[texhax] tex question

Uwe Lück uwe.lueck at web.de
Mon Dec 19 07:08:07 CET 2005


At 16:06 05.12.05, mary ann jenkins wrote:

>I am a long time user of TEX (not latex unless forced
>to be) ... and I would like to know how to add line
>numbers to a *.pdf manuscript.  The reason I need this
>is a journal to which I wish to submit my *.pdf file
>(written using TEX) requires (for review purposes) that
>each line in the text be numbered.

[Sorry for being late!]

The problem with lineno.sty and numline.sty
(which Karl proposes) is that they need LaTeX
which MAJ would prefer to eschew
(I have discovered this fact lately).
Oleg Katsitadze's proposal of EDMAC
fits better in this respect.

On the other hand, I have worked hard the year going by
to adjust Stephan Boettcher's lineno.sty to the desires
of people who would like to use line numbering just for
revising submittings. Some authours had shown up who
use lineno.sty just for this purpose. I have especially
worked at compatibility with revtex4.cls maintained
by the American Physical Society. The most important
aspect of my recent work was that temporal introducing
line numbers should neither affect spacing nor line or
page breaks (two very alert users discovered this issue
and revealed it to me).

We had a similar discussion earlier here -- concerning the
question of how to turn a Plain TeX source file easily
into a LaTeX source file. Phil Taylor contributed essentially
-- if I remember correctly. Mainly:

You just might submit a .tex file as follows:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lineno}\linenumbers
\begin{document}
<your Plain TeX source code so far>
\end{document}

This relies on the fact/hope that most Plain TeX commands
still work under LaTeX. Yet the most important deviation is
that you shouldn't use `\end' as the final command --
the final command rather should be \end{document}.
(Plain TeX's \end differs from LaTeX's \end.)

When revising has converged (successfully),
you might just remove the \usepackage line
indicated above in order to obtain the file for
the final submission. (The .aux may then once
complain strangely -- just ignore this and try
again; or delete the .aux as soon as you do
without lineno.sty.)

However, I expect that most editors/publishers
expect use of LaTeX commands \title, \author,
(\date,) and \maketitle. Most basic features of
LaTeX like these should be easy to learn/apply.

Lucky TeXing,
   Uwe Lueck.



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