The mainboard of my Shuttle ZEN XPC (ST62K) got broken recently, so I decided to look for a replacement. A big German chain of consumer electronics stores launched a campaign for just two days, I could not resist the temptation to buy a new computer 25% off. I purchased the Packard Bell imax X9000 (product sheet), running with a Q6600 (Quadcore) and GeForce 8600 GS.

The operating system installed does not meet my requirements, though it had to be purchased too. I downloaded the Ubuntu Linux 8.04 desktop amd64 iso, tried a first installation that failed. The next try with the alternate desktop iso was successful, Ubuntu was quickly installed. Until now I’m able to work with the 64bit version of Ubuntu 8.04 without any problems, using KILE 2.0 together with TeXlive2007 among other software.

From my perspective I can recommend the installation of the amd64 version of Ubuntu on a Q6600 system.

Today CTAN Announcements informed that the package blowup has been released. It can be used to upscale or downscale all pages of a document. For a first test I created this short a5paper document:

\documentclass[pdftex,a5paper,10pt]{article}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
 
\section{One}
\blindtext[3]
 
\section{Two}
\blindtext[4]
 
\end{document}

It’s pdf output can be opened here. The pdfinfo tool printed:
Page size: 419.528 x 595.276 pts

Now I used the \blowUp macro to upscale the document pages to fit a4 paper size:

\documentclass[a5paper,10pt]{article}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{blowup}
\blowUp{paper=a4}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
 
\section{One}
\blindtext[3]
 
\section{Two}
\blindtext[4]
 
\end{document}

The new pdf output can be opened here. pdfinfo output:
Page size: 595.276 x 841.89 pts (A4)

Of couse you could inspect the paper sizes by using the Adobe Reader.

The blowup package includes several source code examples. During the test I’ve noticed one small mistake in the documentation, the user-level macro \blowUp is described as \blowup, that will cause an error. But I’m sure this will be corrected soon, at least I will report it to the package author.

Today an update of the PSTricks related package pst-fun was released. pst-fun is aimed at drawing funny objects like bird, fish, ant, kangaroo, dog and faces, of course with different size, rotation etc. It may be useful for testing other PSTricks macros and could be more entertaining than simple dots or geometrical shapes. I’ve made a simple compilable example for testing:

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article}
\usepackage[margin=3.5cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{pst-fun}
\begin{document}
\begin{pspicture}[showgrid=true](0,-1.5)(13,4)
  \put(1,1){\psBill}
  \put(3,2){\psBird[Branch]}
\end{pspicture}
\end{document}

And here’s a screenshot of the output:

If you want to see it in vector graphics quality you can find the corresponding pdf output here.

In the documentation to pst-fun you will find more explanation accompanied by examples.

Today version 1 Beta 7.50 of TeXnicCenter has been released.

Major new features of this release are

• enhancement of autocompletion,
• the possibility to create a new file from selected text for inclusion by \input{} or \include{} ore user defined,
• the column for word wrapping can be defined by the user.

More information regarding the features and bugfixes can be read on the TeXnicCenter Homepage.

See also the short review of LaTeX IDEs in Mathematics Diary by jimcp.

The package hyph-utf8 has been released today. It contains hyphenation patterns that have been converted into UTF-8, addressing the need for appropriate patterns by native UTF-8 engines such as XeTeX.

For more information see the README file on its location on CTAN and tug.org/tex-hyphen.

The version 3.18 of the english TeX Frequently Asked Questions has been released. New subjects are:

• Adobe Reader messing with print size
• Prebuilt installation files on the archive
• Installing using preformatted ZIP files
• Getting the right paper geometry from (La)TeX
• Preparing a Type 1 font

Several topics have been revised.

For more information visit the UK TeX FAQ Homepage.