arnold@gatech.UUCP (Arnold Robbins) (05/17/84)
[Document it and call it a feature]
Does anyone know anything about Donald Knuth's TeX (and MetaFont) system(s)?
In particular: What language(s) is it written in?
Where do I get it?
Is it available cheap for universities?
Otherwise, what does it cost?
Will it handle laser printers?
Probable machines it would be run on:
Vax 11/780 running 4.x BSD. \
Cyber 170 running NOS. >--> Xerox 9700 laser printer
IBM 4341 running VM. /
Preferred implementation languages: C, Pascal, PL/1.
Thanks for any information you may have!
--
Arnold Robbins
CSNET: arnold@gatech
ARPA: arnold%gatech.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
UUCP: ...!{akgua, allegra, ihnp4, rlgvax, sb1, ut-sally}!gatech!arnold
"Shoot low, boys, they're ridin' shetlands."chris@umcp-cs.UUCP (05/19/84)
(As this might (should!) be of general interest, I'm posting this
reply rather than mailing it.)
From: arnold@gatech.UUCP
Does anyone know anything about Donald Knuth's TeX (and
MetaFont) system(s)?
TeX is available now. MetaFont will likely become available in a
few months. (It's being converted to WEB, and all the font
descriptions will probably need still more changes.)
What language(s) is it written in?
WEB, which is ``Pascal with macros and documentation''. It is
essentially Pascal, with some of the more obvious gaping Pascal
language problems filled in (macros (but not separate compilation,
sigh)).
Where do I get it?
The University of Washington has been distributing Unix TeX. Send
mail to uw-beaver!furuta or furuta@washington.
Is it available cheap for universities?
Yes. I think there is a tape handling charge.
Will it handle laser printers?
Of course. There are interfaces for the Versatec V80 and the Imagen
Imprint-10, which I know work unmodified, and some other interfaces
which I can't say anything about, not having the devices to experiment
with....
Probable machines it would be run on:
Vax 11/780 running 4.x BSD.
Fine; the hard work of setting up TeX for 4.1BSD and fixing the
Pascal compiler to have an ``other'' ``case''-clause has already
been done.
Cyber 170 running NOS.
Dunno if anyone has done anything for that.
IBM 4341 running VM.
It runs on 4341s running CMS, I think. There are a couple of bugs
in IBM's Pascal compiler that have to be worked around, as I recall.
Xerox 9700 laser printer
I don't know of any driver for that, but drivers aren't too terribly
hard to write.
Preferred implementation languages: C, Pascal, PL/1.
Some of the device drivers are in C. There should be one (DVI2LGP,
I'd guess) in WEB or Pascal.
Now---for those who have been curious enough to read through this
and are still wondering ``What's TeX?'': TeX is a typesetting
system. Imagine what troff would be like if it weren't ugly inside
and outside. That's pretty close to what TeX is. TeX can handle
a practially infinite number of fonts (well, 256 in the current
implementation). It has an internal resolution better than that
of visible light (one ``scaled point''---scaled points are the
internal units of resolution---is 1/65536'th of a point; one point
is 1/72'th of an inch; so one scaled point is 1/4736286.72'th of
an inch).
There is another set of macros available (though problems with
fonts are delaying release) called LaTeX. These were inspired
by Scribe, so I imagine that LaTeX and Scribe do things similarly.
>From what I've seen, LaTeX is quite fancy: it has commands for
building tables, figures, Tables of Contents, sections, line
and circle drawings, etc.
TeX still needs a few more things, like
- an interface to refer;
- fancy drawing stuff like pic for ditroff; and
- a way to print stuff on low-resolution typewriter-style devices
(i.e., daisy wheel printers).
The TeXbook is available in bookstores now (``The TeXbook'',
D. E. Knuth, Addison-Wesley). This is a complete description
of TeX from the user's viewpoint.
Oh well, this article is long enough already. \bye % Plain TeX's
% file-ender, of
% course.
--
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci (301) 454-7690
UUCP: {seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!chris
CSNet: chris@umcp-cs ARPA: chris@marylandfuruta@uw-june (Richard Furuta) (05/27/84)
Recently I've been getting a number of queries relating to the recent messages about TeX for Unix. At the bottom of this message is our general note about obtaining TeX for Vaxen running 4.1 and 4.2 bsd. Please note that the price and requirements are the same whether or not you are a university. We don't have anything available for other Vax versions of Unix. We don't have anything that runs on PDP-11s. Textset in Ann Arbor, Michigan has a version of TeX for the Sun terminal and I hear rumors that there is one for the Apollo. I don't think there is a TeX for the Cyber available yet. Some people in Sweden are the primary contacts for this. There were some problem with getting the previous version of TeX running on the Cyber because of the Pascal. I think that there is a driver available for the Xerox 9700 under Unix. If you are interested in this, please contact me directly and I'll point you at my source. Well, in any case, here is the general information: Thanks for your inquiry about TeX82. The version of TeX82 we have runs under Berkeley Unix, versions 4.1 and 4.2. We understand that it also runs under 4.1c without some difficulty. The tape we send out includes the TeX82 sources and change files, the WEB system sources and change files, fonts for devices at 200 pixels/inch and 240 pixels/inch, a partial set of fonts for 300 pixel/inch and 480 pixel/inch devices, DVI device translators for the Symbolics Laser Printer, the Imagen Laser Printer, and the Versatec printer/plotter, and various other programs and macro packages (in particular, a prerelease of the LaTeX macro package and the first release of the AmSTeX macro package). The tape is written at 1600 bpi in tar format. It currently is about 25 megabytes long but since most of this is taken up by the fonts, most sites can run TeX using much less disk space. I would guess that a site with only one device could run with perhaps 5 to 10 megabytes of disk---less if the sources also were not kept on line. In order to get the tape, send me a check for $50 made to the University of Washington plus a copy of your 4.1 or 4.2 bsd source license (the tape includes a modified version of Berkeley's pc compiler, hence the requirement for the 4.1 or 4.2 license). My address is: Richard Furuta Department of Computer Science, FR-35 University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195 The amount we ask for the tape is intended to just recover our costs (we are prohibited from making any kind of profit by University regulations). Consequently, we would appreciate it if foreign sites could increase the amount of their check as appropriate to pay the added postal costs necessary for mailing the tape ($60 U.S. seems about right). Since we are not a service organization, we cannot officially guarantee that the material on the tape will run on your computer or output device and cannot guarantee any maintenance. However, it has been our experience that only a very few problems have been reported by sites trying to get TeX to run. We also expect that Stanford will continue to fix bugs in TeX for at least the forseeable future. Please note that it is not necessary for you to send any of your Western Electric Unix Licenses---only the 4.1 or 4.2 bsd license from Berkeley. But please do remember to include the 4.1 or 4.2 bsd license---we've had to write or call many sites asking for it which delays things considerably, as well as increasing our costs. Please do not send purchase orders as we have no facilities for handling them. The present distribution is the latest version of TeX82 available to us (presently 1.0). TeX82 has been frozen, and the only changes that will be made in the future will be bug fixes. Please be aware, though, that even though TeX has been frozen, this does not mean that the current Unix TeX distribution is the "ultimate" one. Lamport's LaTeX macro package is expected to be released for general use within the next few months (this package will provide a Scribe-like interface). The TeX group at Stanford will be working on the fonts for the next year or so so these will be changing although TeX itself should be pretty stable after Version 1.0. Additionally, we are adding to the Unix distribution tape as we receive program contributions from sites already running TeX. I have a mailing list which receives notification of updates to TeX. The list is also available for those of you who may wish to address questions to the other recipients (its address is unix-tex@Washington from the Arpanet and CSNet, decvax!uw-beaver!unix-tex from uucp). If you want to be included on this list, just let me know. --Rick Furuta@Washington (ARPAnet or CSNet) or ...decvax!uw-beaver!uw-june!furuta (uucp) ...ucbvax!lbl-csam!uw-beaver!uw-june!furuta