December 2010

From: Dr Christopher Mabb, Scientific Word Ltd.
To: Our Scientific Word/WorkPlace/Notebook Technical Typesetting list

 

1. More about graphics - again!    One of our commercial users raised an issue about generating PDFs with .emf graphics. He wrote:

   "Everything looks fine in the document window, but when I typeset in pdf I’m losing the text included in the graphics. I’ve tried including the graphicx package without any improvement <snip>
   I’m using SW 5.5 and the graphics are .emf files"

   Our answer bears repeating for a wider audience:

   The .emf format doesn't work too well; the first graphic in the PDF attached was obtained by converting your .emf to .png format using the public domain program IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com/).

   We recommend other users take a look at IrfanView, and download the latest version to convert between formats when your only copy of a required graphic is in a format that does not work with Scientific Word/WorkPlace (and you are unable to generate the graphic in a different format from the original source).



2. BibTeX citations in numerical order:    A few weeks ago, someone sent the following request for help from our page at http://www.scientific-workplace.com/ :

   "Dear Christopher,
   Whenever I use the BibTex to put my references in scientific workplace it rearrange the references in alphabetical order. Could you please help me how I can convert my references in numerical order.
   Thanks"

   We replied that:

   The appearance of the References list is governed by the choice of BibTeX bibliography style; the original form of the document \SWSamples\BibTeXBibliographyStyles.tex gives an explanation of what different Bibliography styles do. The style elsart-num (among others) typesets the references in the order of citations (see testbib2.tex attached).

   Please remember that you'll need to click on Typeset - CompilePDF - Generate a Bibliography - OK before clicking on Typeset - PreviewPDF, in order first to compile the list of references from the BibTeX databases (see the bottom of p5).



3. Sans Serif, anyone?    We were asked recently how to change the typeset version of documents to a Sans Serif font. The online Help - Search - sans - sans serif fonts - PSNFSS packages page lists the fonts used in the various Font Families, depending on which package is used (Typeset - Options and Packages - Package Options - Add).
       Changing text to the currently-selected Sans Serif font is then fairly straight-forward:

   Highlight the parts of the document you want to change (Ctrl-A for the whole document), click on the Text Tag popup (on the Tag toolbar you can select from View - Toolbars) and choose Sans Serif. Note that if your document has Front Matter (Typeset - Front Matter) you'll need to go in there separately and highlight and change to Sans Serif. Then you probably want to save the result as the new Shell document to use in future. Please see the files attached (SansSerif.tex and SansSerif.pdf) to see the effect.

   There's an interesting related page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sans_serif .



4. Short titles in Beamer:    A user wanted to know how to insert a short form of the Institute in the Front Matter of a Beamer document, given that there is not a Short Institute tag on the Item tag pop-up in the way there is for Short Author and Short Title. In response we sent him a .tex file similar to BeamerShort.tex, pointing out that Short Institute (in the Typeset - Front Matter) is accessed as a Custom label on the Institute lead item (right-click - Properties) and also demonstrating the form for a Short Date.
       For those of you who use Beamer regularly, it will pay you to download BeamerShort.tex and click on Typeset - Front Matter to understand the point, before doing a Typeset - PreviewPDF to see the short forms of the Author, Institute, Title and Date at the bottom of the slides.



5. Page numbering:    Just today someone asked how to number pages in the format "page n of m", which requires using the lastpage package, as follows. We wrote:

   As well as using the fancyhdr package (presumably), add in the lastpage package and use \pageref{LastPage} to obtain the total number of pages. So the relevant lines of the Preamble in the attached file are:

   \pagestyle{fancy}
   \fancyhf{}
   \fancyfoot[RO]{\bfseries (TURN OVER)}
   \fancyfoot[CO,CE]{\thepage\ of \pageref{LastPage}}
   \fancyfoot[RE]{text on even pages}

   As an example, we included the file fancyheader2.tex which you might wish to download. Please note the additional lines in the Preamble of this file, giving commands for removing (zero width, 0pt) the rule at the top and adding a fairly thick (2pt) rule at the bottom of the page; these numbers can be changed as required.



6. Competition winner:    Our last mailing invited you to take part in our Outstanding Customer Satisfaction survey, and enter the competition for a free upgrade to the next version. Thanks, those who took part, for your various comments and suggestions for improvement. For those who didn't, we asked: "How long has Scientific Word Ltd. been UK distributor of the TCI/MacKichan family of products in the UK?" And it's been ever since our company was formed on 1st. June 1990.
       The winner, with the closest estimate, was Prof. David Waxman who has used Scientific WorkPlace since 1993 for writing papers in theoretical physics and theoretical biology. David gave the answer of 20 years, which we thought was pretty close. Congratulations David - version 6.0 will be on its way to you, with our compliments, as soon as it's released.



7. VAT increase:    As you already know, the rate of VAT in the UK rises to 20% from 4th January 2011; the new Licence Calculator is available at https://www.sciword.co.uk/pricing2011.htm . There's still time to place any Orders with us before we close on Christmas Eve (our Holiday Closure dates are at https://www.sciword.co.uk/holiday.htm) so as to qualify for the old 17.5% rate of VAT. This change will not affect users outside the European Union.



8. Merry Christmas...    as we celebrate a baby being born at Bethlehem in outrageously humble circumstances for the King of Kings. And Gabriel said, "You are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins".