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From: awb@uk.ac.ed.aipna (Alan W Black)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Do TeX and Metafont exist under MINIX?
Message-ID: <3433@aipna.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 4 Nov 90 15:15:28 GMT
References: <1990Nov3.204223.28577@ioe.lon.ac.uk> <1990Nov4.014404.10422@iwarp.intel.com>
Sender: news@aipna.ed.ac.uk
Reply-To: awb@uk.ac.ed.aipna (Alan W Black)
Organization: Dept of AI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 40

In article <1990Nov4.014404.10422@iwarp.intel.com>, pcm@iwarp.intel.com
(Phil Miller) writes:
|>In article <1990Nov3.204223.28577@ioe.lon.ac.uk>, teexdwu@ioe (DOMINIK
WUJASTYK) writes:
|>| Just that really.  Have these two, and some DVI driver(s) and 
|>| a previewer, been ported to MINIX?
|>| 
|>| Dominik
|>
|>The MS-DOS versions of TeX and LaTeX each require about 510k of memory to
|>run.  MINIX doesn't have a compiler which can handle that memory
|>model, and you would in any event NOT be able to spare the memory from
|>other processes to run *tex.
|>
|>Phil
            
It is not strictly true that MINIX doesn't have a compiler that 
could compile such a program as TeX.  The ST version does have gcc
which is more than capable of compiling TeX.  As for MINIX-PC you
need to have the 386 version before you get over the 64k+64k 
restriction for processes.  But under MINIX-386 there is bcc which
might be able to do it and implementations of gcc (mine is in beta
test mode at the moment I will release it soon -- bet I shouldn't
have said that :-).

Basically I see no problem with compiling TeX and Metafont under MINIX
ST or MINIX 386.  Of course this isn't quite the same as being able
to ftp a binary :-)

The main problem is the lack of graphics under minix.  A dvi previewer,
necessary in order to save the worlds trees, would not be easy.  Under
the ST there are some graphics routines (vdi) ported which might a good
place to start at a port.  However, as far as I am aware
there is nothing for the PC (386 or otherwise).

Alan

Alan W Black                          80 South Bridge, Edinburgh, UK
Dept of Artificial Intelligence       tel: (+44) -31 225 7774 x228 or x223
University of Edinburgh               email: awb@ed.ac.uk