How to download the handouts


Last updated: 17.iv.2005



Three different formats have been used for the handouts for this course: HTML ( .htm / .html ), Portable Document Format ( .pdf ) and (...occasionally, perhaps...) PostScript ( .ps ).
  1. The handouts in HTML format aren’t really handouts at all, as they’re primarily intended to be read online --- just click on the link. No problems. Unless you want to print them out. (You can try if you like, but I can’t guarantee the results!)

  2. The documents in Portable Document Format are designed mainly for electronic transfer. They can be viewed on-screen and/or printed out. In some cases, I have provided two different versions of the same document: one is designed for screen viewing – it has pages the size of a computer screen and uses a larger typeface – whereas the other is designed to fit on a normal A4 page (although it, too, can be viewed on-screen).

    To read the .pdf documents, you need the Adobe Acrobat Reader, which you can get here:

    Once you have the Adobe Acrobat Reader installed, you just click on the name of the .pdf file you want to read, and it opens automatically.

    Two words of warning:
  3. If you open one of the documents which is designed for screen viewing, it will probably immediately take over the whole of your screen -- but don't panic: you should be able, if necessary, to force it back into its own Acrobat Reader window (and get your normal desktop back) by hitting the ESC character at the upper left of your keyboard. Alternatively, you can use the CTRL L key combination. (This varies depending on the operating system: under Windows, press the CTRL key at the bottom left of the keyboard and hold it down while pressing the L key; on a Macintosh, press the key with the Apple logo (to the left of the space bar) and hold it down while pressing the L key). To proceed to the next page while in full-screen mode, just hit the CARRIAGE RETURN (ENTER) or DOWN ARROW or RIGHT ARROW or SCROLL DOWN key on your keyboard; if there is a blue margin at the right with the humiliatingly pseudo-Latinate Universitas Saraviensis logo at the top of it, then towards the bottom you will see a number of icons, whose use, in keeping with the spirit of the times, is claimed to be “intuitive”... one of them is a right-facing arrowhead, which will cause the Acrobat Reader to advance by one page (or one stage of a page, in the case of more elaborate “Powerpoint-style” slide-shows...)

  4. If you want to print out one of the documents which is designed for printing, it might be best to print just one page first, to see whether the results are as intended. For example, you might need to select the option “Shrink oversized pages to paper size” before leaving the “Print” dialog box of the Acrobat Reader. I often play around with the page geometry, with the result that some of the text might be outside the range of what the Acrobat Reader considers to be the appropriate page margins. Shrinking the page to fit the paper size will solve this problem. If, on the other hand, you find that the bottom margin on the printed page is too large, you could try unselecting the option “Shrink oversized pages to paper size”; if that doesn’t solve the problem, try selecting “Expand undersized pages to paper size”.

  5. The documents in PostScript format are designed to be printed. In most cases, the hard-copy course handouts (available in the envelopes next to the door of my office or in the folders in the library of FR 4.3 or FR 4.6) are simply my own printouts of the PostScript versions of the course handouts; they often take up slightly more of an A4 page than the .pdf handouts do. If you want to download the PostScript files and print them out yourself, you will need a PostScript emulator (unless you have a PostScript printer). In addition to enabling you to print the PostScript documents on a non-PostScript printer, the emulator will allow you to preview the documents before you print them. Please note, however, that the PostScript emulator is not primarily designed as a screen previewer. This means that the quality of what you see on the screen will not be as good as the quality you will get when you print the document.

    • If you are working in a CIP pool on campus, you should be able to print PostScript documents directly on one of the printers there. Just make sure you select the correct printer icon at the bottom of the screen --- sometimes one and the same CIP pool printer can run in different modes, i.e. it can correspond to several “virtual” printers. The virtual printer you need will probably have “PS” or “PostScript” in its name.

    • If you are working at home on your own PC and want to try out the GhostView PostScript emulator, you can get it at from the GSView Homepage. (The relevant links on that page are on the line that reads: “See Obtaining GSview 4.7 and Obtaining AFPL Ghostscript 8.50”, but read the whole page first.)





Why aren’t the handouts available in .doc format for MS Word?

Because there are so many things that it’s impossible to do with Word!!

Microsoft Word for Windows is quite good as a simple text editor, but is highly complicated (and cumbersome) as a document creation system; the fact that it is currently the “industry standard” for the creation of documents in electronic form has more to do with Microsoft’s highly successful marketing strategies than with the inherent properties of the software itself.

I do all my document creation with latex, a document creation system by Leslie Lamport based on the legendary typesetting engine

tex

programmed by Donald E. Knuth. The result is a .dvi file, which I then convert to a PostScript (.ps) file, from which I then in most cases also generate a .pdf file. This is an old-fashioned but very reliable way of creating high-quality printed documents. It is not a WYSIWYG (“What you see is what you get”) approach to word processing, i.e. you cannot immediately see, on your computer screen, what the final document will look like. But you do have total control. If you have ever examined the source of an HTML document or, even better, created one yourself with a simple text editor, then you will have a reasonable idea of what a non-WYSIWYG approach to document creation is like.

Most electrical engineers – and electrical engineers are among the most sensible and useful people on the planet – refuse to use anything other than latex for document-creation. Once you've experienced the difference between a document created with MS Word (which looks like a document created with MS Word) and a document created with latex (which looks like a document that was professionally typeset), you'll never enjoy working with MS Word again. Some further examples of the typesetting and document creation possibilities of latex and related programmes can be found here.

There is a version of latex  for every computer platform (DOS, Windows, OS/2, MacOS, Linux, Unix, ... even Amiga). If you have an IBM-compatible PC and use Windows 98 or one of the later and even more impossible Windowses and you want to try out latex you might like to check out the links to two installations – WinEmTeX and MiKTeX – which I’ve included below. WinEmTeX is a complete installation, and is probably easier for beginners; it includes the text editor WinEdit. If you want to try MiKTeX, you might like to install the text editor WinEdt (without the “i”) as well. MiKTeX is shareware; WinEdt comes as a demo version which, after a while, will start making your text-editing hell by giving you “increasingly annoying” reminders to pay the registration fee. You can use any old text editor instead of WinEdt, provided you don't mind typing a few simple commands into the DOS box [DOS-Eingabeaufforderung] (or whatever has replaced it in the latest and most impossible Windowses). MiKTeX tends to make latex  connoisseurs purr with pleasure ... to quote the South African novelist Alan Paton out of context, it's a text-processing wonderland “lovely beyond all singing of it”. I recommend it over WinEmTeX, because it is more compatible with other latexes (LaTiCes??) and because it makes it easy to produce high-quality .pdf documents.

But why not do what everyone else is doing, and switch to Linux -- you can purchase an easy-to-install Linux distribution for less than EUR 60, which includes a complete, and very good, latex  installation, or even download Linux (and latex) from the Internet for free!..




... or why not simply switch to a Mac...



Macs now run on OS X, which is largely based on BSD Unix, which is closely related to Linux. In addition to being immune to all those stupid Windows viruses circulating on the Internet, Unix has the advantage of being the same language that the vast majority of Internet servers use. There are three major distributions of latex  available for the Macintosh, OzTeX and CMacTeX and TeXShop + TeXLive-tetex. OzTeX is perhaps easier to use for people who are accustomed to a Macintosh environment, whereas CMacTeX is easier to use for people coming from a Unix environment. TeXShop has the advantage that its text editor, unlike many other text editors, can handle Unicode character-encoding.


You should give serious consideration to the possibility of using latex for the purpose of typesetting your diploma thesis. Once you graduate and become a translator, however, you will probably be forced by the Microsoft mafia to use MS Windows as your operating system and MS Word as your word-processor. Your ability to resist this coercion will be very limited, but there are advantages in at least attempting some form of resistance. At the very least, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you are in good company!