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May 2011

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

 

    We're grateful to those who have Emailed to thank us for our recent mailings. Here are some more tips and technical insights for getting the best from your Scientific Word/WorkPlace/Notebook system:

     

  1. External typesetting specifications:    After our last mailing, one of our university users Emailed:
    "May i ask something? I need to write a book for Cambridge University press and they have sent me files for latex 2e. Those files i can't open with my Scientific workplace version 5. Is there anything i can do to make this work? Thanks so much for letting me know."
    It's a fairly frequent question, and we thought others might also like to be pointed to the instructions for using someone else's typesetting specifications. We replied:
    Thanks for your reply. The files they will have sent you contain the required typesetting specifications; instructions for using such information with Scientific WorkPlace are in the online Help - Search - typesetting specifications - typesetting specifications - typesetting specifications from outside sources. It's non-trivial, but the instructions are comprehensive.
    You'll see the proviso in the Help page that "we do not provide Technical Support services for shells and documents created with typesetting specifications obtained from other sources" - but we interpret this generously for our favourite customers!


  2. Font sizes:    The day after, we received this request from America via our page at http://www.scientific-workplace.com/:
    "how can I make the font within my document larger?"
    We gave three different methods in our response. You can:
    1. Increase the body text size for the document by clicking on Typesetting - Options and Packages - Class Options - Modify - Body text point size, and selecting 12pt rather than 10pt or 11pt.
    2. Use one of the appropriate text tags from the Tag toolbar (View – Toolbars – Tag). In size order these are: large, Large, LARGE, huge, HUGE
    3. Add the scalefnt package, according to the instructions available in the online Help – Search – font size – font size – scaling fonts.
    And we attached a file which, when compiled with Typeset - PreviewPDF, will demonstrate the second and third methods above. (We don't pretend it's pretty - we're just demonstrating the possibilities!)


  3. Colour:    Typesetting in colour is not a common requirement for professional and academic work, but you may want it occasionally. If so, you will need to add the color package (Typeset - Options and Packages - Package Options - Add - color) to your document. There's a demonstration document "PackageSample - color" in c:\swp55\SWSamples... and the PDF is attached.


  4. Surprised?    There is so much available in Scientific Word and Scientific WorkPlace, and many users barely scratch the surface. Even these circular mailings cannot do justice to the full power of the software. And so to help you make the most of Scientific Word/WorkPlace, we supply our professional Training Courses - why not consider either our Standard Two Day Course, or the Graduates' One-Day Course (same content compressed into one day, but really hard work) for your users? Training Course Options are as on our Training page at www.sciword.co.uk/training.htm - with Universities qualifying for a massive 75% discount for small groups of up to 4 people, bringing the Two-Day Course down from £3520 to just £880 + VAT.
        And for customers abroad, we have recently agreed to provide our Training Courses anywhere in the world for the same price as in the UK, when you book two or more courses to run consecutively. I lead all the Training Courses personally, having evolved them over the last 18 years. All Training is provided in English, but we're happy to work with a translator if you need to provide one. Click here to Email us about training.


  5. Landscape slide footnotes:    We get sent some interesting questions. Recently someone asked us:
    "how to insert footnotes in slide styles and keeping them with landscape orientation"
    We replied with the file slidefootnote.tex , which you'll see from File - Document Info started out using the Shell Document Style Editor - Slides A. We've simply added the lscape package as described in our October 2008 mailing (Item 1), and inserted a footnote in the usual way (Insert - Note). Click on Typeset - PreviewPDF to see the result.


  6. Including PDF pages:    This one is potentially extremely useful for many of our users. We were asked:
    "I have two problems. I would like
    1. to include/insert at the end of my tex document some pages from a pdf file (about 30 pages) but not to insert each page as an image. Is there any way to do this? Someone told me that I may need two packages (pdfpages and eso-pic) but I cannot find them in my swp software.
    2. the cover page (1st page) to be an image covering the whole page.
    I should be grateful if you would let me know if this is possible
    Many thanks for your time"
    It is indeed possible; to see this work, first please save samplearticle.pdf and pdfpages.sty onto your computer (right-click - Save Target As) according to the instructions below. We replied:
    Please find a sample .tex file attached, which will work on your Scientific (Word) WorkPlace system if you put the PDF file in c:/swp55/Test/samplearticle.pdf, or else change the path in the TeX fields. It demonstrates using a selection of pages from the PDF, 4-up on a page, and another selection of pages (including a blank page) full size. You'll need to put the pdfpages package (pdfpages.sty) where Scientific (Word) WorkPlace looks for packages - eg. c:\swp55\TCITeX\TeX\LaTeX\contrib\pdfpages\ which folder you'll need to make).
    In case you don't manage it straight away, the result is shown in https://www.sciword.co.uk/includepdf.pdf . In answer to the second question, we said:
    Your best course of action is to print/convert your image to an A4 PDF, and then use the same pdfpages command. <snip> Be sure that both your graphic and document are the same page shape - eg. A4; in Scientific WorkPlace this is chosen in Typeset - Options & Packages - Class Options - Modify - paper size.
    Perhaps you'd let us know how useful this technical tip is to you?


  7. Graphics:    It seems none of our circular mailings would be complete without a graphics question. A few weeks ago we received the following Email:
    "I make sides to give talks on a Toshiba laptop with a tablet feature. I use SWP but I need to put in pictures which in the past I drew with paint but now would like to hand draw in Windows Journal. How can I import such pictures into my SWP document?"
    We recommended that:
    ...since Windows Journal is primarily able to export in TIFF format you'll have to use that: File - Export - Save as Type TIFF. Then you can open the resulting TIFF in Paint and save from there as a JPG after you've cropped the part of the page you're interested in <snip>
        In practice you'll probably want to start with the Blank template in Journal - File - New note from Template - Blank to avoid the lined paper effect.
    We hope this might be of use to others as well. Windows Journal is available from Start - Programs - Accessories - Tablet PC.


  8. Referrals..    Thank you.

 

    Thanks for reading. We Email the Scientific Word family every couple of months. Please just let us know if you no longer wish to remain on our mailing list. More news and technical tips to follow soon...

Cheers,

Christopher
--
Christopher Mabb, Scientific Word Ltd., UK
Tel: +44 (0)845 766 0340; Fax: +44 (0)845 603 9443
Email: christopher@sciword.co.uk
Web: https://www.sciword.co.uk/