Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!unido!ira.uka.de!rusmv1!ifistg!ifi!mattes From: mattes@azu.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de (Eberhard Mattes) Newsgroups: comp.text.tex Subject: Re: why do we need initex.exe AND tex.exe? Message-ID: Date: 28 Feb 91 11:11:31 GMT References: <62097@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> <91058.164419HAN@FRECP12.BITNET> Sender: news@ifistg.uucp Organization: IfI, Univ. Stuttgart, W Germany Lines: 19 In-reply-to: HAN@FRECP12.BITNET's message of 27 Feb 91 20:44:19 GMT In article <62097@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>, xiaofei@acsu.buffalo.edu (Xiaofei Wang) says: > >why do we need initex.exe AND tex.exe? for example, both are supplied with >sb30tex distribution while tex.exe's job can be done by ``initex &plain foo''? initex requires more memory. An initex without virtual memory (sbTeX's, for instance) has serious memory problems under MS-DOS, you can use it only for dumping a fmt file. emTeX implements virtual memory, but tex /i is slower than tex, because there is less memory for buffers. If you're short of memory, initex doesn't work at all (especially big initex!). Jan Therry HAN wrote: > Surprisingly, emTeX has only one executable, TEX.EXE, that can do both > normal TeX compilation and initex format generation (command line switch). ...because the code specific to initex is in a overlay and memory used for initex is only allocated if /i is specified. -- Eberhard Mattes (mattes@azu.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de)