furuta@MIMSY.UMD.EDU (Richard Furuta) (02/22/86)
I have been hearing rumors recently that the Macintosh TeX was about to be released so I decided to call Barry Smith directly and hear the news first hand. It is true. The TeX for the Macintosh will run on a 512K Mac or a Mac+. It incorporates a previewer and an editor for the TeX source. Plans are for it to support inclusion of Macintosh-generated graphics through the \special escape in the TeX. Barry's apparently figured out a way to allow the TeX to run in the background, incidentally. The quoted speed is in the range of 12 to 15 seconds per page. The output devices supported are the Imagewriter and the LaserWriter. It will be sold by Addison-Wesley and the price is expected to be $495. A prerelease version will be available to experienced TeX users on March 15 and the actual release is scheduled for June 15th. For information on the prerelease, contact Barry Smith at 534 SW 3rd Ave., Portland, OR 97204. I don't think that they have LaTeX running on the 512K yet but it does run on the Mac+. I am told that they are spending the time between now and the release date bringing the TeX up to the current revision level and at that time the LaTeX, hopefully, will fit (there was a change to TeX memory management in version 1.3). I've spoken to a number of people who have been running test versions of the package and the comments have been favorable. I know that Barry has spent the past year and a half working on the port and so it should be in pretty good shape by now. --Rick