Newsgroups: comp.text
Path: utzoo!utgpu!radio.astro!brian
From: brian@radio.astro.astro.utoronto.ca (Brian Glendenning)
Subject: Margins and VMS/Unix TeX
Message-ID: <1988Nov27.014959.26521@radio.astro.astro.utoronto.ca>
Reply-To: brian@radio.astro.utoronto.ca (Brian Glendenning)
Organization: Radio Astronomy, University of Toronto
Distribution: na
Date: Sun, 27-Nov-88 01:49:58 EST

Can anyone settle a trivial dispute that's going on here? We have TeX
installed on both Unix machines and VAX VMS machines. On the unix
version if you type in some tex stuff you get reasonable looking
margins. Under the vms tex you don't get any margins, that is, the
text is jammed right up against the upper left corner. \hoffset and
\voffset are the easy fix.

My guess is that the unix tex behaviour is correct, since the examples
in the TeXbook don't mention anything about having to specify margins.
The local sys_critter disagrees and says that the vms behaviour is
correct since otherwise TeX would have to guess about margins (but it
makes a lot of other assumptions, why not insert another reasonable
default??).

So, can anyone tell me what the correct behaviour is? Thanks.

(I don't know offhand what version of TeX is on the Vax, but the unix
 TeX is the standard unix distribution)
-- 
	  Brian Glendenning - Radio astronomy, University of Toronto
brian@radio.astro.utoronto.ca uunet!utai!radio!brian  glendenn@utorphys.bitnet