furuta@uw-june (Richard Furuta) (11/22/84)
I figured this might be of general interest to Unix TeX sites. Three updates of importance in the Unix TeX distribution: (1) The current version of TeX in the distribution is now 1.2 (2) The current version of LaTeX in the distribution is now 2.07 (3) The distribution includes TeX and tangle for the SUN II workstation We also discovered that an earlier change introduced a bug in the eof handling code in tangext.c and weavext.c. We believe that the conditions that exercise this bug do not arise in tangle or weave use since it involves included files and tangle and weave don't do this. TeX 1.2 incorporates minor bugfixes. To quote from the announcement from David Fuchs: Not too much to get excited about: It neatens up an error message or two, as well as implements a feature we all thought was there already but was missing due to a think-o. Specifically, David Chapman recently complained that there's no way to cause TeX to redisplay the current context of an error. Prof. Knuth intended that typing "0" to the "?" error prompt (meaning "delete zero tokens") should do the trick. Now it does. Note that 1.1 and 1.2 produce identical DVI files given the same input, so users shouldn't suffer any ill effects from the change. And from Leslie Lamport's announcement of LaTeX 2.07: The significant changes in version 2.07 that are visible to the user are: * Renaming the " command of version 2.06 to \@. * Replacing \newlist by the more general \newenvironment and \renewenvironment commands. * The \cline command for drawing horizontal lines across selected columns in an 'array' or 'tabular' environment. * A new document substyle 'leqno' for putting equation numbers on the left. * A new 'abstract' environment has been added, and the \author command has been improved. * An new document style for producing camera-ready two-column output for ACM conference proceedings. * Cross-referencing of footnotes now works. There are also a number of changes that make it easier to write document styles. With this version, I have come to the end of all currently planned enhancements. This does not mean that there will be no more changes, but signifies that convergence is in sight. I hope to have the new manual and the final version of LaTeX completed by winter. The Sun TeX incorporates work by Rusty Wright of U.C. San Diego, Charles Perkins and Mike Harrison of U.C. Berkeley, and Steve Correll of Lawrence Livermore Labs. The Sun TeX uses the pc distributed by Sun with their terminal. You'll need a pretty up to date version of the pc compiler, assembler, loader, etc. People have encountered a number of bugs in earlier versions. We built the system here on a Sun II with version 1.1 of the software (diskless, with 2 megabytes of physical memory). The workstation arrived in late October so the software on it has to be pretty close to the most recent. The results are startling to me. I am finding that the Sun TeX is running at about the same speed as the Vax 780 TeX on unloaded machines. In fact, the Sun TeX may be a little faster under these circumstances. The User CPU time is slightly more but the elapsed time is often slightly less. It's hard to tell anything about the system time. Of course, the Sun bogs down much faster with increasing load than does the Vax. The only parts of the distribution ported to the Sun are TeX and tangle. Weave may also work but has not been tested. The distribution tape is available from here. Please send a copy of your 4.1 or 4.2 bsd source license and a check for $75 made to the University of Washington. My address is: Richard Furuta/Computer Science FR-35/University of Washington/Seattle, WA 98195. We can't take purchase orders, sorry. If your organization can only buy things with purchase orders, contact us for alternate instructions. The distribution is presently available on standard 1/2 inch magnetic tape. If you have a Sun with the streamer tape drive and can't read the standard magnetic tapes, please contact us before sending in an order since the costs are going to be different. We haven't made the arrangements yet to produce the streamer tapes but it is something we plan to do. --Rick