New package dialogl (fwd)

[Petr Sojka]

The following collection has been installed on CTAN, in

macros/latex/contrib/supported/dialogl

(na ftp.muni.cz:/pub/tex/CTAN/macros/.... take).
Vse nejslepsi v novem roce
Petr Sojka


Announcement text:
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The `dialogl' collection                     Michael Downes, 20-Dec-1994
                                             mjd at math.ams.org (Internet)

The purpose of the `dialogl' collection is to gather together in one
place a lot of information and examples---probably more than you really
wanted---about how to write TeX macros to carry on dialog with the user.
The centerpiece is a LaTeX package dialog.sty, which makes it
easy to add bits of dialog to a LaTeX document; it can also be used with
non-LaTeX macro packages, if they are plain.tex compatible.

The total size of the dialogl collection is approximately 580K.
Files of interest:

---dialog.sty

This is a LaTeX package that defines some useful commands like

  \readChar{D}\reply

that reads an arbitrary line of input from the user, takes the first
character, uppercases it, and leaves it in the macro \reply for further
use. Furthermore, the first argument (in this example `D') will be used
as a default value if the user response was empty. Unlike \typein,
\readChar is nearly bulletproof under all circumstances, handling even
things like \, %, control-L, \newif, or unmatched { or } that might be
entered by the user. Or consider the two statements

  \readline{0pt}\reply
  \checkdimen\reply\testdimen

These check whether the user response was a valid TeX dimen and leave
the result in the dimen register \testdimen for further use.

---menus.sty

This is a superset of the `dialog' package that provides menu
construction tools to make the job of presenting menus on screen
relatively easy.

---listout.tex

This is a utility for printing out text files. Mainly it is a testbed
for the `menus' package, and thus has (I suspect) the most extensive and
most bulletproof menu system ever programmed in TeX. It was originally
written to work with plain TeX; my later attempts to retrofit LaTeX
compatibility may have some gaps, but it seems to work in the simple
tests that I have done.

---dia-driv.tex

This is the driver file for printing out the documentation of
dialog.sty, menus.sty, and grabhedr.sty. Run it through standard LaTeX.
It is expected to appear as an article in TUGboat Real Soon Now.

---codialog.tex

This is a substantially revised and augmented version of the paper
`Dialog with TeX' that appeared in the Proceedings of the 1991 TUG
Conference at Dedham, Massachusetts (TUGboat vol 12 no 3, December
1991, Part 2). Some nice added examples.