rick@sara70.UUCP (Rick Jansen) (04/09/85)
[It's more fun to compute...]
This is a reposting, this article has already been posted to
net.micro.mac and net.general.
TEX, devised by the wellknown D.E. Knuth, is the "state of the art"
program for typesetting of text, especially mathematic texts larded
with formula's. At SARA, the Amsterdam Combined Universities Computing
Centre, TEX output is produced offline using a fototypesetter. The
process of running TEX and getting your output is a process often taking
a few days. Secondly output from a fototypesetter is quite expensive,
so this is not the way to "debug" your TEX input.
PREVIEW TEX has now been realised for Macintosh. The program, with which
you can preview a DVI-file, a DVI-file actually created with TEX
and a MacWrite document containing more info are downloaded to
net.sources.mac. The DVI-file is part of the periodical "Supercomputer",
which is published by SARA and created with TEX. You should regard the
downloaded program as a demo, as it is quite unlikely that you can use
it at your site. Several things, like the fonts Preview TEX uses, are still
"hard-wired" for the SARA situation and probably still incompatible
with other sites.
If you are interested, download the stuff from net.sources.mac and let
me know what you think of it.
Rick Jansen
{seismo,decvax,philabs}!mcvax!sara70!rickrick@sara70.UUCP (Rick Jansen) (04/09/85)
[ It's more fun to compute? ]
Since my posting of the TEX Preview demo I got quite a few replies
and questions. I will try to answer repeatedly asked qestions here:
-Which version of TEX are you using?
At SARA we are still running TEX80 ('how can we stamp it out'),
the first TEX released.
This TEX is descrbed in D.E. Knuth's book "TEX and Metafont,
New directions in Typesetting", American Mathematical Society &
Digital Press, ISBN 0-932376-02-9. I don't think this book is
still available, as almost everyone is now using TEX82. TEX82
has a somewhat different DVI-file format so I have to modify
TEX Preview to make it useful for TEX82 users.
Problem: we don't have TEX82 yet.
-Which parts have been posted?
All three (3) parts have been posted. If you miss an article,
please ask somene in your neighborhood first to mail them to
you. If *I* have to mail them to you these (large) files are
transmitted by satellite, which is rather costly for the person
who is paying the phonebill.
-Bomb, id=2
Some people complained about a bomb and error, id=2.
If you put the TEX Preview program on the startup disk it WILL work.
The cause is that the fonts reside in the resource file of the
program itself, instead of in the "System"-file. I don't know
why it bombs if you do such a thing, so put the program on the
startup disk for the time being.
-Fonts etc.
The fonts reside in the resourcefile of the program itself, so
I need not post another article containing a fontsfile.
I created Macintosh-fonts matching the fonts of our phototypesetter
as close as possible. Furthermore I made these fonts TWICE the size
actually needed. ith Macintosh you get the highest resolution when
using the ImageWriter. The ImageWriter has a high-resolution mode
of TWICE the screen's resolution. When printing "High quality" this
resolution is taken advantage of by using a fontsize TWICE the requested
fontsize. The result is a character at the corret size, at a higher
resolution. (For example if a document containing NewYork-10 is
High Quality printed, the font NewYork-20 i used together with the
ImageWriter's high-resolution mode.) This is the reason 20-point
fonts are available, which you cannot even choose in MacWrite or
MacPaint. They are just there for high-quality printing.
For TEX Preview I made these double-sized fonts only, up to now.
The main goal was PREVIEW, not to create yet another output device.
So, when viewing on screen, or "Standard Quality" printing these
fonts are scaled down (20 points downto 10 points), still readable
but a bit ugly. The final TEX Preview will have a Zoom 2* feature,
which takes full advantage of the resolution of the edited fonts.
To obtain the best possible representation, use "High quality"
printing.
-Fontmapping
TEX Preview also has to decide WHICH Macintosh font to use for the
font TEX actually uses. With TEX the only thing known to the
"outside world" are the fontnames. These fontnames are stored in
the DVI-file in the so called "Postambule", the last part of the
DVI-file. These names are the interface. The mapping in the posted
previewer is still "hard-wired" for the SARA situation, and most
likely won't reflect your situation and applies only to TEX80
DVI-files. Our fontnames consist of a name, followed by the size,
e.g. "timr10": Times Roman 10 points. A not recognized fontname
is mapped to New York.
-512/128k Macintosh
TEX Preview will work with both 128 and 512k Macintosh, but printing
is quite slow on 128k Macintosh. I have not yet tried to improve
this. Previewing on screen is equally fast on both 128 and 512k,
no difference at all.
-icons
The TEX Previewer and the DVI-file should appear with an icon
of their own when downloaded and de-BinHexed. If not, try setting
the bundle-bit with SetFile or FEdit. If you don't have these
try the following: reset Macintosh and boot the disk with both
the "option" and "command" key depressed until the icon of the disk
appears. For TEX Preview the DVI-file should have the creator set
to "TEXP", the filetype to "DVIF". Again, you can set this with
SetFile.
-Development system
TEX Preview is being developed usinga Macintosh/XL (Ex Lisa)
and Lisa-Pascal.
-Mail
The USENET address in the "About TEX Preview..." MenuItem is wrong.
It should be: "{seismo,decvax,philabs}!mcvax!sara70!rick".
I will respond to ALL mail, but it appears that sometimes mail
gets lost in the mail, so be sure to receive a reply. If not,
please mail me again.
Rick Jansen
{seismo,decvax,philabs}!mcvax!sara70!rick