{"id":824,"date":"2014-05-10T09:28:20","date_gmt":"2014-05-10T09:28:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cvr.cc\/?page_id=824"},"modified":"2026-08-04T21:04:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T15:34:08","slug":"software","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/cvr.cc\/?page_id=824","title":{"rendered":"Software"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a summary of my developmental activities relating to my humble contribution to free\/libre software.<\/p>\n<h3>Packages<\/h3>\n<p>Here is a listing of my packages and those developed jointly with my collaborators like <a title=\"Thanh\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tug.org\/interviews\/thanh.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Han The Thanh<\/a>, Rajagopal, <a title=\"Karl Berry\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tug.org\/interviews\/berry.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Karl Berry<\/a> and <a title=\"Ross Moore\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tug.org\/interviews\/moore.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ross Moore<\/a>.\u00a0 Most of these packages are available at <a title=\"CTAN\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ctan.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">CTAN<\/a>, the Comprehensive T<span style=\"position: relative; top: 0.5ex; margin-left: -0.1667em; margin-right: -0.125em; text-transform: uppercase;\">e<\/span>X Archive Network, where contributed packages and libraries are deposited for global distribution among the user community. Hence they form part of\u00a0 <a title=\"TeXLive\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tug.org\/texlive\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">T<span style=\"position: relative; top: 0.5ex; margin-left: -0.1667em; margin-right: -0.125em; text-transform: uppercase;\">e<\/span>XLive<\/a>, the standardized T<span style=\"position: relative; top: 0.5ex; margin-left: -0.1667em; margin-right: -0.125em; text-transform: uppercase;\">e<\/span>X software distribution released every year by the <a title=\"TUG\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tug.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">T<span style=\"position: relative; top: 0.5ex; margin-left: -0.1667em; margin-right: -0.125em; text-transform: uppercase;\">e<\/span>X Users Group<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The licenses of these packages are the <a title=\"LPPL\" href=\"http:\/\/latex-project.org\/lppl\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span class=\"LATEX\">La<span class=\"TEX\">T<span class=\"E\">e<\/span>X<\/span><\/span> Project Public License<\/a> (LPPL) or a compatible free software license for free download and usage with the freedom to copy, modify, and distribute. As such, users can freely download and make use of them at their will.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">pdfscreen:<\/span> My first package that was publicly released (originally developed for the University of Auckland for online delivery of lecture notes to students. The university allowed me to make the package freely available to the public). Available for <a title=\"pdfscreen\" href=\"http:\/\/ctan.org\/pkg\/pdfscreen\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">download at CTAN<\/a>. (First release: <a title=\"Gmane\" href=\"http:\/\/article.gmane.org\/gmane.comp.tex.ctan.announce\/4798\/match=pdfscreen\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">1999-03-08<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>pdfslide: Helps to make PDF presentations with heavy math content. Available for <a title=\"pdfslide\" href=\"http:\/\/ctan.org\/pkg\/pdfslide\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">download at CTAN<\/a>. (First release: <a title=\"Gmane\" href=\"http:\/\/article.gmane.org\/gmane.comp.tex.ctan.announce\/5060\/match=pdfslide\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">1999-10-13<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>pdftricks: PSTricks package does not support processing with pdfT<span style=\"position: relative; top: 0.5ex; margin-left: -0.1667em; margin-right: -0.125em; text-transform: uppercase;\">e<\/span>X. This package helps to process any T<span style=\"position: relative; top: 0.5ex; margin-left: -0.1667em; margin-right: -0.125em; text-transform: uppercase;\">e<\/span>X document with PSTricks figures using pdfT<span style=\"position: relative; top: 0.5ex; margin-left: -0.1667em; margin-right: -0.125em; text-transform: uppercase;\">e<\/span>X. Available for <a title=\"pdftricks\" href=\"http:\/\/ctan.org\/pkg\/pdftricks\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">download at CTAN<\/a>. (First release: <a title=\"Gmane\" href=\"http:\/\/article.gmane.org\/gmane.comp.tex.ctan.announce\/5591\/match=pdftricks\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2001-02-13<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>bibcheck: Helps to identify uncited bibliographic item in a bibliographic list however long the list might be. Available for <a title=\"bibcheck\" href=\"http:\/\/ctan.org\/pkg\/bibcheck\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">download at CTAN<\/a>.\u00a0 (First release: <a title=\"Gmane\" href=\"http:\/\/article.gmane.org\/gmane.comp.tex.ctan.announce\/1265\/match=bibcheck\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2003-07-13<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>rvwrite: Helps to overcome T<span style=\"position: relative; top: 0.5ex; margin-left: -0.1667em; margin-right: -0.125em; text-transform: uppercase;\">e<\/span>X&#8217;s limitation of writing out to 16 files. Using this package, one can make T<span style=\"position: relative; top: 0.5ex; margin-left: -0.1667em; margin-right: -0.125em; text-transform: uppercase;\">e<\/span>X to write out any number of output streams. Available for <a title=\"rvwrite\" href=\"http:\/\/ctan.org\/pkg\/rvwrite\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">download at CTAN<\/a>. (First release: <a title=\"Gmane\" href=\"http:\/\/article.gmane.org\/gmane.comp.tex.ctan.announce\/7971\/match=rvwrite\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2010-08-28<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>pdfpagediff: Suppose you have two PDF files that are supposed to be identical but have a suspicion that there is a minute difference, <em>e.g.<\/em>, one word has been hyphenated.\u00a0 This T<span style=\"position: relative; top: 0.5ex; margin-left: -0.1667em; margin-right: -0.125em; text-transform: uppercase;\">e<\/span>X package will help find that change by simply superimposing pairs of pages, allowing for a quick visual check. More details and <a title=\"pdfpagediff\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cvr.cc\/?p=201\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">downloads here<\/a>. (First release: <a title=\"cvr.cc\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cvr.cc\/?p=201\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2010-09-01<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>pdfdraftcopy: Helps to include strings like DRAFT or watermarks on a pdf document generated with pdfT<span style=\"position: relative; top: 0.5ex; margin-left: -0.1667em; margin-right: -0.125em; text-transform: uppercase;\">e<\/span>X. Available for download here.<\/li>\n<li>grid: The pack\u00adage helps to en\u00adables grid type\u00adset\u00adting in dou\u00adble col\u00adumn doc\u00adu\u00adments. Grid type\u00adset\u00adting (ver\u00adti\u00adcal align\u00ading of lines of text in ad\u00adja\u00adcent columns) is a dif\u00adfi\u00adcult task in <span class=\"LATEX\">La<span class=\"TEX\">T<span class=\"E\">e<\/span>X<\/span><\/span>, and the present pack\u00adage is no more than an at\u00adtempt to help users to achieve it in a lim\u00adited way. Available for <a title=\"grid\" href=\"http:\/\/ctan.org\/pkg\/grid\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">download at CTAN<\/a>. (First release: <a title=\"Gmane\" href=\"http:\/\/article.gmane.org\/gmane.comp.tex.ctan.announce\/6971\/match=grid+river+valley\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2009-06-16<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>parano: Optionally enables automatic paragraph numbering in <span class=\"LATEX\">L<span class=\"A\">a<\/span><span class=\"TEX\">T<span class=\"E\">e<\/span>X<\/span><\/span> documents, which is not trivial as it might appear. Available for download here.<\/li>\n<li>table: Helps to make tables with captions spanning to the exact width of tabular, landscape tables as a float along with text in portrait mode, and related bells and whistles. Available for download here.<\/li>\n<li>pdfx: The pack\u00adage helps <span class=\"LATEX\">L<span class=\"A\">a<\/span><span class=\"TEX\">T<span class=\"E\">e<\/span>X<\/span><\/span> users to cre\u00adate PDF\/X and PDF\/A com\u00adpli\u00adant pdf doc\u00adu\u00adments with pdfTeX, thereby\u00a0avoiding the usage of proprietary software like Adobe Acrobat Professional. Available for <a title=\"pdfx\" href=\"http:\/\/ctan.org\/pkg\/pdfx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">download at CTAN<\/a>. (First release: <a title=\"Gmane\" href=\"http:\/\/article.gmane.org\/gmane.comp.tex.ctan.announce\/6662\/match=pdfx+cv+radhakrishnan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2008-12-04<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Maintenance<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a title=\"TeX4ht\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tug.org\/tex4ht\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">tex4ht<\/a>: <\/strong>A con\u00adverter from T<span style=\"position: relative; top: 0.5ex; margin-left: -0.1667em; margin-right: -0.125em; text-transform: uppercase;\">e<\/span>X and <span class=\"LATEX\">L<span class=\"A\">A<\/span><span class=\"TEX\">T<span class=\"E\">E<\/span>X<\/span><\/span> to SGML\/XML-based for\u00admats such as (X)HTML, MathML, OpenDoc\u00adu\u00adment, and DocBook, pro\u00advid\u00ading a con\u00adfig\u00adurable (La)T<span style=\"position: relative; top: 0.5ex; margin-left: -0.1667em; margin-right: -0.125em; text-transform: uppercase;\">e<\/span>X-based au\u00adthor\u00ading sys\u00adtem for hy\u00adper\u00adtext. Has been maintaining it along with <a title=\"Karl Berry\" href=\"http:\/\/www.freefriends.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Karl Berry<\/a> of <a title=\"TUG\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tug.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">T<span style=\"position: relative; top: 0.5ex; margin-left: -0.1667em; margin-right: -0.125em; text-transform: uppercase;\">e<\/span>X Users Group<\/a>. A few blog posts describing the functionality of T<span style=\"position: relative; top: 0.5ex; margin-left: -0.1667em; margin-right: -0.125em; text-transform: uppercase;\">e<\/span>X4ht are <a title=\"www.cvr.cc\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cvr.cc\/?cat=14\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">available here<\/a>. The <a title=\"TeX4ht home\" href=\"https:\/\/puszcza.gnu.org.ua\/projects\/tex4ht\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">project home is here<\/a>. I took up maintenance when its author, <a title=\"Eitan\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cse.ohio-state.edu\/news\/news102.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Eitan Gurari<\/a> suddenly passed away on Monday, June 22, 2009.<\/li>\n<li><a title=\"nomencl\" href=\"http:\/\/ctan.org\/pkg\/nomencl\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">nomenclature:<\/a> Pro\u00adduces lists of sym\u00adbols us\u00ading the ca\u00adpa\u00adbil\u00adi\u00adties of the <a href=\"http:\/\/ctan.org\/pkg\/makeindex\">MakeIn\u00addex<\/a> pro\u00adgram.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Documentation<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><span class=\"LATEX\">L<span class=\"A\">a<\/span><span class=\"TEX\">T<span class=\"E\">e<\/span>X<\/span><\/span> Primer: <span class=\"LATEX\">L<span class=\"A\">a<\/span><span class=\"TEX\">Te<span class=\"E\">X<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0tutorial for beginners. Available for <a title=\"LaTeX Primer\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sayahna.org\/ml\/pdf\/latex-primer.tar.gz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">download here<\/a>. (First release: 2003-09-14)<\/li>\n<li>PSTricks Tutorial: Online documentation of PSTricks graphics package. Available for <a title=\"PSTricks\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sayahna.org\/ml\/pdf\/pst-primer.tar.gz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">download here<\/a>. (First release: 2003-09-14)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Software Projects Under Development<\/h3>\n<p>The development of software for these projects is still going on and not yet ready for public release. However, links to the codebase will be made available as soon as a working version is ready.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>ltx-stm:<\/strong> A general document formatting package that is most appropriate for <a title=\"STM Content\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Scientific_literature\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">STM content<\/a>. It works with more recent <span class=\"LATEX\">L<span class=\"A\">A<\/span><span class=\"TEX\">T<span class=\"E\">E<\/span>X<\/span><\/span> kernel (now codenamed as <strong>expl3<\/strong>) and generates a variety of outputs like screen version pdf, print version pdf, <a title=\"HTML5\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/HTML5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">HTML5<\/a> and <a title=\"MediaWiki\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mediawiki.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">MediaWiki<\/a> formats from the same source with a change of class loading option alone.<\/li>\n<li><strong>epub\/pdf for Malayalam:<\/strong> Packages and framework to generate ePub and PDF format outputs from <span class=\"LATEX\">L<span class=\"A\">A<\/span><span class=\"TEX\">T<span class=\"E\">E<\/span>X<\/span><\/span> sources of Malayalam documents encoded in UTF-8.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Pine:<\/strong> This is still an experimental framework and a document processing system in the cloud that makes use of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediawiki.org\" rel=\"nofollow\">MediaWiki<\/a> and its resources. A few freely available plugins of MediaWiki, most notable among them being WorkingWiki, have been used to make the job easier in the cloud. As you can imagine, it is in the alpha phase and is now open to the public only as a proof of concept. If you are an author writing scientific articles with a lot of mathematical content, and you mark up your document with <span class=\"LATEX\">L<span class=\"A\">a<\/span><span class=\"TEX\">T<span class=\"E\">e<\/span>X<\/span><\/span>, then this is a place where you can collaboratively write, edit, typeset, generate PDF, HTML + MathML versions, control different versions of your document, discuss with your collaborators, and publish your article when ready.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a summary of my developmental activities relating to my humble contribution to free\/libre software. Packages Here is a listing of my packages and those developed jointly with my collaborators like Han The Thanh, Rajagopal, Karl Berry and Ross Moore.\u00a0 Most of these packages are available at CTAN, the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network, where [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-824","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvr.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvr.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvr.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvr.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvr.cc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=824"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cvr.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1077,"href":"https:\/\/cvr.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/824\/revisions\/1077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvr.cc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}