Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!sci.kun.nl!erato.cs.kun.nl
From: vlsi4@erato.cs.kun.nl (Freddy Aries)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: TeX versions for Amiga - conclusions so far
Keywords: TeX Amiga PD
Message-ID: <2282@wn1.sci.kun.nl>
Date: 11 Oct 90 09:29:37 GMT
References: <2252@wn1.sci.kun.nl>
Sender: root@sci.kun.nl
Reply-To: vlsi4@erato.cs.kun.nl (Freddy Aries)
Distribution: comp
Lines: 59
Organisation: University of Nijmegen, Faculty of Maths and CS

From the postings and mailings I have drawn the following conclusions:

AmigaTeX (The commercial version by Tomas Rokicki, Radical Eye Software),
is the best by far. It's fast, complete (yes, including LaTeX, METAFONT
and much more), (according to the loads of reactions I got) it is widely 
used, supports Amiga multitasking and ARexx and it has good IFF support.
There are lots of printer definitions available and they give fantastic
results. 
Some people even seem to have bought the Amiga because of this incredible
TeX implementation - and they say they haven't been disappointed.
While I'm at it - the chance of finding anyone who is not satisfied with 
AmigaTeX is even less than the chance of finding bugs in this implementation.
Of course, quality does have a price.

For people with less money to spend there are the Public Domain versions.
They all seem to work okay, but the distributions are not as complete, and
you will have to do a lot yourself.

PasTeX is an implementation of TeX 3.0, done by Georg Hessmann. It is
fully available via ftp, at
   abcfd20.larc.nasa.gov [128.155.23.64] in "incoming/amiga/"
It has a good previewer, and it supports ARexx and IFF format (b/w only).
It is not as fast as AmigaTeX, but faster than eg. CommonTeX.
It is not complete as is - you will have to get font- , pk- and format-files
yourself - and it has only a small number of printer definitions: NEC P6/P7,
Epson FX 80 and HP DeskJet.
You can of course - as one of the repliers suggested - preview your files
on the Amiga, upload them to a workstation and print them out there.
At the moment the documentation is only available in german, but the author
assured me that they're working on an english version.
It does not include METAFONT, but another german (Stefan Becker) has ported 
METAFONT 2.0 to the Amiga, which is now available by ftp at  
      ftp.Informatik.rwth-aachen.de [192.35.229.9]

CommonTeX seems to be rarely used. It is slower than PasTeX, does not have
ARexx support (I don't think it supports IFF either, but I'm not sure), and
it is not freely distributable. (Some parts are not available for distribution
by ftp, so the only way to get it is on disks, for about $6 per disk). 
The disk version seems complete, including METAFONT, LaTeX and others.
It also includes a number of font-, pk- and format files. 
That's about as far as my information on CommonTeX goes.

Then there is a number of other versions hanging around, (well, the TeX
sources are available in WEB, so about anyone could port it to the amiga).
but I think the ones I've mentioned are the best versions at the moment.

If anyone knows about a version he thinks is better and I haven't mentioned,
please let me know.

                             Freddy Aries

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A      									   F
F            Freddy Aries        					   A
A            Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science 		   F
F            University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands       		   A
A     Email: vlsi4@erato.cs.kun.nl					   F
F								       	   A
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