Software

Everything here is freely available and copylefted with the GNU Public License

email

L^AT_EX

Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous

smerf	An implementation of a new image deconvolution algorithm (smear fitting), it has its own page.
extractcomment	Outputs the first comment (indicated by #, i.e. in a script) found in its standard input. Used by sd2h.
sd2h	Generates a web page with links and brief descriptions for everything in a directory of scripts. Basically the fusion of Tomas Brunclik's d2h (Dir To Html) and extractcomment, an example is here.
updateusb	A short bash script to put today's work on a small removable drive. It resembles a backup script but the purpose is really to make your recently changed files portable even when there is a blackout at work.
updatetuna	A perl script for easily updating the schedule page of a talk series with emailed names, titles and/or abstracts. Obviously you would need to change it to fit your talk series, but you might find it useful as a start.
Scripts For Handling DRAO Programs	Probably only of interest to people using the DRAO Export package.
flop 1.2	A set of shell scripts for efficiently keeping two or more computers up to date with each other using a floppy, zip, or nowadays USB, drive. It uses a timestamp directory to only copy files that are newer than what is on the recipient computer(s). The timestamp directory is updated after the files are written. Multiple volumes are easily handled, using GNU tar.
Rare and Useful Things Other People Have Written	I have not modified these very much, but they are useful, possibly used by other things on this page, and difficult to find otherwise.

L^AT_EX helpers

lalaim	LAtex LAbel IMages A perl script to create a L^AT_EX file which will add coordinate labels to an image that needs them. Also handy for when you want a map to be labelled in the same font as the rest of your document, or when you just can't stand the font kvis uses. It's like (and partially inspired by) the epslatex driver for gnuplot, or Xfig's .pstex, but for maps produced by an external program. The (Plain Old) documentation is at the top of the script but otherwise it is not polished yet, because it works...i.e. it's new and I quit working on it as soon as it did what I immediately needed. The L^AT_EX output isn't too hard to tweak, unless L^AT_EX gives you the ! Dimension too large error. What this means is that the numbers in the bounding box of your image are too large. L^AT_EX can't handle bounding boxes (whose default units, BTW, are "big points" (bp), 1"/72) with lengths > 19 feet inside a picture environment, even if you are scaling it down to something smaller. Fortunately when you save the image as an encapsulated PostScript file in the GIMP, it lets you specify the size in inches or mm. Choose something < 19 feet, ideally the size you really want, and everything should work. If you need to scale it further, do so as normal in \includegraphics, and then adjust \unitlength to match.
gettransitions	A script I use to specify KeyJnote transitions for presentations made with beamer and L^AT_EX. It looks for transition-specifying comments in presentation.tex and puts them in presentation.pdf.info for use by KeyJnote. This is much better than keeping track of slide numbers and maintaining presentation.pdf.info yourself. Update (June 15, 2007): "Pino" pointed out that presentation.pdf.info can include information other than transitions, so gettransitions should not write over them. The current version now does the right thing if presentation.pdf.info is reasonably formatted.
filtlatex	A filter for running a L^AT_EX file through a text filter while preserving the L^AT_EX formatting, i.e. it separates the L^AT_EX commands from the textual content, passes the textual content through the specified filter, and stitches the result with the L^AT_EX commands.
chkref	Tries to check that all floats (figures and tables) in a L^AT_EX file have labels, are referred to in the text (including references like Figures~\ref{fig:beginning} to \ref{fig:end}), and possibly whether the reference precedes the float. These are all style issues and therefore optional, but reviewers and referees might complain if you lose track of them.

email helpers

See also my email page.

editor	A simple script that sends its argument to emacsclient if emacsserver is running, and jed otherwise. It is most useful when the environment variable EDITOR is set to its location. July 14, 2006: enhanced to work well in the case of editing something (i.e. mail) on a different computer than the one emacs is running on, but where both computers can see the file through a shared filesystem.
post mode	An emacs mode for composing email or Usenet messages with all the whizbang features you never knew you needed. Get it from my email page.
collofilt	Tries to make the Subject: line of a colloquium/seminar/lunch talk announcement/reminder email reasonably useful. Optimized for the NRAO/UVa astro environment circa December 2006. Get it and its accompanying procmail recipes from my email page.
pprfilter	Cleans up and summarizes the text/plain part of Proofpoint's suspected spam reports. Get it from my email page.

Rob Reid,

Last modified: Tue Feb 26 22:33:09 EST 2008 .