laser-lovers@uw-beaver (01/13/84)
From Furuta@WASHINGTON.ARPA Thu Jan 12 20:43:21 1984
This set of messages is probably not quite appropriate for
Laser-Lovers. However after discussion with mark@umcp-cs, I've
decided that there is no other list that he could send his question to
that would reach the audience he wants to reach. I'd appreciate it if
further anecdotal replies could be sent to him directly (and I also
hope he's willing to summarize them for the list). If you have any
definitive response, though, please feel free to send them to the
list. I'd be especially interested if anyone has any kind of hard
evidence about the kinds of resources that "normal" use of troff takes
(i.e., with all the filters like eqn and tbl) and how this compares to
Scribe.
--Rick
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1) 10-Jan Mark Weiser Which is faster: Tex, Scribe, Troff.
2) 11-Jan To: mark%umcp-cs@CSN Re: Which is faster: Tex, Scribe, Troff.
3) 12-Jan dietz%usc-cse%USC-EC Re: Which is faster: Tex, Scribe, Troff
Message 1 -- ************************
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Date: 10 Jan 84 22:19:16 EST (Tue)
From: Mark Weiser <mark%umcp-cs@CSNet-Relay>
Return-Path: <mark%umcp-cs@CSNet-Relay>
Subject: Which is faster: Tex, Scribe, Troff.
To: laser-lovers@washington, unix-tex@washington
Via: UMCP-CS; 10 Jan 84 22:26-EST
A large number of cycles on our Vaxes are eaten up with troff jobs.
If we switch to Tex (possible) or Scribe (unlikely because of price)
will things get much worse or much better?
Message 2 -- ************************
Mail-From: FURUTA created at 11-Jan-84 19:24:27
Date: Wed 11 Jan 84 19:24:27-PST
From: Richard Furuta <Furuta@WASHINGTON.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Which is faster: Tex, Scribe, Troff.
To: mark%umcp-cs@CSNET-CIC.ARPA
cc: Furuta@WASHINGTON.ARPA
In-Reply-To: Message from "Mark Weiser <mark%umcp-cs@CSNet-Relay>" of Tue 10 Jan 84 22:19:16-PST
Mark,
[...text deleted...]
My feeling on the question is that TeX is slower than Scribe,
at least on Tops-20. It is hard to say what the answer is on Unix
since Unix Scribe seems to be particularly slow. I am not sure how
things compare with troff, particularly since troff tends to need many
processes for eqn, tbl, etc. Things certainly aren't going to get
much better but I can't say whether or not they will get much worse.
The people at the Locke computer center here estimated that
Scribe would cost their users something like 75 cents a page while TeX
cost something like $1.15 a page (day rates). Runoff was down in the
20 to 30 cent range, if I remember correctly.
The people at the Applied Physics Lab report something like a
third of their machine is devoted to text processing. They don't
consider this undesirable, though, since they feel that it pays off to
have the text processing done there. They just include it when they
estimate what they will be needing.
--Rick
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Message 3 -- ************************
Return-Path: <@USC-ECL:dietz@USC-CSE>
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Date: 12 Jan 1984 14:20-PST
From: dietz%usc-cse%USC-ECL@SRI-NIC
To: mark%umcp-cs@CSNET-CIC
Cc: laser-lovers@washington
Subject: Re: Which is faster: Tex, Scribe, Troff
Via: Usc-Cse; 12 Jan 84 15:35:54
We don't have Tex, but Scribe is quite slow, probably slower than Troff.
Paul Dietz
dietz%usc-cse@USC-ECLA
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