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MATH DEPT Computer News, Volume 32
MATH DEPT Computer News, Volume 32
with help from Brad Lucier, Rodrigo Bañuelos, and J.-K. Yu
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I give three different ways to create Math Letterhead in this volume of the News. I like the first way best. At the moment, you need to have
/pkgs/texlive-2007/bin
early in your path in order to use the new TeX and the new letterhead macros that Brad Lucier created to go with it. If you don't know how to do this, click on your path to find out how.
Now check out
to see a sample letter. Save this text file as sample.tex and use it as a template for your own letters. Type
amstex sample.tex
to TeX the file, and after that, type
xdvi sample.dvi
to see it, and
dvips sample.dvi
to print it.
By default, this creates a black-and-white version of the Purdue logo. If you use a color printer and want to have a black-and-gold version of the logo, add
\goldlogo
to your TeX file just after the
\input mathletter2006
line.
You can find some other sample files in the directory
/pkgs/texlive-2007/texmf-local/tex/plain/local/
The new dvips command that comes with the new TeX is slightly different than our old version. For example, I used to refer to certain input files by their full path name. I referred to my signature file as
/homes/bell/Images/signature.eps
and dvips would find it and put it where I told it to. It won't do this anymore (for security reasons). You'll need to put all your special input files in a directory and add that directory to a TEXINPUTS environemental variable in your .cshrc file. To solve this problem for myself, I created a directory called Mytexfiles in my home directory and moved all my special input files there. Then I added the line
setenv TEXINPUTS $HOME/Mytexfiles//:
to my .cshrc file. (That funny //: thing at the end of the line needs to be there. See a message from our own Chapman Flack for the reason why.) Now, when I refer to the input file in any directory where I'm doing TeX, I merely call it signature.eps and TeX and dvips search for it in my Mytexfiles directory and find it.
This might be a good place to mention that Robert McGraw told me about a small program called Xming that is useful for people like me who only use an X-server on my PC at home to tunnel xdvi output through an ssh session. (It is much easier and smaller than the gigantic Cygwin or PC X-ware programs.) Check out this instructional site at Penn State for links to download Xming and a nice explanation of how to use it to tunnel X-connections through your secure shell program.
A few years ago, Rodrigo Bañuelos took Adam Hammer's CS LaTeX letterhead and modified it for Math Department use. Brad Lucier has added a slightly modified version of these files to the department's TeX installation at
/pkgs/texlive-2007/texmf-local/tex/latex/local
Check out
to see a sample letter that uses this new macro. Save this text file as sample2.tex and use it as a template for your own letters. Run
latex sample2.tex
twice to TeX the file, and after that use xdvi and dvips as above to view and print the file.
To get a color Purdue logo, just uncomment out the "\ColorLogo" line in the file sample2.tex
Rodrigo Bañuelos points out that if you have an electronic signature, signature.eps (for latex) or a signature.pdf (for pdflatex), you can also paste it in the letter (which is very useful for uploading letters to mathjobs.org.) He explains that to do this, replace the line
\signature{blah-blah,\\ Professor of blah-blah}
by
\signature{\vskip-.6in{\hskip-.2in\scalebox{.4}{\includegraphics
{singature.pdf}}}\\ blah-blah,\\ Professor of blah-blah}
for pdflatex
or
\signature{\vskip-.6in{\hskip-.2in\scalebox{.4}{\includegraphics
{singature.eps}}}\\ blah-blah,\\ Professor of blah}
for latex.
Note: You may need to play around with the number in \scalebox{.x} and some of the other parameters given here to get size and location of your signature to your liking.
A very simple and elegant LaTeX solution to the Purdue letterhead problem that only a true mathematician could be so bold to create has been given by our own J.-K. Yu. Copy the two files below to the directory where you do TeX.
Edit letter.tex and substitute your own information in the obvious places. Latex the file and, as above, use xdvi to view it and dvips to print it. The beauty of the thing is that there is no graphics file to deal with for the logo. Yu created the logo using LaTeX fonts, lines, and even colors. You get a color logo by default, but if you comment out the
\colorlh
line by putting a percent sign in front of it, you'll get a black and white logo.
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