garym@cognos.uucp@uunet.uu.net (Gary Murphy) (08/24/90)
I really didn't expect to receive such an instant response to my posting!
Many thanks to all who took the time to enlighten a poor novice!
Basically, dosTeX appears to be a dinosaur from some lost age, having
been usurped by the warmer-blooded sbTeX. sb30 no longer suffers from
requiring different environment values from the CDVICGA and DVIEPS
viewers, no longer requires the memory limits to be specified at preload
time, and is generally smaller (slightly) and faster. sb30 also
includes documentation, although you must have the system installed before
you can read it (the .doc file is in TeX) -- when I first installed dosTeX,
I had a problem of obtaining a test suite, sb30.doc solves two problems
in one pass!
sb30 also encourages letting sleeping fonts lay --- there is no 'preload'
utility, and the TeX uses a complicated and fully configurable (to them
what has the gnosis) memory system which can accomodate up to 32k words
and handle run-time swapping of fonts to a user-specified swapfile location
(RAM drive recommended). As an owner of a lowly 640k AT, I can't say
very much about this feature, but I can say that I can print the 6 page
documentation and the TeX->DVI stage will run inside of 440K (the documents
claim 570k free is enough for the full 32k-words).
Several respondents alluded to the emTeX as the next generation after sb,
although none had actually used it. After reading about the font-swapping
in sb30, I rather suspect the 'em' in the title has nothing to do with
typeset spacing, and instead implies 'Extended/Expanded Memory' or some
such -- not having either (except at work where, yes, they have no TeX),
I'll need a better sales pitch before I convert.
Again, many thanks and praises to all those who responded.
--
Gary Murphy uunet!mitel!sce!cognos!garym
(garym%cognos.uucp@uunet.uu.net)
(613) 738-1338 x5537 Cognos Inc. P.O. Box 9707 Ottawa K1G 3N3
"There are many things which do not concern the process" - Joan of Arcfanchiot@acf4.NYU.EDU (Sergio H. Fanchiotti) (08/28/90)
One small point about TeX implementations: If there is a co- -processor installed, does any implementation make use of it or it is not needed in TeX's manipulations ? Thanks in advance for any comment Sergio Fanchiotti fanchiot@acf4.nyu.edu Ps: Although I use Sbtex, the Emtex package IS very complete and has an excelent set of dvi drivers for previewing and printing. Also I suspect that the em in front are the initials of the author ( yes I know that it doesn't take much to realze that).
dhosek@sif.claremont.edu (Hosek, Donald A.) (08/29/90)
In article <7080001@acf4.NYU.EDU>, fanchiot@acf4.NYU.EDU (Sergio H. Fanchiotti) writes... > One small point about TeX implementations: If there is a co- > -processor installed, does any implementation make use of it > or it is not needed in TeX's manipulations ? AmigaTeX can use a coprocessor and it does speed things up. None of the MS-DOS implementations have coprocessor capability (I could be wrong, though). It might be less useful in the 80x86 architecture than it is in the 680x0 architecture. >Ps: Although I use Sbtex, the Emtex package IS very complete and has >an excelent set of dvi drivers for previewing and printing. Also I >suspect that the em in front are the initials of the author ( yes I know >that it doesn't take much to realze that). The emTeX drivers have one great weakness: they use PXL files (or at least the last release I looked at did). Arguments against PXL files: they're big (PK files average around 17% the size of PXL files. Maybe some of you have gobs of disk space to blow on this sort of thing, but most micro people I know don't), they only support 128 characters in a font (a big problem for the new generations of fonts being created with ISO 8859 coding). -dh And em is for Eberhard Mattes. SB also is the initials of the two authors (Wayne Sullivan and someone whose name no one can ever remember). --- Don Hosek TeX, LaTeX, and Metafont support, consulting dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu installation and production work. dhosek@ymir.bitnet Free Estimates. uunet!jarthur!ymir Phone: 714-625-0147 finger dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu for more info
wilker@descartes.math.purdue.edu (Clarence Wilkerson) (08/29/90)
I believe the em in emtex refers to Eberhardt Mattes, the packager and organizer.
naras@stat.fsu.edu (B. Narasimhan) (08/29/90)
In article <8221@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> dhosek@sif.claremont.edu writes: > >The emTeX drivers have one great weakness: they use PXL files (or >at least the last release I looked at did)..... Really? I have had no problems using pk files with emTeX ever since it was announced by Eberhard Mattes on the net. In any case, pxl files are no longer the problem. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- B. Narasimhan Supercomputer Computations Research Institute & naras@stat.fsu.edu Dept. of Statistics, FSU, Tallahassee, FL 32306. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
wjw@eba.eb.ele.tue.nl (Willem Jan Withagen) (08/31/90)
In article <8221@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> dhosek@sif.claremont.edu writes: >In article <7080001@acf4.NYU.EDU>, fanchiot@acf4.NYU.EDU (Sergio H. Fanchiotti) writes... >>Ps: Although I use Sbtex, the Emtex package IS very complete and has >>an excelent set of dvi drivers for previewing and printing. Also I > >The emTeX drivers have one great weakness: they use PXL files (or >at least the last release I looked at did). Arguments against PXL >files: they're big (PK files average around 17% the size of PXL >files. Maybe some of you have gobs of disk space to blow on this >sort of thing, but most micro people I know don't), they only >support 128 characters in a font (a big problem for the new >generations of fonts being created with ISO 8859 coding). Well I've got to turn you in on this one. Not only can it use PK-fonts, But it has something more nifty. You can have FLI-files( Font-Library ) This is a large file, which could hold all kinds of magnifications of fonts. The size is about the same size as the total of PK fonts used in the FLI-file, BUT the nice thing is that there's no more slack on the PK-files. And having lots of fonts this could certainly add up if you've got a 4Kb of 8Kb cluster on your disk. Further more I would like to admit that I'm a very pleased person with the package as is distributed. Regards Willem Jan Withagen. Eindhoven University of Technology DomainName: wjw@eb.ele.tue.nl Digital Systems Group, Room EH 10.10 BITNET: ELEBWJ@HEITUE5.BITNET P.O. 513 Tel: +31-40-473401 5600 MB Eindhoven The Netherlands