Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bellcore!att!emory!gatech!psuvax1!psuvm!frecp12!han
From: HAN@FRECP12.BITNET (Jay Thierry HAN)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: why do we need initex.exe AND tex.exe?
Message-ID: <91058.164419HAN@FRECP12.BITNET>
Date: 27 Feb 91 20:44:19 GMT
References: <62097@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Lines: 14
Organisation: ECP-Paris France

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''?

I think sb30TeX's executables differ. TEX.EXE is designed to conform to the
TeXbook's specs about interactivity, memory management, etc. INITEX is
optimized for format generation. I've had lots of memory problems when using
initex with the French GUT distribution diskettes (needs 570k for LaTeX!).
Surprisingly, emTeX has only one executable, TEX.EXE, that can do both
normal TeX compilation and initex format generation (command line switch).

                                                       J.T.H.