Digital Typography News

It is widely believed that programming is a difficult mental task that not everyone can perform. Nevertheless, books like “Head First Programming“, by Paul Barry and David Griffiths, are a testimony that programming is for (almost) everyone. In principle, a programming language is an artificial language designed to express solutions to problems that directly or indirectly are mathematical in nature. Thus, everyone can learn to program, provided he/she has some elementary mathematical maturity. In different words, everyone who is familiar with basic mathematical notions, can learn to program. The real problem is how to convince one that he or she is capable of doing some great things with a computer?

Barry and Griffiths have written a book that can convince even the most skeptic reader that programming is indeed a task suitable for everyone. Their book employs some interesting techniques adequate for novice readers. And this is exactly what makes their book special. On the other hand, the book should be of interest even to experienced programmers who aim to teach programming. The book starts with almost silly examples, but in the end they show the readers how to develop real GUI applications, that is, applications with a graphical user interface. More specifically, the book is divided in ten chapters. The first chapter aims to familiarize readers with computer code written in the Python programming language, which is the teaching vehicle of the book. Readers are asked to do a number of exercises that will help them to understand some basic notions (in general, readers are expected to do all exercises). Then the readers are introduced to conditional constructs and their use in programming. The second chapter is devoted to string manipulation, while the third chapter introduces readers to functions. The fourth chapter is about arrays and files and the fifth chapter about hash tables and their use. The sixth chapter is about modular programming and the seventh chapter is an introduction to basic GUI programming. The eighth chapter is about the design and implementation of GUI applications that may accept input from users. The last two chapters present present “advanced” topics in GUI programming.

I am  not a novice programmer, but after reading some chapters and skimming through the rest of the book, I dare to say this is a book every newcomer should consider studying. The book has been published by O’Reilly on December 2009 and costs £38.50 or 40€, or $49.99.

It is my please to announce the publication of  “Ψηφιακή Τυπογραφία με το XeLaTeX“, which is published by Epikentro Publications.

Currently, xindy can be used to generate, among others, Greek indexes and glossaries. Unfortunately, its coverage of the Greek language is incomplete. To solve this problem I have modified file polytonic-utf8.pl.in. More information about xindy and its use is included in my forthcoming book on XeLaTeX.

Apostolos Syropoulos

We are glad to announce that  issue 22-23 of Eutypon is now available! Happy reading!

On 17, 18 & 19 June 2010 the Department of Design & Multimedia of the
University of Nicosia will be hosting the 4th International Conference
on Typography and Visual Communication (ICTVC) with the general theme
“Lending Grace to Language”.

After three important and successful international meetings (2002,
2004, 2007 / http://www.ictvc.org/) ICTVC moves to Cyprus.
Our new home sits at the crossroads of three continents, a location of
historical significance that far outweighs its small size.
The multicultural character of the island makes Cyprus a perfect location
for a conference that explores the world of typographic design and
visual language.

The Organizing Committee members invite you to contribute your
proposals for a presentation or panel discussion for inclusion in the
programme of the 4th ICTVC.
Abstracts of no more than 200 words and a short bio of 70-100 words,
either in Greek or English, should be submitted by 10 January 2010.
Conference presentations should be up to 30 minutes.

This time ICTVC is organized in collaboration with the Mass Media and
Communication Institute (IMME), Cyprus, and AlterVision, Greece, and
is supported by the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication
at the University of Reading (UK), the Association Typographique
Internationale (ATypI), the Institute of Paper, Printing & Publishing (IP3, UK),
the Greek Graphic Designers Association (EGE) and the Thessaloniki Design Museum.
ICTVC is endorsed by the International Council of Graphic Design Associations (ICOGRADA).

I am really happy to announce that the new issue of Eutypon is available from our web site. Please point your browser to http://www.eutypon.gr/eutypon/e-cont-21.html.
Apostolos Syropoulos

The amscd package adapts the commutative diagram macros of AMS-TeX for use in LaTeX. However, the package cannot be used with XeLaTeX when the unicode-math package is loaded. A workaround is to patch file amscd.sty using the following patch

— amscd.sty.old Κυρ Οκτ 12 19:11:58 2008
+++ amscd.sty Κυρ Οκτ 12 19:11:20 2008
@@ -155,16 +155,16 @@
}% end lowercase
\endgroup
\atdef@ A#1A#2A{\CD@check{A..A..A}{\llap{$\m@th\vcenter{\hbox
- {$\scriptstyle#1$}}$}\Big\uparrow
+ {$\scriptstyle#1$}}$}\Big\myuparrow
\rlap{$\m@th\vcenter{\hbox{$\scriptstyle#2$}}$}&&}}
\atdef@ V#1V#2V{\CD@check{V..V..V}{\llap{$\m@th\vcenter{\hbox
- {$\scriptstyle#1$}}$}\Big\downarrow
+ {$\scriptstyle#1$}}$}\Big\mydownarrow
\rlap{$\m@th\vcenter{\hbox{$\scriptstyle#2$}}$}&&}}
\atdef@={\CD@check={&\enskip\mathrel
{\vbox{\hrule\@width\minCDarrowwidth\vskip2\ex@\hrule\@width
\minCDarrowwidth}}\enskip&}}
-\atdef@|{\CD@check|{\Big\Vert&&}}
-\atdef@\vert{\CD@check\vert{\Big\Vert&&}}
+\atdef@|{\CD@check|{\Big\myVert&&}}
+\atdef@\vert{\CD@check\vert{\Big\myVert&&}}
\atdef@.{\CD@check.{&&}}
\endinput
%%

and then to add the following lines to file unicode-math.tex

\UnicodeMathSymbol{”02193}{\mydownarrow}{\mathopen}{downward arrow}
\UnicodeMathSymbol{”02016}{\myVert}{\mathopen}{double vertical bar}
\UnicodeMathSymbol{”02191}{\myuparrow}{\mathopen}{upward arrow}%

Apostolos Syropoulos

Will Robertson released a new version of the xltxtra package that solves the \verb* and verbatim* problem I mentioned in my previous article (see the documentation of the package for details),

Apostolos Syropoulos

XeLaTeX users you have tried to use the \verb* command and/or the verbatim* environment may have noticed that the OPEN BOX character (graphic for space) is not visilble. To remedy this problem, one has to use a font that includes this character (e.g., the UMTypewriter font) and make a small package with the folliowing code:

\def\@@xobeysp{^^^^2423}
{\catcode`\ =\active%
\gdef\@@vobeyspaces{\catcode`\ \active\let \@@xobeysp}}
\@namedef{verbatim*}{\@verbatim\@@vobeyspaces\@sxverbatim}
%
\def\verb{\relax\ifmmode\hbox\else\leavevmode\null\fi
\bgroup
\verb@eol@error \let\do\@makeother \dospecials
\verbatim@font\@noligs
\@ifstar\@@sverb\@verb}
\def\@@sverb{\@@vobeyspaces \@sverb}

The author of the xltxtra package will include this code in the package.

Apostolos Syropoulos

If you have followed the steps in Generating the XeLaTeX format and xgreek version 2.0 you must remove from your system file hyphen.cfg that is described in Setting up XeLaTeX to typeset Greek documents, or else you might not be able to create the format file.

Apostolos Syropoulos

PS A regular poster to the XeTeX mailing list suggested to mention that in recent distributions everything regarding hyphenation patterns is included. So causal users should upgrade to avoid messing with their system’s configuration.