using metapost

I had a problem using metapost with my postscript previewer (gv).
It could not open the font file. It turns out that I found
a solution in the following email:

------------
Re: Metapost, GS and CMR10
Christof Schardt -- Fri, 30 Jun 2000 22:06:19 +0200 (MET DST)


Hi Kosta,

I meanwhile got a solution (thanks to Kenneth Hansen).
Very helpful are the descriptions contained in the
file CTAN/tex-archive/info/metafp.(ps/pdf).

Three steps were needed:

1. add this line to the beginning of the mp-file:
prologues:=2;

2. Edit the file Fontmap in the Ghostscript-Directory and add
this line:
/cmr10 (cmr10.pfb) ;

3. Copy cmr10.pfb to the fontfolder of ghostview
(I found it on my TexLive-CD)

Now Ghostview is able to show my mp-pictures. :-)

When typsetting more complicated labels, you might
repeat steps 2 and 3 for further fonts.
Just edit your EPS-file and read in the prologue,
what fonts are needed.

Next Problem will be to set up WinEDT for using
it for the mp-picture-development-cycle (see next mail)

Bye and thanks
Christof

cups configuration

Something that was making me angry with my Linux configuration
was my inhability to print from the HP laserjet 2100 printer
in my office. This is especialy true, since in the web everyone
says that it works well!!! It turns out that the problem was just
a lack of configuration in the cups package I have. I download
the ppd drivers from linuxprinting.org. However, everytime I sent
a job, it just printed something wrong, or not at all. After many
tryouts, I finaly decided to check the cupsd log file (/var/log/cups). It
turns out that the problems was the software not finding the scripts
foomatic-rip and foomatic-gswrapper, which should be in the
directory of the filters /usr/lib/cups/filter. Somebody at cups should
improve the feedback of this software, because I spent countless hours
trying to make this work, and cups is now on my blacklist of user
unfriendly software. Note that this is not worse because I am using
the excelent kde printing support, that is able to install and detect
printers (the original, html-based intaller of cups is horrible).

imap configuration

My first objective was to make the folders in my office machine
available, so that I could check them when traveling (like I am
doing now). The best solution is given by imap software. The first
step was finding a suitable imap server for cygwin. I found out
that the University of Washington imap server is the best out
there, and simple to configure (in fact, it provides zero-configuration).
I found the cygwin package under uw-imapd (and related packages).

After installation of this package, the only thing one needs to
do is made inetd work properly. The main problem that occured to
me when running ined was that mount points must be system-wide defined
(the default is to have user defined mount points, which seems stupid
to me). One can define system-wide mount points using mount -s.
The other thing to check is the PATH variable, that must have
c:\cygwin\bin. Then, one must edit the /etc/inetd.conf to add
support for imap (see the readme for the uw-imapd package, in
/usr/share/doc/Cygwin).

This should be all! imap is wonderful, and will export your inbox
(default to /var/mail/username) and your folders in the home directory.
The client side for me uses pine. This is the clear choice, since
the pine guys are the same that wrote imapd. So, I have no doubt
that this is the best software for reading email from imap. To
read from a folder in your home directory, one just needs to add
the following folder to the folder collection:
{servername.com}foldername

Easy as pie. Now I can access the files in my machine, and save
emails to the folders that I defined there.

more software configuration success

The last two days I spent some time trying to configurate my
Linux software. Sometimes it can be difficult, since the error
reporting is not the best... But I managed. I will send the
report of the two successes: imap and cups configuration.