Subject: Re: flyer.tex diffs (and a plea for TeX assistance)
To: None <netbsd-docs@netbsd.org>
From: James K. Lowden <jklowden@schemamania.org>
List: netbsd-docs
Date: 07/20/2005 21:12:56
Jeff Rizzo wrote:
> OK, I went back and looked more closely at the Makefile - if anyone
> bothered trying to generate flugblatt.pdf or depliant.pdf, you'd notice
> it doesn't actually work correctly - the last revision made some
> dimensional changes that were not applied to those versions correctly.

Hi Jeff, 

I didn't try to make anything except a letter-size English version.  I
started from Jan's links (not CVS) so I didn't have the other sources. 
It's possible I broke it; I hope I didn't cause you and grief.  

I think your changes to the text are uniform improvements, btw.  

> With the attached patch to Makefile, I can generate what looks to me
> like good A4 and Letter versions of flyer.pdf, and good A4 versions of
> flugblatt.pdf and depliant.pdf.  I added 'flyer-a4.ps' and
> 'flyer-a4.pdf' targets so that no Makefile editing is necessary to
> create a4 versions, and made creating all 4 versions the default.

I changed the h&w arguments and left the original PSTOPS_FRNT/PSTOPS_BACK
definitions (the first pair) because I wasn't sure my "corrections" were
right.  You seem to have quickly digested and synthesized the two. 
Thanks! 

I wrote down what I learned in the README I sent Jan.  The world would
probably be a better place if you'd check that for accuracy, too....  

Hubert, the h&w options to pstops don't have anything to do with
orientation.  They serve as denominators, so that if you say "-h 12in"
(notionally, 12" high paper), you can say place a "page" at "0.25h" and
pstops will understand you to mean 3 inches.  Whether that's 3 vertical or
horizontal inches depends on where it's used.  (And in any case, up/down
right/left are pretty confusing terms when the pages are being rotated 90
degrees.  

When I started, the Makefile specified letter-size paper as -h & -w in
centimeters, with -h being the larger.  I found that confusing, because
we're laying the columns (in my mind) *across* the page while specifing
the distance in terms of height.  I guess my predecessor thought of it as
"up the page, sideways".  That was a little too abstract for me.  ;-)  

Regards, 

--jkl