[comp.sys.mac] Info on TeX

donch@tekirl.TEK.COM (Don Chitwood) (09/02/87)

Does anyone have experience with a program called TeX or Text or some other
phonetic spelling?  The one I'm after was written by Barry Smith and another
fellow.  It is apparently very powerful.  I'm interested is how 
easy it is to use.  Does it require a knowledge of arcane function keys, a la
VI in unix?  Or is it Mac-ish and friendly?  Also, does it have page layout
capabilities such as Ready-Set-Go or Pagemaker?  

Thanks for any responses!

Don Chitwood
Tek Labs
Tektronix, Inc.

hallett@macbeth.steinmetz (Jeff R Hallett) (09/03/87)

In article <725@tekirl.TEK.COM> donch@tekirl.TEK.COM (Don Chitwood) writes:
>
>Does anyone have experience with a program called TeX or Text or some other
>phonetic spelling?  The one I'm after was written by Barry Smith and another
>fellow.  It is apparently very powerful.  I'm interested is how 
>easy it is to use.  Does it require a knowledge of arcane function keys, a la
>VI in unix?  Or is it Mac-ish and friendly?  Also, does it have page layout
>capabilities such as Ready-Set-Go or Pagemaker?  
>
>Thanks for any responses!
>
>Don Chitwood
>Tek Labs
>Tektronix, Inc.


Well, TeX is a computer typesetting language and an extremely powerful
one at that.  You can do just about anything with it, but like most
powerful command-language things, the learning curve is quite steep.
You can use any editor you like since TeX accepts text files with
embedded commands.  By the way, it was written by Donald Knuth.

It is not easy to use, but there is a macro package available for it
written by Leslie Lamport called LaTeX.  This is a structured version
of TeX that makes it very easy to create professional-looking,
well-structured documents quite quickly and painlessly.

The two TeX packages for the Mac are MacTeX (FTL Systems) and TeXtures
(Addison-Wesley).  They are good adaptations of the TeX environment to
the Macintosh, however, I have yet to see WYSIWYG TeX for the Mac (it
exists for the Suns).

You can send me mail if you would like more information.

Jeffrey A. Hallett               (hallett@ge-crd.arpa   hallett@desdemona.uucp)
Software Technology Program
General Electric Corporate Research and Development

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