- Directory Trees: Organize your main directory into a few subdirectories. For instance I have the following subdirectories in "~" (Maple, Matlab, Netstuff, Papers, Other, Classes, Html, Stat, Teaching). Each subdirectory has a similar structure. Nothing in my directory is ever more than three directories deep.
- Multitasking: Running more that one window at a time. Unlike Macs and PCs, Unix is a truely multitasking environment. Often time I have four or five different windows/programs running at the same time. To run a program in the background, such as netscape, type netscape & . That allows you to still use that window and run netscape at the same time.
- "nice" command. For computationally intensive programs, the nice command allows you to tell the OS to give priority to other processes (programs). Example nice -19 mathematica &
- "top" command. Let's you know what the CPU is doing. Tells you the priorities of the processes and what programs are chewing up the CPUs. Type "?" to see options. (r=renice,k=kill)
- Turbo C Shell: It is the nicest of the UNIX shells. Allows completions hit TAB, to find what commands start with those characters. If the line set autolist = "ambiguous" is in your .cshrc file then the possible completions are listed. If the line set correct = cmd is in your .cshrc file, then incorrect commands are attempted to be corrected.
- Aliases : a command or series of commands can be made easier by assigning it to a alias. This is done by typing for example alias lpr 'lpr -h' . This particular command will reassign the name lpr to automatically not print a header page. Aliases can be placed at the bottom of your .cshrc file. Here is a listing of other aliases that I use.
- Links : a link points to another file or
directory elsewhere on the system. This is helpful
if there are two copies of programs called the same
thing and you want to use a different version from
the typical version. A nice setup for doing this is
making a bin directory in your $HOME
directory. This is done by the following commands:
- cd
- mkdir bin
- cd bin
- ln -s /scratch/Netscape3.0/sun-solaris2.5/netscape
- File Permissions: Normally, all files that you
create can only be read and written by you, however, often
it is nice to be able to change the permissions, so others
can see you files. To view the permissions on a file
type ls -l. The "-l" command is the long version
of "ls". At the beginning of a filename, there is a
ten character-wide code. Here's the decipher.
- The first letter denotes the type associated to the name. d directory, l link,
- The next three letters are your permissions r read, w write, x execute.
- The next three letters are your group permissions r read, w write, x execute.
- The next three letters are everyone's permissions r read, w write, x execute.
- ftp To move files use ftp (file transfer protocol), by typing ftp site where site is the name of a machine. In ftp, get filename moves a file called filename from the remote machine to the local machine and put filename moves a file called filename from the local machine to the remote machine.
- Compressing Files and Directories :
Compressing a file can be done by typing gzip
filename and uncompressing it is done by typing
gunzip
Compressing a directory can be done using tar. To tar a directory called DIR, type tar cvf DIR . After a tar file is made, it can then be compressed. To untar a file, type tar xvf filename
These are nice to know for a couple of reasons. First, you can compress old directories that are rarely used, but you don't want to throw them away. Secondly, many files that you can download from the net are compressed or "tar"ed files. A file with a .tar suffix is a tar file and a file with a .gz suffix.
- Uuencoding and mailing pictures. Also a
handy thing to know about mailing files other than
text files (i.e. GIFs, JPEGs, etc.) The program
uuencode takes a non-text file and makes it a text file.
For example, to encode the picture, pict.png and mail
it to me, type uuencode pict.png pict.png | mail
staab@colorado.edu The second pict.png is the name of
the file that it will be called after decoding.
If you recieve a uuencoded message, save the message as a file called filename and type uudecode filename .
Some mail tools will automatically uudecode a picture (netscape), others will allow you to view it (pine).
A word processor is designed to produce a page of text that looks good. Examples are Microsoft Word and Word Perfect. A processor is concerned with the margins and the font and the font size and way that text is wrapped, etc. The output file contains information about all of the appearances of the text on the page and the actual text. The problem is that the files produced from word processors are not portable to different machines.
Generally, a text file is an intermediate step to another program. For example LaTeX, f77, f90, gcc, c++, matlab, netscape, etc. all take text files as inputs. Any language can be written as a text file.
- To start xemacs type xemacs &
- There are a line of icons along the top row which have many features you need. Many of the other features are located above the icons in pull down menus.
- To try the tutorial, type C-h t C= control key, It is a very handy starting place.
- Most of the motion keys are self-explanatory.
Other reasons for using LaTeX for printing papers:
- It's portable to any machine
- It handles references, equation numbers, figure numbers, and section numbers with ease.
- It is what many journals use to publish.
- It looks great.
- It's almost as easy as a word processor.
- Download an very simple LaTeX file.
- To read it into xemacs type xemacs simple.tex &.
- To compile it type latex simple.tex .
- To view the results type xdvi simple.dvi &
A more complicated LaTeX file is found here . You will also need this file.
-
To download the LaTeX version of my Jan 30, 1996 talk
you need the following three files
to compile type latex talk.tex . To view type
xdvi talk.dvi then to print, type
dvips talk.dvi .
My macros file
Here's a LaTeX file
which explain more about the thesis style.
Here's a simple version of a thesis. You need to
download the following files
Again, to compile, type latex main.tex and
the rest is similar to above.
Other LaTeX Help