drstrip@intvax.UUCP (David R. Strip) (01/04/91)
I was asking about a fatal format error on plain.fmt created with sbtex30 version of initex. It seems that initex can run out of disk space while dumping and not complain. Furthermore, when it exits, it releases some temporary disk files (I guess), and therefore you still have free disk space, even though the .fmt is bogus from an out of disk error. Anyway, plain.fmt should be about 140K, not the 72K I initially got. The good news. So far, sbtex30 seems to be GREAT. It is 30-40% faster than my microTeX version 1.5A, and takes less memory for the code, allowing .tex files that exceed memory on microtex to complete. More complete comparisons reported in TUGBOAT are consistent with this experience. This pc version of TeX is highly recommended, and you can't beat the price.