Computer Help

• How to Access E-Journals
• Accessing restricted sites from home (e.g. MathSciNet):
  1. Configure your browser’s proxy settings to use the automatic config proxy: http://www.bgu.ac.il/bgu.pac (precise details depend on the browser you are using). Some firefox users with sophisticated needs have reported using the add-on “FoxyProxy” for using different proxies at the same time, but most users have no need to use it.
  2. Use your BGU username/password.

• Protected resources Certain BGU websites are only directly accessible from within the University. Users from the department can access them from outside through VPN, or via ssh tunnel. E.g., to access the travel form, issue from a terminal

   ssh -gfN -L 2444:bgufin.bgu.ac.il:443 <userid>@lvs.cs.bgu.ac.il
  

  Then access https://localhost:2444/xTafnit/default.csp (of course, <userid> should be replaced by your University id, and 2444 can be replaced by any available port)

  Update: The University blocked all ssh access…

• Help FAQ (CS wiki, only from within the University)
• Contact the CS Lab: web form or email.
• CS Lab Staff
• Some files and utilities related to the department are available for download as an archive or via git with git clone 'https://www.math.bgu.ac.il/git/wwwmath/bgu-utils' Currently this includes a LaTeX class file for the BGU cv format, along with some templates.
• Instructions for operating the copying machine.

Make sure your laptop’s MAC address is registered with the CS lab or that your machine is registered with the university’s wireless network (visit the CS Lab).

The following instructions are offered by the CS Lab. If they fail, please file a report.

Linux

Make sure that cups is installed. There are two methods:

• Automatic printer discovery

  1. Add the following lines to /etc/hosts:

     132.72.44.185 vmprtsrv vmprtsrv.local
     132.72.44.56 vmsmb vmsmb.local
     

  2. Install avahi-daemon and cups-browsed (part of the cups-filters package)

  3. Add the line

     BrowsePoll vmprtsrv
     

     to /etc/cups/cups-browsed.conf.

  4. Start avahi-daemon, and (re)start cups and cups-browsed services
  5. Use the printers math{1,2}{s,d} for 1st/2nd floor single/double sided printing

• Manual configuration

  If the above fails, stop the cups service, and replace /etc/cups/printers.conf with a file similar to the following:

   <DefaultPrinter lpz1d>
   AuthInfoRequired none
   Info HP-603 double side
   Location Math building 1st floor room 118
   MakeModel HP LaserJet 600 M601 M602 M603 Postscript (recommended)
   DeviceURI socket://132.72.145.99
   Type 8425684
   </DefaultPrinter>
  
   <Printer lpz2d>
   AuthInfoRequired none
   Info HP-603 double side
   Location Math building 2nd floor room 219
   MakeModel HP LaserJet 600 M601 M602 M603 Postscript (recommended)
   DeviceURI socket://132.72.145.73
   Type 8425684
   </Printer>
  

  (Modify which one is the default to your convenience). Restart cups

Windows

Create a “standard IP port printer”. Use the queue name from the previous item as the port name.

The problem of using LaTeX in Hebrew is divided into two parts: typing the LaTeX source, and typesetting it using a LaTeX variant.

Typing

For typing, it is possible to use a standalone editor, or an integrated environment. Examples of the latter include TeXworks, which comes with the standard TeX distributions (e.g., MikTeX and TeXLive) and TeXnicCenter. The essential requirement is support for bidirectional (bidi) editing, preferably with some LaTeX syntax recognition. For standalone editors that run in a terminal (e.g. vim or emacs), bidi support might be provided by the terminal (One such option on Unix-type systems is urxvt, contact me for details).

In any case, it is essential that the text is saved using the UTF-8 encoding (this should be the default in any post-2005 editor).

Processing

Documents should be processed with the XeTeX variant of TeX. One advantage is that it uses the system fonts, rather than special fonts that come with TeX. XeTeX (and XeLaTeX) are provided with the standard distributions. Multilanguage support is provided by the polyglossia package (a replacement for babel), which should be loaded in the preamble. Polyglossia uses fontspec to select the fonts, and should be configured to select the correct font. This depends on the OS and on the fonts installed, please see the fontspec documentation for details. One way of loading the Hebrew support is to input the file hebrew.tex available in the bgu-utils repository, which also contains some examples (again, this file may need to be modified to use the correct fonts).

Once the document is ready, it should be processed with xelatex: xelatex stuff.tex. An integrated tex environment might have a button for that.

Alternatives

An alternative is to use LyX, a “wysiwyg” front-end to (xe)latex, which is rumoured to support bidi. Please check the web for instructions.

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