This file is also going to be ftp'd to your site, under the name May03-upgrades2.txt. There are two main areas for upgrade/change in the NRC class files. This file (May03-upgrades2.txt) covers revisions for the class files for articles; the file May03-upgrades1.txt covers the new macros for front matter. Some points are left in Evelyn's words, occasionally with additions from me; others are based on points raised in the meeting. II. REVISIONS: while mainly concered with nrc2, the matching changes should also go into nrc1 (unless nrc2-specific). Some of these have already been incorporated into Evelyn's version of nrc2, which I'll ftp to your site; filename = nrc2-may03.cls. Her comments are in the file. At the bottom are some additional points raised in the meeting but which I believe are more coding issues than real problems with how the class files do things. I'll let you know if they're solvable with current macros or actually do need changes in the .dtx. ================== II. REVISIONS to nrc1/nrc2: -------------------------- 1. CHANGE: `doi' now lowercase. DONE 2. Evelyn: I have made changes to each of these files [Evelyn's versions of nrc1, nrc2: nrc1-ek-may23.cls and nrc2-ek-may23.cls] to allow us to put an "S" in front of the page numbers. Me: I asked what this meant ... here is her reply: We are doing a Supplement to the Volume of this year's Journal of Environmental Engineering and Science and Supplements must be page numbered with an S in front of the number. We start again at page 1, but it is now page S1. Fortunately we hade asked for a way to put a prefix (the file number) in front of a page number, but we had asked for a hyphen after the prefix. I simply took the hyphen out. I suppose there is a possibility that sometime in the future we could need both filenumber and the S for Supplement. so if you want you and Robin can produce something elegant that would give us, e.g., P03-004-S1. But at the moment I am abusing a tag. My additional query: Pagenos. appear in headers and footers. You want them down in the opening page footer too, where the article's page range is given? Her reply: Everywhere the page number appears on the paper must have the S. Soooo ... an option to page no. style? DONE: supplement documentclass option; however, not affecting paper page ranges (in the ID box) yet: should it? 3. Evelyn: I have changed a couple of lines in the flitemize commands in NRC2.cls to get the proper alignment. These are flagged by "Changed by EK". Please correct these in the new version of the class file and check that NRC1.cls is OK. Me: she's using the version which had these things `fixed'. From her file, which includes this info: \ProvidesClass {nrc2} [2002/07/24 v1.4.2o NRC 2-column journal class% ]% $Id: May03-upgrades2.txt,v 1.2 2003/08/17 13:01:56 rf Exp rf $ I've copied the following lines, the only ones I found with her `EK' mark: \newenvironment{flitemize}% {% \ifnum \@itemdepth>\z@ \@toodeep \else \advance\@itemdepth\@ne \def\@itemitem{labelitemi}% \labelsep-10pt %%Changed by EK %%\labelsep\z@ \leftmargini10pt\relax %%Changed by EK %%\leftmargini10\p@ \list \labelitemi {\def\makelabel##1{##1\hss}}% \fi }% \endlist i've done this copy. i don't think it's quite the right way to do the required job but i haven't the time to think it through now. 4. Evelyn: Please move the "Pagination not final..." text to the top of the page (above the header) and allow it to appear on a page along with the doi information. Me: pagnf (and proof, I beleive) currently is mutually exclusive with \DOI; moving it to the top of the page (above the header) leaves the bottom of the page open again for something else -- in this case, \DOI, if it's being used. So if there's any code that prevents another option if pagnf is active, that restriction can now be eased. 5. Evelyn: Abstract and resume are ragged right with hyphenation turned on. DONE (hyphenation was explicitly suppressed; now it's slightly encouraged) 6. Evelyn: Appendixes: Please put a period, not a colon after, e.g, Appendix A, BUT ONLY when the appendix has a title. it's not entirely clear what this means. do we have the : still if the appendix has no title? how is the lack of title detected? (note: this could be very tricky -- the "appendix a" stuff isn't put in by the section command, rather by a command defined well before the section command is called. would \section** for a no-title appendix be acceptable? (given that \section is being used defining appendix heads anyway.) We would like to number tables, figures, and equations within an appendix using the form Table A1, not Table A.1 this sounds as if they want everything numbered within sections: is this the case? -- if so, i can easily arrange it. whatever, coded as requested for now. as i've done it so far, it doesn't have any effect unless \appendix* has been used. do they _always_ \appendix* (as it were)? 7. Tables: Horizontal rules: i. Two successive \cline's currently touch. Would like them to only be as wide as widest col. entry, thus leaving space btwn. adjacent cols. Me: at present, if you have \cline{2-3} and \cline{3-4}, the output is equivalent to \cline{2-4}. But they want separated \cline's. i've inserted a \Cline macro, coded as in the example that you looked at. ii. At outside left/right edges of tables, rules DON'T exceed margins of text entries -- using @{} does this, right? Me: I believe this is a spec change, that originally they wanted hlines to be wider than the table contents ... whatever, @{} in the table specs is what they should use. the only way to implement it would to be to do exactly the same internally, which would be an awful lot of effort for something i would instinctively put into coding guidelines. 8. Tables: Footnotes: Evelyn: Can we tighten up the interline spacing for footnotes? In our Ventura journals tables footnotes are in 8 point on 9 point leading. The line indent for a table footnote is 8 pt. Please add hyphenation capability (still ragged right). Me: We never did up a table footnote macro for them. I believe they just do things like this: ... \hline \mc{4}{l}{\footnotesize{${^{\it a}}$Zenon ZeeWeed.}} \T\\ \mc{4}{l}{\footnotesize{${^{\it b}}$US Filter/Memcor.}}\\ \mc{4}{l}{\footnotesize{${^{\it c}}$Aquasource.}}\\ \end{tabular} \end{table*} or this, for wrapped paragraphing: ... \hline* \mc{8}{>{\PreserveBackslash\raggedright}p{38pc}}{\footnotesize{$^{a}$Soil was sampled from the center \T of chamber after daily measurements at experimental plot. Numbers in the column indicate the number of soil samples collected and analyzed during the experimental periods for each field site.}}\\ \mc{8}{l}{\footnotesize{$^{b}$Upland soil planted with green onions.}}\\ \mc{8}{l}{\footnotesize{$^{c}$Upland soil planted with soy beans.}}\\ \mc{8}{l}{\footnotesize{$^{d}$Data were obtained by personal communication with National Honam Agricultural Experiment Station (NHAES).}}\\ \mc{8}{l}{\footnotesize{$^{e}$Total-nitrogen concentration.}}\\ \end{tabular} \end{table*} now done: \tmark in the table, tablenotes environment underneath it, with \tnote commands in it. author's/editor's responsibility to line up the notes to the marks. On our spec sheets, they actually did give us the specs for table footnotes; we just left it as being something they could code themselves via regular LaTeX. The specs are: -- 8/9 Times for nrc2; 8/10 for nrc1: I wonder if paragraphing via default LaTeX means doesn't give them 8/9 but 8/10 ... \smallt (tight small) now used -- footnotemark: italic letter superscripted [probably at the same height as any other 8pt text ... but as you see, they seem to be ok with the size/height used in mathmode superscripting ...] that's the default, but if you say \tmark[moocow] you'll get "moocow" as a marker. so serve you right. -- wrapped text indents 8pt from left margin i've done this. since it looks so odd otherwise, i've made the text in the first line of the note also start at 8pt from the margin, with the mark at the margin. (this is easily adjustable, of course, as is the 8pt value.) Looks like they now need a proper macro (\tablefoot? \tablefn?). I've sent queries to Evelyn on whether the default style/size/height of the mathmode superscript $^{c}$ is ok or if they would actually prefer something slightly different. As well, I'm querying that 8pt indent for the following reason: In tables, they want p-type columns to have a 9pt hanging indent; I'm asking Evelyn if it's ok to have a 9pt paragraphing column, with an 8pt paragraphing table footnote right below it ... mathematically, it sounds like it would look odd ... (see below) 9. Tables: Evelyn: Table text and table captions are ragged right with hyphenation turned on. done (same as figure captions) the columntype macro you wrote should be using my new "ragged right with hyphenation" setup. would you like me to bring it into the class, or should i make my ragged thing available for you to use (it's a private command at present)? this also seems to encompass the last bit of (8) 10. Figures: Evelyn: Figure captions should be ragged right with hyphenation turned on. done 11. Evelyn: Sometimes it is impossible to balance columns. Me: The problem is that they can SEE that a given column has various non-para boxes -- an equation or float -- but adding just a smidge of \vspace to make its bottom align with the other column just won't work. The text gets totally shuffled and is even worse. I guess what they want is some kind of page-locking command that would then allow them to fine-tune/fiddle to get those bottoms to align. However, I believe the downside to hand-tuned fiddling is that it ?may or ?does turn up when the file's converted to html. In any event, it's very aggravating to see where space could be added, yet adding it wreaks havoc. I do sympathise with this! Oh. Before you do anything. Evelyn has to send me her def's of two macros she's been adding to the canned preamble, \shortpage and \longpage, which she says they add when columsn are really behaving badly; it improves things a great deal, but then they still have that last little bit of fine-tuning at page-bottom that just goes to hell if they adjust within that page ... 12. Evelyn: Can we have a paper size option that is bigger than 8.5 in. by 11 in. (we use letter extra for our other journals) so that we can put crop marks on the files we send to the printer. As it is we must send these pages without crop marks and have no recourse if the text is not positioned properly on the paper. As well, our printer has told us that the crop marks on NRC1 do not give the correct page size of 7 in. by 10 in. The present page size is slightly under these measurements, according to the person I spoke to. Can you please verify? This one may well be open still ... I said that it's more helpful if the printer (the person, in this case) would be more specific and provide hardcopy to show where exactly the crop marks are off for both nrc1 and nrc2. I've just sent off a query to Evelyn for hardcopy of both outputs so we can see where things are apparently `off'. I'll cc you the message, for your files. 13. Evelyn: Please ensure that all "canned" text for the ID box uses the wording and capitalization in the attached table. Me: I've got `the attached table' and will go through it, comparing with my current nrc class files (July of last year): \ProvidesClass {nrc1} [2002/07/24 v1.4.2o NRC single-column journal class% ====== In addition to the above, there were three problems raised at the May meeting which I _believe_ are not really related to definitions in the .dtx but in coding errors using existing macros. I have to do some testing to see where things might be in error. One problem they have is actually Fran ... she still codes things as for early versions of nrc1 and simply doesn't seem to want to check the documentation that shows how to do things differently from those early days. So she tends to maintain pretty/ugly hacks and the others don't always realise they do know how to do these things more easily ... or more correctly. So before I pass them on as actual problems, I need to check just what they're doing, and what the current macros indicate they should be doing. Here are their three coding queries: a. We need to be able to put a footnote to the text in the ID box. (Now we abuse tags and edit the PostScript file to do this. I want to check this one out. But coding the PS file is a pretty grotty solution, for sure! b. How do we repeat a footnote number in the ID box, if the same footnote belongs to two authors? (Line's "Present address" problem) I think this is just a coding error. I have the pertinent lines from the .tex source file + hardcopy to work with. c. Can we indent runover lines in all text cells by 9 points? Runover lines in heading text are left aligned. If all cells in the column must be the same, please leave as is and show us how to code the text cells to get the indent. This last one I'd already solved for them last year but it would seem the solution, an additional line to for the array package to define a P-type argument (I'd found the necessary info in the array documentation and mentioned it to you and you'd gone `Duh!' via the screen ;-) ), hadn't been circulated. he other two: This last issue was also one which brought us to discussing the merits of incorporating the array package (for one) via some kind of ?\Required macro within the .dtx rather than having it be explicitly invoked via the preamble. Esp. as in this case, it's an output that directly affects how a complex table is organised. If the authors are already fiddling to get their paragraphing column entries to fit, their work and hacks and explicit line-breaking have to all be tossed when the in-house staff use a P-arg for the house style of such entries. And nrc-opening.tex, where this add-one line is included, is not distributed to authors. %% END OF FILE