures}{\getbuffer}

Hans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                  Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
                      Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
 tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Side by side images

[Hraban]

Hans Hagen wrote:
> \startbuffer
> \startcombination[2*1]
>   {\externalfigure[a.png]} {the first one}
>   {\externalfigure[b.png]} {the second one}
> \stopcombination
> \stopbuffer
> 
> \placefigure{two figures}{\getbuffer}

BTW: This is explained in "ms-cb-en.pdf", page 31, what should be
findable somewhere at pragma-ade.com ...

Hraban.

Re: Side by side images

[Tom Sobota]

Hans and Zeljko,

Thanks for your answers to my problem, this is exactly what I need :-)

I am working on an intermediate-sized documentation project. Initially I planned to have a HTML version for on-screen interactive perusing, and a LaTeX version for printing. But I liked the looks of ConTeXt-generated documents, together with PDF output so much that I'm right now changing all. This includes a Perl script that reads the original HTML files and writes ConTeXt which already works, more or less. Now I'm trying to learn more ConTeXt to make it better.

By the way, I wonder if the source for the interactive Context manual ("Context, an excursion" by Ton Otten & Hans Hagen) can be had? The examples I downloaded from the Pragma site are fine but rather simple, I'd love to have a big, fully working example.

Bye and thanks
Tom

A 22.53 4/9/00 +0200, ha escrito:
>At 08:23 PM 9/4/00 +0200, Tom Sobota wrote:
>>Hi,
>>
>>I just subscribed to this list. Downloaded and started working with
>Context a week or so ago, so I'm full of doubts and incertainties! I have
>previous experience with LaTeX and a little TeX.
>>
>>My (first...) question is, is there a way to place two (or more) images
>side by side, each having its own caption? I have seen side by side figures
>in the manuals, but sharing a single caption.
>
>\startbuffer
>\startcombination[2*1]
>  {\externalfigure[a.png]} {the first one}
>  {\externalfigure[b.png]} {the second one}
>\stopcombination
>\stopbuffer
>
>\placefigure{two figures}{\getbuffer}
>
>Hans

Tom Sobota
tsobota@teleline.es
Madrid, España

Re: Side by side images

[Hans Hagen]

At 05:04 PM 9/5/00 +0200, Tom Sobota wrote:
>Hans and Zeljko,
>
>Thanks for your answers to my problem, this is exactly what I need :-)
>
>I am working on an intermediate-sized documentation project. Initially I
planned to have a HTML version for on-screen interactive perusing, and a
LaTeX version for printing. But I liked the looks of ConTeXt-generated
documents, together with PDF output so much that I'm right now changing
all. This includes a Perl script that reads the original HTML files and
writes ConTeXt which already works, more or less. Now I'm trying to learn
more ConTeXt to make it better.
>
>By the way, I wonder if the source for the interactive Context manual
("Context, an excursion" by Ton Otten & Hans Hagen) can be had? The
examples I downloaded from the Pragma site are fine but rather simple, I'd
love to have a big, fully working example.

Then take a look at the presentation styles (s-pre-*.tex) and faq styles
(s-faq-*.tex). They implement complete styles. 

Hans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                  Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
                      Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
 tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Side by side images

[Zeljko Vrba]

On Mon, Sep 04, 2000 at 08:23:46PM +0200, Tom Sobota wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I just subscribed to this list. Downloaded and started working with Context a week or so ago, so I'm full of doubts and incertainties! I have previous experience with LaTeX and a little TeX.
> 
> My (first...) question is, is there a way to place two (or more) images side by side, each having its own caption? I have seen side by side figures in the manuals, but sharing a single caption.
> 
\placefigure[][fig:blah]{My figure}
	\startcombination[2*1]
	{\externalfigure[blah]}{Caption 1}
	{\externalfigure[blah2]}{Caption 2}
	\stopcombination

Re: Wanting to learn plain TeX

[Hans Hagen]

At 07:57 PM 9/4/00 +0200, Robert F. Beeger wrote:
>Hi!
>
>Thanks for the tips to Hans and Marcus.
>I'll take a look on some of this books in the near future.
>
>And maybe I'm also going to read the TeX-Book itself.
>I've read some positive reviews of it at amazon.de.
>I'd thought Knuth's books to be full of ununderstandable math and 
>typesetting Chinese.

There is a russian version of the texbook, maybe even japanese, but chinese
... i don't know. There are some chinese names in his books however. The
good old tex book has no chinese, so that simplies it a bit -) 

Context does chinese and will do it better some day soon. Looking at the
glyphs will convince you that chinese is worth looking at, but I admit that
I cannot read it. But, Wang Lei is working on a tutorial. 

The nice thing about the tex book is that you can read it many times and
the more you know about tex, the more new things you will discover. Unless
you want to write your own macro package, you can safely skip half of it,
unless you want to get a feeling about what is involved. 

Hans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                  Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
                      Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
 tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Wanting to learn plain TeX

[Robert F. Beeger]

Hello!

At 22:45 04.09.00 +0200, Hans Hagen wrote:
>There is a russian version of the texbook, maybe even japanese, but chinese
>... i don't know. There are some chinese names in his books however. The
>good old tex book has no chinese, so that simplies it a bit -)

Good joke!

>Context does chinese and will do it better some day soon. Looking at the
>glyphs will convince you that chinese is worth looking at, but I admit that
>I cannot read it. But, Wang Lei is working on a tutorial.

Just because of being curious about this one: How can this work? I remember 
of having heard once that the writen Chinese language consists of 2000000 
or even more symbols, of which each one stands for a word. Are Unicode 
characters used here or a special mapping from ASCII to Chinese. I also ask 
myself what sort of keyboard the chinese guys use when they want to type 
some text in Chinese.

>The nice thing about the tex book is that you can read it many times and
>the more you know about tex, the more new things you will discover. Unless
>you want to write your own macro package, you can safely skip half of it,
>unless you want to get a feeling about what is involved.

I think I'll try to get a look behind the scenery and maybe read the 
texbook from cover to cover.
You and some of the other guys on this list convinced me to give it a try.

So: thanks again to all of you.

Robert

Re: Wanting to learn plain TeX

[Hans Hagen]

At 05:10 PM 9/6/00 +0200, Robert F. Beeger wrote:

>Just because of being curious about this one: How can this work? I remember 
>of having heard once that the writen Chinese language consists of 2000000 
>or even more symbols, of which each one stands for a word. Are Unicode 
>characters used here or a special mapping from ASCII to Chinese. I also ask 
>myself what sort of keyboard the chinese guys use when they want to type 
>some text in Chinese.

Wang Lei is the person to answer this best. When I implemented chinese, i
did so based on the info he gave me, since the documentation that comes
with other tex implementations is in chinese and therefore unreadable for
me. So, i implemented chinese from scratch. There are more problems
involved than fonts. Currently fonts are dealt with by splitting them up in
=<256 glyphs and using the two byte chars to invoke them. In context the
first byte (char) triggers a font switch [all bytes>128 are made active].
Then the font+char combination is fed in a unicode handler [on top of
font-uni] where spacing and linebreaking is optimized. 

The complications are in: different encoding/font specific numbering
schemes, split labels, mixed chinese latin, and more. This is a rather
multi dimensional problem: font/encoding/language/... with languages within
languages and so. 

Concerning keying, there are special keyboards and free tools for editing.
Kind of funny to see you windows become chinese, due to characters that are
intercepted and mapped onto chinese or whatever. Of course there is emacs. 

Some day I will use omega for this, but first I will finish the current
implementation.  

Hans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                  Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
                      Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
 tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Wanting to learn plain TeX

[Mr. Wang Lei]

On Wed, 6 Sep 2000, Hans Hagen wrote:

> >Just because of being curious about this one: How can this work? I remember 
> >of having heard once that the writen Chinese language consists of 2000000 
> >or even more symbols, of which each one stands for a word. Are Unicode 
> >characters used here or a special mapping from ASCII to Chinese. I also ask 
> >myself what sort of keyboard the chinese guys use when they want to type 
> >some text in Chinese.

As I know Chinese language consists more than 100000 characters. But most
of them are used in ancient literature. In fact, if you know about 
3500 - 5000 Chinese character, you can read and write Chinese without
problem. 

Input Chinese in computer needn't special keyboard. If you have
install a Chinese version Windows, you can active the Chinese 
input method by click the input icon or more quickly hit "ctrl+space".
Then you just type the key "a, b, c, ..., z" in your keyboard,
there will be the matched Chinese characters appear and sorted 
by number, you can select them by hit the corresponding number key.
If you have non-Chinese system, for example, English Windows, 
Linux/Unix, you should install the Chinese fonts(usually TTF)
and the input software first and do as above to input Chinese.
So Input Chinese needn't special keyboard but the special software.

> 
> Wang Lei is the person to answer this best. When I implemented chinese, i
> did so based on the info he gave me, since the documentation that comes
> with other tex implementations is in chinese and therefore unreadable for
> me. So, i implemented chinese from scratch. There are more problems
> involved than fonts. Currently fonts are dealt with by splitting them up in
> =<256 glyphs and using the two byte chars to invoke them. In context the
> first byte (char) triggers a font switch [all bytes>128 are made active].
> Then the font+char combination is fed in a unicode handler [on top of
> font-uni] where spacing and linebreaking is optimized. 

Typesetting Chinese have more difficults than other Western languages
in TeX. Although modern Chinese typesetting much like English, there 
are still some difference between them. Hans do good works on them,
ConTeXt now can use Chinese number, set split labels, typesetting
Chinese (both simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese), etc.   

Wang

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Wang Lei                      Phone: 86-10-62541687 
Institute of Applied Mathematics  Email: lwang@amath8.amt.ac.cn
Chinese Academy of Science        Address: P.O.Box 2734, Beijing, 100080  
------------------------------------------------------------------------