edgar@function.mps.ohio-state.edu (Gerald Edgar) (02/03/90)
Some remarks about the new LamS-TeX macro package. It was written by Michael Spivak. It is now available, see the ad in the December Notices of the AMS (the page with the complicated commutative diagram). LamS-TeX is a set of macros that sits on top of AmS-TeX. It is intended for writing mathematical text using TeX. The package includes AmS-TeX version 2.0. But it does not include the new AMS fonts that would be required to use all of the features of AmS-TeX (msam, msbm, cmmib, cmbsy). The package does not include TeX itself. If you know about AmS-TeX, then you know most of the features available here. The main additions: (1) Symbolic cross-references. This is handled as in LaTeX. Theorems, Tables, Figures, Sections, References (and anything else you choose) are automatically numbered. You can assign a symbolic name to them, and use that name elsewhere. The proper number will be inserted. When the numbering changes, these numbers will be changed, too (although perhaps not until the succeding time the file is TeXed). (2) Commutative diagrams (!!!). Much more extensive than the diagrams possible with AmS-TeX alone. Five new fonts (and Metafont source) are supplied for this: arrow parts at many different angles. Now I am not a large user of commutative diagrams: probably there are fewer than 10 diagrams in all the papers I ever published. But I once needed a diagram with a diagonal arrow, and was unhappy to find that AmS-TeX did not know how to do this. I find it difficult to imagine any diagram that LamS-TeX will not do. (I could imagine using this feature even in papers on graph theory to draw graphs. Or to draw geometrical figures ...) I think this one feature is the main reason mathematicians will be interested in LamS-TeX. (3) Tables. See the ad for a sample of a complicated table. (4) Many other features that I have not tried. For example, an external program to use to alphabetize an (automatically produced) index. Negatives: (5) It is very big. I did run it on my Macintosh (2 meg RAM) using ctex running under MPW. The doc suggests that it runs with TeXtures, also. HOWEVER, it is too big for the default version of OzTeX (ver. 1.2). Apparently OzTeX sets the hash size at 2500, but LamS-TeX requires 2696. [Knuth originally said that 2100 is "ample".] And of course you will want to define a few macros of your own after LamS-TeX is loaded ... There is a \purge feature to remove parts of LamS-TeX that are not needed and recover their space. But it recovers only the main memory space, and does not allow more multiletter control sequences. (6) A question I received by email: > Please let us know what you think of LAmS-TeX after > using it for a bit; I've got lots of stuff in LaTeX: > any hope of a painless conversion? Answer: NO. LamS-TeX is NOT LaTeX; the syntax is different, the philosophy is different. Basically, LamS-TeX is more like plain TeX. ---- Gerald A. Edgar Department of Mathematics Bitnet: EDGAR@OHSTPY The Ohio State University Internet: edgar@mps.ohio-state.edu Columbus, OH 43210 ...!{att,pyramid}!osu-cis!shape.mps.ohio-state.edu!edgar -- Gerald A. Edgar Department of Mathematics Bitnet: EDGAR@OHSTPY The Ohio State University Internet: edgar@mps.ohio-state.edu Columbus, OH 43210 ...!{att,pyramid}!osu-cis!shape.mps.ohio-state.edu!edgar