\def\nl{\hfill\break}
% BEST OF TEXHAX notes for TeXline
% by Sebastian Rahtz
% Malcolm - i am unused to plain TeX, and have quickly hacked together
% some macros. please feel free to redo at will. wish I was back in
% LaTeX.....
%---------------------------------------------------------------------
% program quoting macros
%
\def\UncatcodeSpecials{\def\do##1{\catcode`##1=12 }\dospecials}
{\begingroup\obeyspaces\catcode`\ =13\endgroup}
%
\def\SetupVerbatim{\tt\def\par{\leavevmode\endgraf}\catcode`\`=\active 
\obeylines\UncatcodeSpecials \obeyspaces\catcode`\ =13}
{\catcode`\`=\active \gdef`{\relax\lq}}
%
\def\program{\begingroup\parindent=0em\par
\SetupVerbatim\xprogram}
\begingroup
\catcode`\|=0 \catcode`\\=12
|obeylines|gdef|xprogram#1\endprogram{#1|endgroup|vskip 10pt|parindent=0em|par}
|endgroup
% 
% miscellaneous
\def\and{\item{$\bullet$}}
\def\sq{\smallskip\begingroup\leftskip=3em\noindent
\sf\parindent=0em\parskip=2pt}
\def\eq{\smallskip\hrule\smallskip
\parindent=1em\parskip=0pt\leftskip=0em\endgroup}
\def\bs{$\backslash$}
%
% names
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%-------------------------------------------
\centerline{\bf Bits of \hax, Summer 87}
\medskip\noindent
Those readers of \TeX line who are not daily users of electronic mail,
and/or use \TeX\ primarily on micros, may not be aware of the
existence of the \hax\ mailing list, which exists to share information
around the international \TeX\ community. It is distributed from the
University of Stanford under the editorship of Malcolm Brown, and uses
a digest format; Malcolm stores incoming mail (requests for
information, news of new products, replies to other questions,
`official' communications from TUG in advance of TUGboat) until
it reaches critical mass, then bundles it together with a list of
contents and sends it to everyone on the \hax\ list. Typically, this
happens two or three times a week, and each issue contains about a
dozen contributions, which means that a vast amount of \TeX -related
material is flitting across the networks all the time. The purpose of
this article is to describe the range of \TeX ery covered in \hax, and
to highlight some of the more interesting topics. Readers who wish to
join in this activity (be prepared for  a lot of browsing of mail
messages!) must have an account on their local mainframe or mini with
access to network mail (consult your local guru); send mail to
|texhax-request%uk.ac.ucl.cs| and ask that
your name be put on the list to receive \hax\ (don't forget to tell
them your own mail address). As things stand at the moment, this
international mail will not cost you anything, as one copy is sent to
London and forwarded to you from there.

\hax\ is read by a very large number of people, to judge by
contributions, from America, Canada, Britain, Europe, Japan, Australia
etc. Leslie Lamport is a regular contributor with answers to \LaTeX\
problems, Barbara Beeton monitors it for TUG, and even Donald Knuth
adds the occasional note. It is a good place to send an esoteric
question, as usually someone with an unpronounceable name from an
institution you have never heard of will send in an answer. If you
want a more local answer (`who has got a copy of xxx in Britain?'),
there is a UK version of \hax, recently set up by Peter Abbott at
Aston, to bring together specifically UK \TeX ies --- mail to {\tt
tex-info@uk.ac.aston.mail} to get on that list.

For the purpose of this article, I have looked at the 36 issues of \hax\
that reached me between May 22nd and September 6th (an average of
about two a week). There were approximately 480 contributions dealing
with every sort of \TeX\ arcana; just searching the subject fields
(not necessarily a proper reflection of contents), I found 129 pieces
relating to \LaTeX\ (including 22 sets of \LaTeX\ Notes from
Leslie Lamport), 14 pieces on \BibTeX, 11 on \MF, 6 on
\SliTeX, and just 1 on \AmSTeX. My subjective impression is that
\LaTeX\ matters are an even higher proportion of \hax\ even than
appears from these figures. In general, contributions vary from the
questions about hardware (usually printers), to the private life of
\TeX\ macros, as evinced in the following two excerpts:

{\narrower\noindent
  My order for the IBM 4250 font tapes just came back with
   ``I no longer have a font tape for the 4250 printer. The person
    who supplied it to me originally has not made another one for version 2
    of TeX."
  Where can I get one of these tapes?
  What's the difference between V1.01 and 2?
  Will they still work?
\smallskip}
\noindent and

{\narrower\noindent
Subject: TeX eats l's after fil

\noindent
If an `l' or and `L' follows a unit of glue such as `fil', even separated
by spaces, it is aparently parsed as part of the name of the unit.  This
leads to some fairly strange behavior.  For example, the following script
will put a `K' and a `M' in the dvi file, but no `L'!\nl
|\def\q#1{\hskip 0 pt plus 0 fil #1}|\nl
|\q{K}\q{L}\q{M}|\nl
\%\% barbara beeton responds:\nl
the ``l"-gobbling you've encountered is legitimate, and easily explained.
the full syntax of \bs hskip is\nl
|\hskip<dimen> plus<dimen> minus<dimen>|\nl
since your example didn't include a ``minus'', tex keeps looking.
since ``fil'' is a ``pseudo-dimension'' it can continue, up to 3 ``l"s
(if your data had been ``llama'', all you would have gotten in the output
would have been ``ama'').  similarly, if the data had started with the
word ``minus'', not followed by a proper $<$dimen$>$, minus would have been
gobbled and you probably would have gotten a nasty message to the effect
that a $<$dimen$>$ was expected, and 0pt will be assumed.  the best way to
avoid this is to put |\relax| after your skip expression.
	this is covered explicitly in the texbook; look it up in the
index (page 469): ``l after fil''.
\smallskip}

Sometimes \hax\ gets onto a general issue---there have been
discussions over the last year on such questions as:

{\narrower
\and Can University authorities be persuaded to drop their
`double-spaced Courier' thesis requirements for students who have
access to a proper typesetting system like \TeX?
\and What freedom should \LaTeX\ users have to tinker with the layout?
Leslie Lamport feels strongly that only experienced document designers
should be able to alter even the font used in a running head.

\and Can a consistent set of standards for dvi drivers be put
together? What facilities should they have? How do you handle \bs
specials? This question was
addressed in detail at the TUG meeting in August, and a committee was
set up to look into it.

\and What is the relationship of \PS\ to \TeX? Lamport suggested
\TeX\ be changed to output pure \PS, others defend their LN03s to the
death.
\smallskip 
}

One common feature of \hax\ is the swapping of style files for \LaTeX.
For those who are not aware of it, 
there is a large collection of these style files
held at Rochester. The `latest' list is given
elsewhere in \TeX line. All of these files are obtainable
over {\it email}. Rather than have to tangle with
the absurdities of {\it email\/} addressing,
is possible to obtain them over the |uk-tex|
distribution as well.

To obtain these style files from Aston, you could
try the following, VAX VMS command (assuming you
have a VAX, or a friend with a VAX, and that it is
connected over Janet):\nl
|transfer -|\nl
\hbox{|aston.kirk::[public.latexstyle]000index.list-|}
|latex_index.txt|\nl 
|/user=public,public|\nl
This will put the index file in your own
directory as |latex_index.txt|. It should look
something like the list given in the next article.
If you cannot gain access to Janet, you can also
obtain the files on floppy. See the next
article.

\hax\ is quite a fascinating compilation of the
fascinating, obvious, apparent, useless, arcane,
obscure, informative and (sometimes) rude!

\rightline{\sl Sebastian Rahtz, Southampton University}
