\pagestyle{empty} in the
preamble of your LaTeX source file. If one the other hand,
you wanted to suppress the page number on one page but not
on the others, then use \thispagestyle{empty}.
Typically, this might be done on the first page.
\pm.
\center environment, the \flushleft
environment positions text on the page. You may use it to avoid
paragraph indents. There is also a \flushright environment.
Your first project for the semester is to build a World-Wide Web home page and to help someone else build one. The page is supposed to contain at least one link and one image.
Today we are going to get started by building a simple home page. During the semester, you will add links and images and further information to the page, but today the goal is just to get a page that works.
World-Wide Web pages are written in HTML (Hyper-Text Mark-up Language). This language is similar to LaTeX in spirit. According to Tim Berners-Lee, the main designer of the Worldwide Web, when you design a web page, you should start by prescribing the logical design of the page, but not the visual design. Thus, you should say, "This is a level-three heading," even if you could say, "This is centered text in a fourteen point bold sans serif font." It is best, at least at the beginning, to let the browser choose how to display what you have designed. Commercial web sites use HTML to get visual effects, so this may be tempting, but it is better to postpone worrying about appearance when you are learning HTML.
In HTML, the mark-up instructions are called "tags". For example
the tag that starts a new paragraph is <P> or <p>. Each tag
is surrounded by angle brackets. It does not matter
whether the tags are upper case or lower case.
Most of the tags come in grouped pairs, which work like LaTeX's
containers, such as {\em ...} or like the
\begin{math} ... \end{math} environment structure. A
typical example of a pair of HTML "tags" is the pair <EM>,
<\EM> that is used to emphasize text. In your HTML source file you type:
</EM>this is emphasized text</EM>
On the Web browser you are now using it looks like: this is emphasized text.
By convention, Web browsers use an italic font to display emphasized text,
but the font choice is left to the particular browser. Notice that the end tag
looks just like the start tag except that it has a slash after the left angle bracket.
Here is a template for a very basic Web page. Use the mouse to cut this template and paste it into a text editor. Then modify the information so it applies to you. Unlike in LaTeX, blank lines in HTML do not start new paragraphs, so you can use blank lines to make your input file more readable. (In HTML you must use a <P> tag to start a new paragraph in general.)
<html>
<head>
<title>A Very Basic Home Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1 align=center>My home page</h1>
<P>
Here is some information about me.<br>
Notice that the paragraph tag <P> does not need the optional
matching end tag <\P>.<br>
If you want a line break without starting a new paragraph, use <BR>,
<br>
If you want a horizontal line as a separator, use <HR>.<br>
Neither <BR> nor <HR> needs a matching end tag.
<h2>This is a level two header</h2>
<OL>
<LI>This is the first item of an ordered list.
<LI>The list item tag <LI> is another one that has an optional
end tag, <\LI>.
</OL>
<h3>Information about me</h3>
<ul>
<li>My e-mail address
<li>My telephone number
<li>And so on; this is an unordered list.
</ul>
</body>
</html>
Your browser should display the document title on the title bar of the browser window. Here is what will display in the browser window:
Here is some information about me.
Notice that the paragraph tag <P> does not need the optional
matching end tag <\P>.
If you want a line break without starting a new paragraph use <BR>.
If you want a horizontal line (horizontal rule) use <HR>.
Neither <BR> nor <HR> needs a matching end tag.
After you edit the HTML template, you need to save it as a
file and be sure that Web browsers can find it. Each computer
system has a special location where it expects to find publicly
accessible HTML files. On the Rutgers-Camden servers clam
and scivis, the location for HTML
files is a subdirectory named html in your home directory.
You may have to create the subdirectory yourself and make it
world-readable and world-executable by using chmod to give the
correct access permissions. Why does the subdirectory
need to be world-executable? That's because the browser needs to get
a list of the files in the directory, and getting the directory
listing is executing the directory. Since the browser starts
at your home (=root) directory, that directory also needs to be world-readable
and world-executable. We'll now take care of setting permissions for
your home directory, your html directory, and for the file index.html.
Move to your home directory by using the command cd at
the Unix prompt.
Check by using ls whether there is a directory
html in your home directory. If it does not exist, then
create the subdirectory now with the command mkdir html (no period
after html).
Save your basic home page in this special subdirectory with
the name index.html (this is a standard name for home
pages). Use the "Save As" feature on your text editor: you can
probably navigate to the subdirectory html,
and then type in the name index.html.
There is one more step: you need to change the access permissions on
index.html to make it a world-readable file. Open a terminal
window, execute the command cd and then the command
chmod go+rx . (the period is required). Now execute the
command cd html and then the commands
chmod go+rx .
(again, the period is required) and chmod go+r
index.html.
Here's some explanation of the command chmod. As
stated above, your home directory and the html
subdirectory must be made readable and executable to everyone who
should be able to read your home page, and the file
index.html must be made readable to the same people. We use the
command chmod to add (or remove) directory and file permissions.
There are three types of operations on a file or directory: you can read, write
or execute it. (Executing a directory is just getting a listing of the files in
it.) There are three classes of people who need permissions to read, write or
execute a file: the user (that's you), the group (which on clam
would be those people who have accounts on clam), and other (the world
at large). To make it possible for a Web browser to access files in your new
html subdirectory, you need to make both your home directory and the
new one readable (r) and executable (x) by members of the group (g) and by others
(o).
The directory "." is the current directory, so the command
"chmod go+rx ." adds to the people in "go"
permissions rx for the current directory.
From your home directory, you could have used the Unix command
chmod go+rx html to add permissions to the
html/ subdirectory.
Since you were already in the subdirectory html/, then the
command was "chmod go+rx ." or
"chmod go+rx ./". Similarly, you gave permissions for making the
file index.html world readable.
You can now check the permissions
for the file index.html by using the command dir index.html,
which should show nine symbols arranged in three groups that look
like rwx r-- r-- . The first group of symbols indicates that you have permission to
read, write and execute the file index.html. The second group indicates
that clam users have read permission for the file and the third group
indicates that everyone else also has read permission for the file.
Now test it out. Open a Web browser (Netscape Navigator, for example), click
on the "Open" button, and type in
http://clam.rutgers.edu/~your_user_id/
or if you are working on scivis, try
http://scivis.rutgers.edu/~your_user_id/.
Your home page should display in the
browser. Now have your neighbor try to display your home page
(this is an extra check to confirm that the file permissions are correct).
When you have time to go further, you can look at some information for building home pages from the Web Beginner's Corner at Texas A&M University. The Web Beginner's Corner has links to information (such as Tim Berners-Lee's comments on HTML style) that should interest even those who have substantial experience in the constructing Web pages.
Another practical source of information is the section on the internet on the University of Pennsylvania's Math Department home page. I recommend it.
Other tips:
Recall that in the LaTeX graphics
assignment from last class, you worked with an Encapsulated PostScript File
(file-type EPSF) called golfer.ps. We used the LaTeX graphics package
epsf, which was designed to work with the dvips driver.
Since you may want to do similar work on another system, which may use a different
driver for converting dvi files, we will also look at the package called
graphicx and at the package called epsfig. Open a
terminal window and a text editor, and then use your mouse to copy the following
LaTeX source code into your editor.
\documentclass[12pt,dvips]{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\title{\LaTeX{} Exercise: Graphicx Package}
\author{}
\date{\today}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
This is a test of the graphicx postscript graphics package.
Some people have a \rotatebox{25}{slanted view} of the world.
\reflectbox{Is this secret writing or what??}
We can both rotate and adjust the dimensions of the included graphics
by commands in the graphicx package. Here is an example.
Can you tell whether the width was adjusted before or after the
rotation?
\begin{figure}
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[angle=30,width=4in]{golfer.ps}
\end{center}
\end{figure}
\end{document}
graphicx-test.tex. Make sure that the file
golfer.ps is in the same directory as graphicx-test.tex.
Then run latex graphicx-test and use dvips to convert
the resulting dvi file to graphicx-test.ps. Print this
file and turn in hard copy by the end of class.
Remark. To conserve disk space, you
should remove the final PostScript file, and you may want to remove the other
files produced by LaTeX as well, saving only the source file.
Of course, you may start on the homework during class if you have time.
epsfig-test.tex. Before you run
latex on the new file, make sure that the PostScript
files that you want to use have been moved to the same directory.
View your file by using dvips epsfig-test -o epsfig-test.ps and
then use your PostScript viewer to look at the typeset file. For
exaple, if you are on clam server use the command
ghostview epsfig-test.ps. If you are on the scivis
server, you can use ShowPS by entering the command
showps epsfig-test.ps at the network prompt.
\documentclass[12pt,dvips]{article}
\usepackage{epsfig}
\title{\LaTeX{} Exercise: epsfig package}
\author{}
\date{\today}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
This is a test of the epsfig postscript graphics package.
Here is an example of an included graphic floated as a
centered box with a height of $y$ inches and a width
of $x$ inches.
%You should choose suitable numbers as values to substitute for <x> and
%<y> here and in the commands below. See the example further down.
%(In particular, there should be no angle brackets in the argument to \epsfig.)
\begin{figure}
\begin{center}
\epsfig{file=<your-filename1.ps>, height=<y>in, width=<x>in}
\end{center}
\end{figure}
We can both rotate and adjust the dimensions of the included graphics
by commands in the epsfig package. Here is an example.
Can you tell whether the width was adjusted before or after the
rotation?
\epsfig{file=<your-filename2.ps>, height=4in, width=3in, angle=45}
\end{document}
After viewing the results of your first run, see what the effects are when you change the height or width or angle. What happens if you take out either of the keyvalues height=<something> or width=<something>?
When you have things working to your satisfaction, write up a LaTeX document that displays the effects that you can get with epsfig. You should have at least three included figures. I suggest that you keep the dimensions of the figures modest to avoid creating a huge PostScript file. Please hand in the typeset version of your document at the beginning of our next class meeting.
If you have done all the in-class activities suggested above, and there is still time left, here are some other activities you can do.
/ Contents /