furuta@MIMSY.UMD.EDU.UUCP (05/16/86)
I've just received an announcement of the Macintosh version of the TeX formatting package. It's available now in prerelease form ($495 from Addison-Wesley/contact Brenda Cavallaro at (617) 944-6795---price includes version 1.0 update when released). The package corresponds to TeX version 2.0. The package requires a 512K Mac or larger with at least 800 Kbytes of disk. It supports the PostScript printers and the ImageWriter (I and II). They use the new TeX Computer Modern fonts and also say they support the PostScript printers' built-in Helvetica and Times fonts. They include a built-in editor that handles multiple document windows and handles very large documents quickly (multiple megabyte files with quick relocation within the file---they quote a one second time to move from point to point in a 1 megabyte file using an Apple HD20 hard disk). They also provide a built-in previewer. LaTeX is not yet included. An enhancement promised for the first released version is the ability to paste in pictures from MacPaint and MacDraw---that's not in the prerelease yet. The stated timings seem to be very good---10 to 20 seconds per page for TeX processing and 2 to 4 seconds to display a new typeset page. They don't say how long it takes to print a page on the Imagewriter. These timings compare very favorably with the IBM PC versions. The XT TeX's took about two times as long to process a page. The AT versions took about half the time per page. Since I'm sending this note to some lists that I do not moderate, let me state that I have no commercial interest in this product or in the firm that created it (Barry Smith of Kellerman and Smith in Portland, OR). I have known the author of the port for a number of years and we both serve on the steering committee for the TeX Users Group. --Rick