wizard@sosaria.imp.com (Chris Brand) (05/24/90)
In article <384@ncc1701.stgt.sub.org> space@ncc1701.stgt.sub.org (Lars Soltau) says: > In article <1990May16.225905.3743@watcsc.waterloo.edu> adf@watcsc.waterloo.edu > (Andrew Dellano Fernandes) writes: > >I was wondering if anyone knew anything about Amiga \LaTeX, \TeX, and other > >bits of goodies in the public domain. I know that Radical Eye Software makes > >an Amiga \TeX, but heard that there were umpteen billion public domian \TeX's > >out there that were every bit as good. Any truth? Sources? > > Just can't be. The AmigaTeX preview alone is worth the money. The TeX > implementation is almost as fast on my 68000 A2000 as the PC TeX on my 386SX > (16MHz) in the office. ARexx port, previewing while TeX is still running, > support of IFF pictures with rescaling and various dithering techniques, > you name it, they have it. Rokicki has used huge amounts of time to tune > AmigaTeX and to implement every possible gimmick. What is more, he is the > inventor of CTeX, the C translation of TeX. He is a prominent figure in the > TeX Users Group (TUG) and in the Amiga PD scene. I'm sure that AmigaTeX is an excellent product, however it's very expensive, at least in Europe. 500 US$ are a normal price for the package, without special drivers. CommonTex does not (yet, from the latest information of the author) include things like CAD-files input, Arexx port and so on. It does support resizable IFF import and even PBM import. And it costs only a fraction or, if you know somebody with a copy, nothing, since it's PD (more or less, you can copy it anyway). -- ------------------------------------ Chris Brand - wizard@sosaria.imp.com "Justice is the possession and doing of what one is entitled to" - Platon ------------------------------------
xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (06/01/90)
I'd just like to add my words of support to the others for Radical Eye, Tom Rokiki (will I ever learn to spell that name?) and Amiga TeX. A while back, I was essentially bullied into doing some METAFONT programming. This meant I had to learn TeX, learn METAFONT, create a development environment, code the required symbols in METAFONT, use them in TeX for proof-of-usability, transfer the whole mess to a Sun system, and install it. I bought Amiga TeX, Amiga METAFONT, a TeX deiver for my NEC 5200 printer, Knuth's METAFONT and TeX books, and sat down to learn. Three weeks later, I had the stuff sold to my customer and installed on his site. From using both the Sun and the Amiga TeX and Metafont, there is no comparision; Amiga TeX is faster, better, showed no bugs, included a marvelously clear reference manual, was better organized, and the support was great. I would recommend that anyone doing TeX or METAFONT on _any_ system investigate doing all the work on the Amiga using Radical Eye's software and just transfer the files to whatever system wants them when they produce clean copy on the Amiga. You'll save more in labor costs than the Amiga software cost you, inside a month if you are a heavy TeX user, and probably pay for the Amiga within five to six months. Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>