cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) (04/20/88)
Can anyone forward me a hard pointer to Amiga Tex? We are using Tex more and more here at work and I decided that the time has come to tilt at the windmill of getting them to buy a TeX for my Amiga at home... so I curled up with the latest AmigaWorld and Amazing and I can't find ANY ads for the thing. Does it really exist -- I suspect BBN ain't gonna be very excited about getting vaporware, or demoware, or betaware. If it _does_ exist, I'll probably have to get something approximating some real literature/documentation about it to make the folks in purchasing happy. Any and all pointers, existence proofs, testimonials, etc will be gratefully appreciated. Thanks!! __ / ) Bernie Cosell /--< _ __ __ o _ BBN Labs, Cambridge, MA 02238 /___/_(<_/ (_/) )_(_(<_ cosell@bbn.com
rokicki@polya.STANFORD.EDU (Tomas G. Rokicki) (04/21/88)
In article <23631@bbn.COM>, cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes: > Can anyone forward me a hard pointer to Amiga Tex? Well, I suppose it's time to crawl out of my hole. For information on AmigaTeX, including a *free* demo disk, simply write me at: Radical Eye Software Box 2081 Stanford, CA~~94309 AmigaTeX is neither betaware nor vaporware; the first beta was in April of 1986, and the first release was on September 1, 1986. And an ad will be in the next Amazing Computing. -tom
jim@b11.UUCP (Jim Levie ) (04/22/88)
In article <23631@bbn.COM>, cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes: > Can anyone forward me a hard pointer to Amiga Tex? We are using Tex more and > more here at work and I decided that the time has come to tilt at the > windmill of getting them to buy a TeX for my Amiga at home... so I curled up > with the latest AmigaWorld and Amazing and I can't find ANY ads for the > thing. Does it really exist -- I suspect BBN ain't gonna be very excited > about getting vaporware, or demoware, or betaware. If it _does_ exist, I'll > probably have to get something approximating some real > literature/documentation about it to make the folks in purchasing happy. Any > and all pointers, existence proofs, testimonials, etc will be gratefully > appreciated. Thanks!! I've seen a couple of questions about this... AmigaTeX is available from: Tomas Rokicki Radical Eye Software Box 2081 Stanford, CA 94309 Ph (415) 326-5312 An email address that should work is: ...polya.Stanford.EDU!rokicki AmigaTeX is definitely not vaporware, betaware, or any other such strange beast. I've been using it (in various versions) for over a year now. Tomas has done a superb job. His standard package includes the best preview I've ever seen. Almost all of our text preparation in done on Amiga's running AmigaTeX. Even though we have both VMS and Unix systems with TeX installed, the usual question is, "when can I have an Amiga and TeX?". It is far faster and easier to prepare a document on the Amiga, with it's multiple windows and TeX previewer, than it is on my Sun 3/180. The Sun is a little faster, but the Amiga has a much more sophisticated previewer. I have had very few problems with AmigaTeX, and the few that I did find involved printer drivers which were reported to Tomas and fixed in less than a week! How's that for service. I think that I've gotten about 3 major updates to AmigaTeX in the last year, each better than the previous version. Tomas's latest addition has been Metafont, which works terrifically. I used to build fonts on a Microvax, not any more, the Amiga is faster and has a neat previewer for the Metafont output which is most useful in designing logos and such. Our experience has been so good that we are gradually moving everyone who needs to do much text processing off the multi-users systems and onto networked Amiga's. NOTE: Neither myself nor Remtech is affiliated in any way with Tomas Rokicki. -- =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ Jim Levie REMTECH Inc Huntsville, Al The opinions expressed above are just that. Ph. (205) 536-8581 email: uunet!ingr!b11!jim
bph@ut-emx.UUCP (Butler Hine) (04/25/88)
[one of these days I won't put this here and see what happens]
I just wanted to add my two cents and say that Tom Rockiki's AmigaTeX
is one of the best software packages for the Amiga that I've ever seen.
I have access to a Vax 11/780 here that runs TeX and outputs to a
LaserWriter. Since I got AmigaTeX, I do all of my TeXing local and
only upload the final TeX document when I want to print it out. On
a loaded Vax, TeX runs much slower than it does on my Amiga, and the
previewer saves an enourmous amount of time. It also costs less
than similar packages for the IBM-PC and the Macintosh.
Standard Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Radical Eye (i?) Software
aside from being a satisfied customer. I just like to see good work
recognized.
--
Butler Hine
Gabba, Dept. of Astronomy, University of Texas at Austin
Gabba, Austin, Tx 78712 (512) 471-4419
Hey! {allegra,ihnp4}!{ut-sally,noao}!utastro!bph
(internet) bph@astro.AS.UTEXAS.EDU
(bitnet) bph%astro.as.utexas.edu@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDUjea@ur-cvsvax (Joanne Albano) (04/28/88)
There is a TeX interpreter-like user-friendly front end
for Suns called Publisher. Is there any such beast for the
AMIGA? How much is AmigaTeX?
--
Joanne Albano, Center for Visual Science (716) 275-6848
Room 256 Meliora Hall, Univ. of Rochester, Rochester NY 14627
UUCP: {rutgers,allegra,decvax}!rochester!ur-cvsvax!jea
INTERNET: ur-cvsvax!jea@cs.rochester.edu or jea@cvs.rochester.edugore@eecs.nwu.edu (Jacob Gore) (04/30/88)
I have just started playing around with a demo version of The Publisher. (The
demo is a full-blown version, except that you cannot save the files you edit.)
It's a beautiful program. But it took a considerable amount of time just to
start up on a Sun-3/160 (the software was on an Eagle NFSed from a VAX-785,
over an unloaded Ethernet). You need at least 10 megabytes, if I recall, for
the main part -- more if you want options, such as TeX & LaTeX conversion
facilities.
If ArborText could indeed make one fit on an Amiga, my current dilemma of
choosing machines for the department office would be resolved. But...
Jacob Gore Gore@EECS.NWU.Edu
Northwestern Univ., EECS Dept. {oddjob,gargoyle,ihnp4}!nucsrl!gorebts@sas.UUCP (Brian T. Schellenberger) (05/05/88)
In article <796@ur-cvsvax.UUCP> jea@ur-cvsvax.UUCP (Joanne Albano) writes: |There is a TeX interpreter-like user-friendly front end |for Suns called Publisher. Is there any such beast for the |AMIGA? How much is AmigaTeX? There sure has been a lot of talk about AmigaTeX lately. A *brief* summary: [well, I *tried* to keep it brief] AmigaTeX is an implementation of Donald Knuth's TeX typesetting package, a document compiler that runs on machines from IBM mainframes to Unix boxes to CDCs to PCs to, yes, the Amiga. Drivers are available to get output on everything from APS phototypesetters to laser printers to dot-matrix printers to, yes, the Amiga screen. It is available in source form for `free' for only $100, or $120 for Unix. Commercial implementations for PC run around $500, and those for the Mac around $800 (I mention this only for perspective). It is *not* a wysiwyg (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) package; it is more like TROFF or SCRIBE or SCRIPT: The input file is plain ASCII and contains control sequences to do things. The TeX language is very powerful; Tom Rokicki has a "towers of hanoi" program written in TeX, for example ('though I wouldn't really recommend chucking your C compiler in favor of TeX). With the LaTeX macro package, you can get automatic section numbering, table of contents, cross-references, &c. With a simple program called "texidx" and LaTeX you can also get automatic indices. TeX does automatic justification and line-breaking, including a *superb* algorithm for hyphenating words automatically. For long documents (as opposed to one-page flyers), all this is really much better than wysiwyg. For one-page things, I must admit that wysiwyg is better, though I now use TeX for everything ('cause I know it). TeX is also absolutely state-of-the-art for typesetting mathematics. If you set lots of math, you want TeX. Period. The AmigaTeX implementation is indisputably one of the best ports ever done, for any machine (this sentiment is not just mine). Tomas Rokicki, besides being a leading light of the Amiga world (he's filled a number of Fish disks by himself) is also prominent in the TeX world, having invented the ".pk" format for storing TeX fonts and pioneered the TeX-in-C effort (which you may be running even now on your Unix system, if you've just gotten a very recent port tape, and stuff runs scads faster). [disclaimer: if any of this is exagerated, an embarressed Tom will post a correction shortly, no doubt.] It is *basically* a traditional implementation, but Tom has added an ARexx communication port between the AmigaTeX and the (included) previewer. This allows the previewer to instantaneously display pages from AmigaTeX without having to wait for the document to finish. By moving the previewer window from a custom screen to the workbench screen and using something like "conman" while running TeX, you can get formulae or custom symbols built by combining existing symbols "just right" with instantaneous feedback. It's not quite as cute as the equation editor in the Publisher, but it is nearly as useful. Also, AmigaTeX will understand all of the Amiga characters. This makes the input rather more pleasant if, like me, you have occaison to use diacritical marks fairly often. (I am secretary of the local Baha'i public information office, and lots of words relating to my Faith take diacriticals.) It sells for $200 for AmigaTeX + $100 for each printer-driver you get. The $200 includes TeX, the previewer, previewer fonts, LaTeX, AMSTeX, initex, and all the macro source files. It is distributed on 10 disks. It is usuable on a one-drive, 2-meg Amiga (I used it that way for over a year), a two-drive, 1-meg machine, or a 1-meg machine with a hard disk. It *can* be used with a 512k machine, but I wouldn't recommend it; without at least 1 meg, you can't run the LaTeX macro package, and without LaTeX, I find TeX pretty unpleasent to use. You will be missing only two things for the $300 above: A book to describe TeX itself (available at your local B. Dalton), and "texidx" (the automatic indexing program I mentioned above). I will be happy to send "texidx" (excutable and/or source, for the Amiga) and the style-file I use with it to anybody who needs it. I need to get around to telling Tom; he'll probably be happy to include it on the standard TeX distribution. To order: Tomas Rokicki / Radical Eye Software / Box 2081 / Stanford, CA 94309 He's got an electronic address, too, but I don't remember the address and doubt that it matters since everything I send to him seems to get sucked into a black hole. DISCLAIMER: I am a long-term TeX fan. A year and a half ago, when I decided to buy a home computer, I looked around to find the best TeX engine for the least money I could find. I therefore bought an Amiga so I could get the machine that ran AmigaTeX. I've never regretted that decision. This is my only connection with AmigaTeX and Tom Rokicki. ALSO: He has dropped his former distribution comany (n^2). If you gave up on AmigaTeX due to distribution problems, try again. -- --Brian. (Brian T. Schellenberger) ...!mcnc!rti!sas!bts . . . now at 2400 baud, so maybe I'll stop bothering to flame long includes.
UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer) (05/05/88)
I want to second all the nice things Brian said about AmigaTeX. I *do* use it on a 512K 2 floppy machine, and tho there are limitations am quite happy. It is true that you cannot run LaTeX, but those new to TeX should know that TeX vs. LaTeX (a huge set of macros built on top of Plain TeX) that this is one of those religious issues---sort of like C (==TeX) vs. Ada (==LaTeX). 8-) 8-) 8-) I don't mean to start a TeX war. LaTeX is really pretty good. One caveat. I don't have the *latest* version of AmigaTeX. Maybe it has become a little bigger and doesn't fit on a 512 machine so well. (I have about 356K free when I run it, and that drops to about 17K during the run.)
phil@titan.rice.edu (William LeFebvre) (05/06/88)
In article <493@sas.UUCP> bts@sas.UUCP (Brian T. Schellenberger) writes: >There sure has been a lot of talk about AmigaTeX lately. A *brief* summary: >[well, I *tried* to keep it brief] It's hard to be brief about something so good....... >The AmigaTeX implementation is indisputably one of the best ports ever done, >for any machine (this sentiment is not just mine). It is, in my opinion, much better than the environemnt available on the Sun. This is primarily because the previewer will start viewing page 1 as soon as TeX is done processing it---that is, *while* TeX is still churning on the rest of the document. It fully utilizes the machine's multitasking. >The $200 includes TeX, the previewer, previewer fonts, LaTeX, AMSTeX, initex, >and all the macro source files. It is distributed on 10 disks. Something very important that you left out of that list: BibTeX. This is a separate program, much like IdxTeX is separate, that makes doing bibliographies almost trivial. This is essential to anyone working on a serious paper (like a doctoral dissertation). It's still verion .98i, but Tom said he would work on getting the latest version (.99c) working (he may even have done it already). The publication of the TeX User's Group, called TUGBoat, has an article about AmigaTeX in the most recent issue (volume 9 number 1) written by Tom Rokicki himself. "The Commodore Amiga: A magic TeX machine", pp 40--41. William LeFebvre Department of Computer Science Rice University <phil@Rice.edu> Disclaimer, disclaimer, etc. I'm just a satisfied customer, etc.
vkr@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath K. Rao) (05/17/88)
I concur with all the good things said about AmigaTeX and would like to add that the support from Tom has been better than support for any other software I own. In article <671@thalia.rice.edu>, phil@titan.rice.edu (William LeFebvre) writes: > Something very important that you left out of that list: BibTeX. ^^^^^^ Is there any hope a BibTeX that will work with AMSTeX? I got to have AMSTeX for my papers. Does anybody know of spelling checkers that will eat TeX source? I was going to hack MicroSpell (Fish 101) but would rather not reinvent the wheel. The catch is that of course, it should not cry wolf at $MU_*(\Omega_0SO(n))$. Disclaimer, disclaimer, etc. I'm just a satisfied customer, etc.
paolucci@snll-arpagw.UUCP (Sam Paolucci) (05/17/88)
In article <523@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu> vkr@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath K. Rao) writes: >I concur with all the good things said about AmigaTeX and would like to add >that the support from Tom has been better than support for any other software >I own. > >In article <671@thalia.rice.edu>, phil@titan.rice.edu (William LeFebvre) writes: >> Something very important that you left out of that list: BibTeX. > ^^^^^^ >Is there any hope a BibTeX that will work with AMSTeX? I got to have AMSTeX >for my papers. >Does anybody know of spelling checkers that will eat TeX source? I was going >to hack MicroSpell (Fish 101) but would rather not reinvent the wheel. The >catch is that of course, it should not cry wolf at $MU_*(\Omega_0SO(n))$. I'm working on porting a program that will remove all TeX specific commands. The resulting file should be clean enough to be passed through any spellchecker. I'll post it when I finish it. > > Disclaimer, disclaimer, etc. I'm just a satisfied customer, etc. -+= SAM =+- "the best things in life are free" ARPA: paolucci@snll-arpagw.llnl.gov
rokicki@polya.STANFORD.EDU (Tomas G. Rokicki) (05/17/88)
> Does anybody know of spelling checkers that will eat TeX source?
I'm working on that, along with index generation and dvidvi, as a
freebie to be available in a month or so . . .
Many thanks for all the kind words, guys!
-tom
--
/-- Tomas Rokicki /// Box 2081 Stanford, CA 94309
/ o Radical Eye Software /// (415) 326-5312
\ / | . . . or I \\\/// Gig 'em, Aggies! (TAMU EE '85)
V | won't get dressed \XX/ Bay area Amiga Developer's GroupEgaryo@masscomp.UUCP (Gary Oberbrunner) (05/18/88)
In article <523@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu> vkr@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath K. Rao) writes:
:Does anybody know of spelling checkers that will eat TeX source? I was going
:to hack MicroSpell (Fish 101) but would rather not reinvent the wheel. The
:catch is that of course, it should not cry wolf at $MU_*(\Omega_0SO(n))$.
:
We have a program here at Masscomp called delatex; I think it came with the C
TeX distribution. I think (I'll have to check on copyrights) that I could
mail it to you or post it if there was enough demand.
It removes all TeX and LaTeX constructs and acts as a filter, so you can then
spell-check the result. I've used it for a couple of papers, and it seems to
work fine. Mail to me at ...!{harvard,ulowell,uunet,allegra}!masscomp!garyo.
As always,
Gary
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Remember, Truth is not beauty; (617)692-6200x2445
Information is not knowledge; Beauty is not love; Gary Oberbrunner
Knowledge is not wisdom; Love is not music; ...!masscomp!garyo
Wisdom is not truth; Music is the best. - FZ ....garyo@masscomp
--
Remember, Truth is not beauty; x2445
Information is not knowledge; Beauty is not love; Gary Oberbrunner
Knowledge is not wisdom; Love is not music; ...!masscomp!garyo
Wisdom is not truth; Music is the best. - FZ ....garyo@masscomp