%% -------------------- Linux News # 11 TeX version ------------ %% % Hunter Goatley's fine NEWSLETTER_FORMAT.TEX macros were used to % % do the fancy stuff in this newsletter... check it out. % % --------------------------------------------------------------- % \ifx\undefined\eoa\input newsletr \fi \font\titlefont=cmr17 scaled\magstep 5 \font\mottofont=cmr12 \font\littlefont=cmbx5 \pageheaderlinefalse \pagefooterlinetrue % I want a header line but % not on the title page \evenpageheader{}{}{} \oddpageheader{}{}{} \evenpagefooter{Page \folio}{Linux News No.11}{January 17, 1993} \oddpagefooter{Page \folio}{Linux News No.11}{Vol.\ 2\ \ No.\ 3} % Linux script thingey made from the Latex script thingey % Couldn't resist this, I'm sure Haley would really like it \def\LiNuX{{\rm L\kern-.15em\raise.8ex\hbox{i}\kern-.11em N\kern-.1667em\lower.5ex\hbox{U}\kern-.125emX}} %% --------headline for non-titlepage from Gentle Intro --------- %% % I want to make this a box with the \LiNuX NEWS logo CENTERED but I % couldn't get it to work right. :-( \def\linheading{% \vbox {\hrule% \line {\strut \vrule \quad {Linux News \farright January 17, 1993} \hfil \quad \vrule}% \hrule}% } \newif \iftitlepage \titlepagetrue \headline= {\iftitlepage \hfil \global\titlepagefalse \else \linheading \fi} \titlepagetrue %% -------------------- headline for titlepage ------------------ %% \newspage % setup macro for the page \vskip 3pt \noindent {\titlefont L i n u x \hskip .2 in N e w s} \vskip 3pt \hrule width 7 in height 1 pt \smallskip \hrule width 7 in \vskip 4 pt \centerline{\mottofont Mottomme: ``Hakkeroida ja Auttaa''} % \vskip 4 pt \hrule width 7 in \vskip 2 pt \noindent Linux News Number 11 \farright {January 17, 1993} \vskip 2 pt \hrule width 7 in \vskip 7pt \begindoublequotes % Handle double quotes \ignoreunderfill % Ignore undervfill errors \parskip=0pt % Don't skip between paragraphs \parindent=18pt % Indent paragraphs 18pt \rm % Use tenpoint roman \begincolumns{2} % macro for double columns \definefigs{3} % Reserve boxes for up to 3 pages of figures. %% ------------------------- first article --------------------------- %% \centerline{\bf My Two Cents} \vskip 4 pt \noindent Well it's here and it's cool \dots\ it's the \TeX\ \LiNuX{} {\sl NEWS\/!} As Linus said about the ``Loading \edots\/''\/ display incorporated in the 0.12 kernel, ``Run, don't walk to see this''. I've been playing around with \TeX\ for a little while and now with {\sl Linux News\/} I have a wonderful excuse to really dig in and learn it. The two column format and lots of great macros are all from Hunter Goatley's sample newsletr.tex file and the sample newssamp.tex which is included in the /usr/TeX/lib/tex/inputs directory of the \TeX\ distribution. These formatting macros and examples make it simple to produce a pretty nice looking newsletter without really {\it knowing\/} \TeX{}. My other reference is Michael Doob's {\sl Gentle Introduction to \TeX\/}, which is just great for getting started and, very importantly, {\it it's free\/}. I recommend using emacs and Kresto Thorup's auc-tex elisp package from the elisp archive at Ohio State. If you use X then you can use xdvi to preview documents and voil\'a \edots\/typeset quality hardcopy. \TeX\ is one of those things that people like to get religeous about it seems; they either love it or they hate it. I love it. Non-programmers may gasp when they see the source to a \TeX\ document but I don't think it's any more bewildering than any of the large wysiwyg packages. Of course, I admit to having a marked aversion to word processors in general \dots\/when I was a MS-Dos user I did all my work with a nice little editor called Qedit and a bunch of add--in macros. The point I'm making ({\it Ah hah\/!}) is this: if you are new to text manipulation under *nix, go ahead and try \TeX{}, it's really not all that hard to get started, despite what you may have heard. Be careful to use \TeX's flexibility and fonts with moderation though or you'll end up sounding like Haley Mills on a capucino bender. \eoa \articlesep \coltitle{\centerline{--- Announcements ---}\break \centerline{The week in c.o.l. and c.o.l.a}} %% ------------------------ announcement stuff ---------------------- %% % Use dotitem macros to format Announcements \bgroup % Start a new group to keep local \listindent{2pt}\beginlist \dotitem January 7 Overlooked last issue was Anthony Rumble's announcement of a new modem server which sports modem initialization, binary lock files, locked speed connection or follow connect speed, etc. \par FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/ \par \farright Incoming/mdm.2.05.sh.Z \dotitem January 10 -- Muhammad Saggaf announced Seyon 1.74 today, a BETA version which supports speeds up to 115200 bps. \par FTP:sipb.mit.edu:/pub/seyon/new-beta \dotitem January 10 -- Mika Liljeberg has uploaded binaries and diffs for tcsh-6.03, the enhanced C type shell for Linux. A patch is included to help with problems with POSIX job control. Compiled with gcc2.3.3 \par FTP:nic.funet.fi, tsx-11.mit.edu and sunsite.unc.edu \dotitem January 10 The new net FAQ is now available. Phil says he will revise to include setup for standalone sans network card. \par FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/ \par \farright faq-net-0.99.2 \dotitem January 11 -- Rik Faith has uploaded new manpages to tsx-11 including fdisk.8, login.1, rdev.8, shutdown.8, update.8, and others. \par FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu: rik-man.tar.Z \dotitem January 11 Peter MacDonald announced a new SLS 99pl2 which will completeley upgrade parts 'a', 'b' and 'c' of the distribution. Peter remarks that this is a massive upgrade which includes gcc2.3.3 and libc 4.2. Lpr, fixed Minicom, system V init, emacs info, and shadow passwd are also there.The kernel includes the selection patches to enable mouse cut and paste in virtual consoles and also the ipcbeta patches for interprocess communication and shared memory. X11 will not be upgraded until Xfree86 1.2 is ready. \par FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/SLS \dotitem January 12 -- Mike Jagdis has uploaded bootsys3.taz, a SYSV boot environement and init which supports run levels, ctrl-alt-del trapping, and more. Needs libc 4.2. Docs, manpages and the all important example scripts are provided! \par FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu, nic.funet.fi, sunsite.unc.edu: \par \farright bootsys3.taz \dotitem January 12 Lars Wirzenius reminds us one last time that the crossposting of articles from comp.os.linux.announce to comp.os.linux will cease ``around thursday (in some unspcified timezone)''. If you don't have news access and can't improve the situation, join the ANNOUNCE channel on linux-activists. C.o.l.a is gatewayed to Fidonet as the LNXMANAGE area. \dotitem January 12 Nigel Gamble announced that he has written an interrupt-- driven printer driver. \par FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/ALPHA \par \farright /lpirq.1.tar.Z \dotitem January 12 Muhammad Saggaf has released Seyon 1.8 which incorporates a revised transfer, protocol window, dialing directory, fallback resources (no app-defaults file needed), complete and updated man page and speed support for 56700 and 115200 bps. Many other improvements! \par FTP:sipb.mit.edu:/pub/seyon \dotitem January 13 Rick Sladkey has uploaded a new mount package for Linux. Doug Quale's mount/umount supports NFS and understands how to deal with non-device mounts like the /proc fs. An NFS man page is also included. \par FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/ \par \farright mount-0.99.2.tar.Z \par tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/ALPHA/NFS/ \par \farright mount-0.99.2.tar.Z \dotitem January 13 Tommy Frandson has released version 1.1 of VGAlib - the VGA graphics library for Linux. Supports 16 and 256 color modes, alternates between text and graphics mode, text mode restorationn, tseng et4000 color modes and monochrome 640x480 mode. Note: the included {\it runx\/} program may be used by those who have text mode restoration problems after X is quit.\par FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/(???) \dotitem January 13 Thomas Dunbar announced hp2xx binary and docs: ``The `hp2xx' program is a versatile tool to convert vector-oriented graphics data given in Hewlett-Packard's HP-GL plotter language into a variety of popular both vector- and raster-oriented graphics formats. The various supported output formats include Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), MetaFont, PCX, IMG, and several formats intended to facilitate the generation of graphics within TeX documents. In addition, `hp2xx' output is printable on the HP Laserjet/Deskjet printer series, and it may be used as a HP-GL previewer on many platforms, e.g. X11.'' \par FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/packages/TeX/ \par \farright hp2xx.taz \dotitem January 13 Linus sent 0.99 patchlevel 3 to nic.funet.fi: ``Still no 1.0 - I have had a couple of reports of problems, so I'll make yet another 0.99 release. The diffs (against 0.99.2) and complete source can be found at nic.funet.fi: pub/OS/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus as usual, and will probably show up at the other sites pretty soon. 0.99.3 contains no real new features, but the diffs are pretty big anyway (100kB+ compressed): various things have moved around a bit and there are a lot of minor changes. The changes include (but are not limited to): \par - the math emulator code now also understands the unofficial codes (in case somebody followed the ML math emulator thread). I'd be interested to hear whether ML now works with the emulator. - various SCSI driver changes - some re-organization of the tty open/close code to remove a few race conditions. - interrupt handling rewrites (two-level interrupt code cleanups) - the serial drivers are tytso's alpha-drivers: they aren't quite completed, but as they need the interrupt handling patches to get ready, this is probably the least traumatic way of doing it. - some more minor keyboard driver changes (mostly taking advantage of the two-level interrupts) + a lot of other minor changes. I once more hope people will try it out, and report any problems or successes to me. Known problems: - there seems to be something weird going on in the ST-0x driver with some scsi disks. - tcp/ip is reportedly still not quite stable, and I can't even test it out. NOTE! The DMA functions have changed for the high DMA channels - all DMA functions now take their arguments as the number of bytes instead of the old way of using bytes for ch 0-3 and words for ch 5-7. This might lead to problems with the SoundBlaster driver, which may need editing. '' \dotitem Ed Carp has uploaded a patch to Mailpak-1.4 that fixes a problem with {\it cu\/} not setting the ports correctly with the ``--e'' or ``--o'' switches. \par FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/ \par \farright /mailpak-1.4/uucp.patch.1 \dotitem January 14 Kenneth Osterberg has a new XView port ready which are compiled with gcc2.3.3 and libc4.2. The Open Look Virtual Window Manager is also now included (!!!) and DIRMENU and WINMENU are now fixed. UIT, the tool/class library for C++ programmers is there also. \par FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/binaries/ \par \farright /usr.bin/usr.bin.X11/xview3L3.tar.Z \dotitem January 16 Bradley E. Smith has uploaded SUIT 2.3 to sunsite. It is an interface toolkit for X. \par FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming \endlist \egroup % -------------------- end Announcement stuff ------------------------% \articlesep \noindent I'm amazed at the popularity of \LiNuX{} {\sl NEWS \/} \dots thanks to all who sent mail, motto translations and even postcards. I spent so much time on this I wasn't able to answer everyone and there are some missing articles in this issue. All in all though, I think it turned out {\sl positively swimmingley\/!} As usual, comments, submissions, suggestions etc. to: \break \centerline{tree@cs.jhu.edu} \par \centerline{tree@midget.towson.edu} \articlesep \coltitle{\centerline{--- {\bf Happy Hacking} ---}\break \centerline{to everyone!}} \bye