Frequently Asked Questions

I will add to this file questions as soon as they are given to me. I will also include answers if they are known. At the beginning of each meeting I will reserve some time for questions and answers. With all of the experience we have, maybe someone will have the answer to your questions.

  1. (6/30/95) For those of you who want to use tex from within emacs, you should uncomment the lines 
    ;(setq TeX-default-mode 'LaTeX-mode)
;(setq tex-site "/usr/local/lib/emacs/site-lisp/tex-site.el")
;(load tex-site)
    in your .emacs file. (These lines are located in separate parts of the file -- they are not adjacent as I have shown them here.) When you edit (using emacs) a file with the extension .tex you will get a menu item labelled latex. Select it with the mouse and you will see what is available.
  2. (6/23/95) At present you must switch to a decstation (zeno, runners, or frobenius) to use latex2html.
  3. (6/26/95) Thanks to Andreas for the following information: 
    To use the html mode for emacs, uncomment the lines

;(autoload 'html-mode html-mode "HTML major mode." t)
;(or (assoc "\\.html$" auto-mode-alist)
;  (setq auto-mode-alist (cons '("\\.html$" . html-mode) 
;                              auto-mode-alist)))
;

in the .emacs file to

(autoload 'html-mode html-mode "HTML major mode." t)
(or (assoc "\\.html$" auto-mode-alist)
  (setq auto-mode-alist (cons '("\\.html$" . html-mode) 
                              auto-mode-alist)))

Note that many people may have older versions of the .emacs file
that may not have these lines at all. In this case, it's probably
best to get a new copy of the .emacs file (and the Default files
and Keymaps files), but html-mode can also be enabled by adding
the following line before the above lines in the .emacs file:

(setq html-mode "/usr/local/lib/emacs/site-lisp/html-mode.el")
  4. (6/26/95) You should be aware that html mode has some irritating side effects For example, getting a plain > is a nuisance. You must type C-c >. Also I don't like the way lines are continued in the file. However there are some advantages and I may switch to html mode. Here is a fix that Andreas has suggested for the > problem: 
     You can get around it by creating a
local copy of the html-mode file in your Emacs directory, changing
the path in your .emacs file and modifying the local copy as
follows:

 (define-key html-mode-map "\C-c<" 'html-less-than)
 (define-key html-mode-map "\C-c>" 'html-greater-than)
 (define-key html-mode-map "\C-c&" 'html-ampersand)
 (define-key html-mode-map "<" 'html-real-less-than)
 (define-key html-mode-map ">" 'html-real-greater-than)
 (define-key html-mode-map "&" 'html-real-ampersand)

instead of 

  (define-key html-mode-map "<" 'html-less-than)
  (define-key html-mode-map ">" 'html-greater-than)
  (define-key html-mode-map "&" 'html-ampersand)
  (define-key html-mode-map "\C-c<" 'html-real-less-than)
  (define-key html-mode-map "\C-c>" 'html-real-greater-than)
  (define-key html-mode-map "\C-c&" 'html-real-ampersand)

That reverses the < and Ctrl-C < behaviour.
  5. (6/29/95) Is it possible to get the html commands into the menu bar of emacs (like auctex does with tex)?
  6. (6/29/95) How do you set up Netscape to correctly read dvi and postscript files? Answer (by way of Jack Lee and Dave Collingwood): 
    Put the lines 

application/postscript; ghostview %s
application/x-dvi; xdvi %s

in a file called ".mailcap" in your home directory, and the lines

application/postscript         ai eps ps
application/x-dvi              dvi

in a file called ".mime.types", also in your home directory.
  7. (6/29/95) How does one make a clickable image (such as appears on the internet public library home page -- it seems to be a special .gif file)?
  8. (6/29/95) How does one set up a counter to count users? Atmospheric Sciences has such a counter. It seems to write a new html file each time a browser reads it. Here is a link to a tutorial on counters. Would someone like to report on it?
  9. (6/29/95) How does one create forms that can be filled in? Here is a reference for forms. Would someone like to report on it?
  10. (7/5/95) How does one make backspace work as the usual erase character when filling in forms in Netscape or Mosaic?
  11. (7/5/95) Here are some more references on counters (courtesy of Don McConnell)
  12. (7/6/95) If you don't want to copy and edit the html-mode file to change the behaviour of emacs html-mode, you can put the following line in your .emacs directory: 
    (setq html-mode "/user7/awiegman/Emacs/html-mode.el")
    instead of the line: 
    (setq html-mode "/usr/local/lib/emacs/site-lisp/html-mode.el")
  13. (7/6/95) Setting up counters seems to involve putting files in directories that we normally wouldn't be allowed to write to (i.e. Don Bovee would have to do it). It seems that a different file would be needed for each page on which a counter is used. This seems like a pretty clumsy way to proceed.
  14. (7/6/95) Thanks to Mike and Andreas we can fix the bad backspace behaviour in Netscape and Mosaic. Create a .Xdefaults file in your home directory and put in it the lines: 
    *XmText.translations: #override\n\
   osfDelete: delete-previous-character()
*XmTextField.translations: #override\n\
   osfDelete: delete-previous-character()
    Next add the lines 
    xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults
    to your .cshrc file. The next time you login the backspace behaviour will be fixed.
  15. (7/11/95) How does one append to a file from Mosaic or Netscape?
  16. (7/11/95) What are the limits to font sizes in latex?
  17. (7/11/95) In order to get latex mode in emacs you may need to copy everything in the file /math/Defaults/Emacs and then edit it.
  18. (7/12/95) Here's a bug that Pietro found in using the amslatex template to submit an abstract: 
    If you want to submit an abstract to the AMS, by e-mail, you must read the 
instructions at page 139 of the January 1995 Notices. They tell you how to 
retrieve three files: 

instruct.tex, example.tex, amsabs.sty

instruct.tex contains the instructions.  example.tex is like an electronic 
preformatted envelope that you must fill in and then send to 
abs-submit@math.ams.org.  These two files use the documentstyle `absams' 
that's why you need the amsabs.sty file in your directory.

Here is the problem I encountered: it uses the version Latex 2.09 that
sits on Zeno, and not the Latex2e that's on the Hp's.
So you need to xon zeno first and then latex the files.

AMS is working on fixing the bug.
  19. (7/13/95) Does anyone know about Fortran 9x? Is there a final version? Does it incorporate some of the Matlab operations? Is there a published manual?
  20. (8/10/95) Here is Andreas' help for putting inputs into a tex file: 
    the path for tex, latex etc. / counters

all the above programs check a variable called

TEXINPUTS

If you have files you don't want to copy into your current directory,
but would rather keep one copy in a directory say called 

/user7/awiegman/TeX/Styles,

others in a directory called

/user7/awiegman/TeX/HYPER

here's how to make it possible:

Add a line like the following

setenv TEXINPUTS $TEXINPUTS':/user7/awiegman/TeX/HYPER:/user7/awiegman/TeX/Styles'

to your .cshrc file. Files in the above directories
are now found just by referencing their name. Note
that if the same file name appears in your current
directory, that is the file that is actually read.
  21. (8/10/95) Is there a way to generate large sparse positive definite matrices in Matlab?
  22. (8/10/95)In case you missed it here is Don Bovee's message about our web server. 
    I have changed our Web server from using the CERN daemon (CERN-httpd) to 
using the NCSA daemon (NCSA-httpd). The NCSA version should run a little 
faster and be more compatible with the many scripts written to do things 
such as send mail, gather statistics, and request comments. I am hoping 
that I have managed to configure the new server in approximately the same 
way that our old one worked. I would be interested in hearing of any 
problems/unusual-behavior that you experience with the new server.