tpic specials

[Bob Tennent]

 >|The package doc says
 >|
 >|> This package provides smooth beams and crescendos/decrescendos by means
 >|of vector drawing: tpic \special's or pdfTeX raw literals.
 >|
 >|so it should be easy enough to convert the pdf literals into any of the
 >|current tex engines even if tpic is a bit obscure these days.
 >|
 >|tpic is essentially a tex wrapper for groff pic syntax as described
 >|by  man
 >|pic  if you have it installed, or online eg at
 >|
 >|
 >|https://linux.die.net/man/1/pic
 >|

Thanks. The developer of musixvbm sent me the following
link, which provides exactly the documentation of tpic
specials I wanted:

http://ftp.tug.org/svn/dviout/trunk/htmlhelp/htmle/IDH_CMDTPIC.html?revision=229&view=co

Best,
Bob

 >|On Sat, 15 May 2021 at 07:14, Bob Tennent <rdtennent at gmail.com> wrote:
 >|
 >|> The musixtex add-on musixvbm.tex replaces font-based beams
 >|> by vectorized beams using (for dvi output) tpic specials.
 >|> For example, here is a typical sequence of tpic specials,
 >|> obtained using dviasm:
 >|>
 >|>           xxx: 'sh 1'
 >|>           xxx: 'pa 0 34'
 >|>           xxx: 'pa 1012 34'
 >|>           xxx: 'pa 1012 1'
 >|>           xxx: 'pa 0 1'
 >|>           xxx: 'pa 0 34'
 >|>           xxx: 'ip'
 >|>
 >|> These tpic specials at least seem to be supported by dvips
 >|> and dvipdfm, but not by any dvi viewer known to me (xdvi,
 >|> yap, okular). Are there any dvi viewers that support (at
 >|> least) these tpic specials?
 >|>
 >|> Tpic specials are said to be "standard" but I've been unable
 >|> to find any documentation. Where can I find it?
 >|>
 >|> Bob T.
 >|>
 >|>