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From: acmfiu@serss0.fiu.edu (ACMFIU)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: TeX
Message-ID: <2083@kluge.fiu.edu>
Date: 30 Jan 91 09:19:15 GMT
Sender: news@kluge.fiu.edu
Organization: Florida International University, Miami
Lines: 34

ok texhackers, here's what's going on with tex on the GS:

	o it is being worked on. i am doing this at the present time.
	o the conversion is being done via TeX->pascal->c. this is a very
	  tedious process. however, this much as been done.
	o because of bugs in orca/c you will not see tex on the gs until
	  mikey decides to fix bugs in orca/c (which he will start soon).
	o because of the above, i'm working on the conversion on a Sun at
	  school so i can maybe get it working. however, we're tight on space
	  so i might have to hold soon (disk at 98% capacity right now).
	o if anyone has orca/pascal, call mike NOW and demand that he let
	  arrays/records be larger than 64K for the next release of pascal.
	  if this is done, TeX will be done in a week.
	o on the note of dvi drivers, Doug McIntyre ported Nelson Beebe's
	  imagewriter II driver to the IIgs. this might be what others are
	  referring to.
	o when TeX is complete, be warned that you will need about 2+ megs
	  to run the thing. however, i will probably put extensive work into
	  modifying TeX to allocate memory dynamically. TeX is a total kluge,
	  a very poorly written program. i am quite shocked that knuth wrote
	  this, yet am happy he did as the program is beautiful.
	o the only other modification i want to make to TeX is to get rid of
	  the tex.pool file. this makes it particularly dangerous when future
	  minor upgrades of TeX come out (i.e. go through the entire conversion
	  process over again). i have a shell script now that is doing all the
	  work and i hope human intervention never happens.

well, that's about it. i will be sure to notify you of things as they happen.
incidentally, i have TeX split up into 45+ files at home on the GS. i have
been able to see parts of TeX running during preliminary tests but, as stated
before, bugs in orca/c just don't make it worth my while to beat my head against
the computer to continue this on the GS.

albert