HMC Mathematics Computing Weblog

I have moved the current CentOS and CTAN mirrors off yum.math.hmc.edu and on to our new mirror server, http://mirror.hmc.edu/.

The new base URLs for these mirrors are

CentOS

http://mirror.hmc.edu/centos/

CTAN

http://mirror.hmc.edu/ctan/

For the time being, I have set up redirects so that attempts to retrieve data from URLs pointing to yum will automatically be redirected to mirror.hmc.edu.

At some point the machine that the old mirror server runs on may be retired or repurposed, so if you're using our CentOS mirror to update your machines or our CTAN mirror to download TeX-related material, I would encourage you to change the URLs in your YUM configuration files to point to the new location.

If you're planning on working on your thesis or Clinic report using systems not run by the department, you will need to download the cmtty package to use these classes.

The cmtty package specifies Computer Modern Typewriter as the default monospace typeface when typesetting theses or Clinic reports. Computer Modern Typewriter is more compact and better formed than Courier, which is the default monospace font with many of LaTeX's font packages.

The package is licensed under the GNU General Public License, and you are welcome to use it for any of your own projects under that license.

The revamped combined sample thesis and Clinic report is now available for download and use.

This document provides you with

• A typeset example showing various features provided by LaTeX and the hmcthesis or hmcclinic classes
• An exemplary document to show you what ``good'' LaTeX code should look like

The sample document can be downloaded from http://www.math.hmc.edu/computing/support/tex/sample-report/, which is the new canonical home for this material. In addition to links to download the files in ZIP or tar.gz format, there are basic instructions on how to typeset the sample files to generate a sample thesis, sample clinic report, or both.

Remember, if you're working on your TeX system, you'll also need to be sure that you have the latest version of the hmcthesis or hmcclinic class files. The class files can be found by going to http://www.math.hmc.edu/computing/support/tex/ and following the links to the appropriate pages.

Eric Malm '05 put together a nice LaTeX class (hmcpset.cls) for typesetting math homework assignments. The class, along with a template (hw-template.tex) and a sample document (hw-example.tex) is available for your use and enjoyment.

The class file, which helps you typeset homework assignments according to the department's homework guidelines is installed in the shared TEXMF tree at /shared/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/hmcpset/ so it can be used from any department Linux workstation.

If you want to use the class and template on your own TeX system, it can be downloaded from the new home for departmental LaTeX classes.

I am taking over maintenance and development of the class from Eric, so if you have any changes you'd like to see made or bugs fixed, please let me know.

I have created a new home for the department's LaTeX classes: http://www.math.hmc.edu/computing/support/tex/classes/. You will find links to download these classes, along with information about using and customizing them.

I will remove or edit pages referring to older versions of this material so that we can, finally, have a single place to send people to find the most up-to-date versions of these files.

At the moment, there are pages for the hmcclinic, hmcposter, and hmcthesis classes. More will be added when the department adds more classes. (I will be installing the homework class that Eric Malm put together soon.).

As always, the latest version of this code is also available in /shared/local/share/texmf on the math cluster machines. You should be able to use any of these classes without having to do anything special beyond specifying them in your \documentclass command in the preamble of your document.

I've made a draft of a poster class for creating Clinic posters available. It's called hmcposter.cls, and it's available from several locations:

• Installed in the math cluster's shared TEXMF tree, at /shared/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/hmcposter-alpha-2
• Downloadable from my website (as a gziped tar file)
• Read-only Subversion, using

  svn co http://vetinari.math.hmc.edu/svn/latex/hmcmath/classes/hmcposter/trunk hmcposter

If you can use Subversion, the Subversion method will give you the most recent changes to the class. If you choose to use this class, I would very much appreciate feedback and suggestions for improvement. Remember, LaTeX is designed to separate content from presentation (much like the combination of X/HTML and CSS), so you won't see as much flexibility as you might with some other tools.

The type in the current (Alpha 2) release is probably too small, allowing too much in the way of content for a poster. I will probably do some tinkering in the near future to make the body type larger. I'm also not thrilled by the way the title and sponsor currently appear, so will probably be addressing those, as well.

I've added the TEXMF tree provided by Wolfram for use in compiling TeX documents exported from Mathematica to the system.

The files are located in /shared/local/share/Mathematica/texmf; to use them, modify your TEXMF environment variable by adding that directory. You will probably want something like

setenv TEXMF "$TEXMF, \!\!/shared/local/share/Mathematica/texmf" (*csh)
or
export TEXMF="$TEXMF, \!\!/shared/local/share/Mathematica/texmf" (Bourne/Korn variants)

which adds the files from the Mathematica TEXMF tree after the rest of the files in the standard TEXMF path.

The TeX Users Group has launched a new, online journal, PracTeX, devoted to practical, day-to-day use of LaTeX and TeX.

The premiere issue includes articles on using CTAN, creating presentations, documents, and posters from the same LaTeX source, tweaking LaTeX, and a q&a column, Ask Nelly, along with lots of other material.

PracTeX looks like a useful resource for beginners and oldtimers, alike.

While I'm at it, I should mention that we have a CTAN mirror here at Mudd. It's currently located at http://yum.math.hmc.edu/ctan/. I'm not currently updating it regularly, but if there's more interest, I can start doing so.

yum also houses the math department's mirrors of CentOS (the Red Hat Enterprise Linux rebuild distribution that we use). Fedora, Red Hat's next generation Linux distribution, and the Fedora Legacy support packages for older Red Hat distributions (we will probably stop mirroring these soon).

All of these mirrors are available for use within CUC. I'm interested in having the CentOS and CTAN mirrors be available to the public, but doing that right would require better hardware than I can currently devote to the mirror right now, I think, as well as an okay from CIS for the bandwidth.

I've added some additional LaTeX packages to the system for the creation of presentations. Beamer and FoilTeX allow you to create PowerPoint-like presentations using LaTeX, with transitions, backgrounds, templates, and so forth.

You should be able to use these packages by opening your document with the appropriate \documentclass command or by loading packages with \usepackage. If you need to look at the source code, you will find it under /shared/local/share/texmf/tex/latex. Documentation can be found under /shared/local/share/texmf/doc.

As usual, we welcome suggestions for LaTeX packages of general interest for shared installation -- if there's a LaTeX package that you find useful, let us know about it and we'll look into installing it so that everyone can take advantage of it!

We now have some notes on TeX and LaTeX resources available.