[comp.sys.dec] TEX Preview

phd_jacquier@gsbacd.uchicago.edu (08/11/90)

Hi,
I am considering a DEC RISC station and I have a few, possibly stupid
:-) questions.  I have done some research on SUN stations but I know
little about DEC stations.

1) Is there a readily available TEX/LATEX with a PREVIEWER that works
   with their windowing system?
2) The 3100 seems to me to be inferior to the sparcstation SS1+. Is
   this correct? 
3) In a word, why should I prefer a DEC station to a VAX station? Are they
   superior for the price? Do they have a larger software base?
4) I heard that the DEC windowing system allows me to choose either VMS or
   UNIX. I guess I could not have simultaneously UNIX and VMS windows, or 
   could I?   

Thanks a lot
Eric

grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu (Dirk Grunwald) (08/11/90)

>>>>> On 11 Aug 90 03:30:51 GMT, phd_jacquier@gsbacd.uchicago.edu said:

p> Hi,
p> I am considering a DEC RISC station and I have a few, possibly stupid
p> :-) questions.  I have done some research on SUN stations but I know
p> little about DEC stations.

p> 1) Is there a readily available TEX/LATEX with a PREVIEWER that works
p>    with their windowing system?

host foobar.colorado.edu contains an Ultrix TeX/LaTeX previewer (xtex)
with a plug-and-play configuration for PMAXen in
~ftp/SeeTeX/xtex-something-pmax-something.tar.Z Follow the makefile
rules, and grab the Install manual, which many be helpful (although
tells you how to build it from source). This binary is for Ultrix
UWS2.2 or later with Display Postscript, and uses DPS to display
postscript figures in your TeX/LaTeX documents (if you use \psfig).


p> 2) The 3100 seems to me to be inferior to the sparcstation SS1+. Is
p>    this correct? 
--

I would strongly disagree. We many SS1's and the 3100 out performs
them on interactive & computation loads. The only slight problem is
long pauses on heavy I/O.

p> 3) In a word, why should I prefer a DEC station to a VAX station? Are they
p>    superior for the price? Do they have a larger software base?
--
They are much faster.