Page 1 of 1

Allowed attachment extensions

Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2010 8:42 pm
by Ytrog
I wanted to upload a .tex file today and the board wouldn't allow it. It's a harmless format which is essentially plain text. It is used to format documents (in PDF, for example).

Re: Allowed attachment extensions

Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2010 8:51 pm
by mikenz66
Hi Ytrog,

A work around is to put the files in a zip archive, which most OS's can unpack automatically. The board software does seem to allow me to post .zip files...

Mike

Re: Allowed attachment extensions

Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2010 8:56 pm
by Bhikkhu Pesala
Any file can be uploaded as a zip attachment, so there is no need to support the less common extensions. Text files will also be much smaller if compressed.

Install 7-Zip to reduce file sizes even further than standard Zip utilities.

Re: Allowed attachment extensions

Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2010 9:02 pm
by Ytrog
I know the tricks, thanks. I just want to be able to upload these without work-arounds as it would be nice if people could cooperate on texts (translations, trnascriptions, etc.) together here without hassle.

Re: Allowed attachment extensions

Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2010 9:17 pm
by retrofuturist
Greetings ytrog,

I had a quick look into what the format is about and it seems alright to add to the list of allowed extensions.

Feel free to load a small document into this topic as a test.

Metta,
Retro. :)

Re: Allowed attachment extensions

Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2010 9:19 pm
by Ytrog
Ok.

:thanks:

Re: Allowed attachment extensions

Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2010 9:37 pm
by retrofuturist
Greetings Ytrog,

What do you need in order to be able to open files of this extension?

MEtta,
Retro. :)

Re: Allowed attachment extensions

Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2010 9:42 pm
by Ytrog
To open those files: notepad

To use those files, see: http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.ph ... 829#p91692" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There is a list of what I use.

Some tutorials:
http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/LaTeXPrimer/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.andy-roberts.net/misc/latex/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://ece.uprm.edu/~caceros/latex/introduction.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Re: Allowed attachment extensions

Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 12:34 am
by retrofuturist
Greetings Ytrog,

From your experience, how does this format differ from the more traditional TXT format?

Metta,
Retro. :)

Re: Allowed attachment extensions

Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 1:13 am
by mikenz66
Hi Retro,

TeX (and LaTeX, a set of macros written in TeX) is a powerful typesetting tool written by a famous computer scientist (Donald Knuth), who wrote it because he was dissatisfied with the available tools when he was writing his series of books on The Art of Computer Programming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of ... rogramming" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The typesetting algorithms developed by Knuth for TeX (some of which were PhD projects by his students) are very powerful, particularly for mathematics, enabling one to produce manuscripts and books of the very highest quality (unlike most consumer-level commercial software...), so TeX/LaTeX is a standard format in Mathematics/Physics/Computer Science circles, and the preferred submission format for journals such as Physical Review.

TeX/LaTeX input files are plain text, with text markup (like in html, or on this board), so you can write using your favourite text editor, and not in some proprietary binary format. And you don't have to worry that there will be some change of version that will render your files useless...

Of course, for most people a WYSIWYG tool like OpenOffice (or some commercial package like Word) will probably be more convenient, but for technical documents TeX/LaTeX is hard to beat...

Mike

Re: Allowed attachment extensions

Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 1:35 am
by mikenz66
PS, Retro, you might enjoy this note about Knuth's article "The Complexity of Songs"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complexity_of_Songs" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
There is also a link to the entire article...

Mike

Re: Allowed attachment extensions

Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 8:31 am
by Ytrog
I would also add that for any long text or even books it's hard to beat.