Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!ucbcad!pasteur!ucbvax!renoir.Berkeley.EDU!monardo
From: monardo@renoir.Berkeley.EDU (Pat Monardo)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Note on Common TeX and METAFONT
Message-ID: <22696@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 21 Jan 88 06:20:23 GMT
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: monardo@renoir.Berkeley.EDU (Pat Monardo)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 52

My C language METAFONT is currently working very nicely.
I plan on enjoying it for a while before submitting it to
the fine scrutiny but it appears to pass the trap test.
As soon as I have a machine readable version of the trap.log,
I will make it pass the test. In the meantine, it now correctly
compiles all of Computer Modern. I dont know about distribution,
but if you would like to beta test it, I may put it on a vax
somewhere for ftp access. Now that METFONT is finished I will also
clean up Common TeX to Version 2.9 very soon.


Regarding a problem with Common TeX:

Newsgroups: comp.text
In article <400@sering.cwi.nl> denise@cwi.nl writes:
>
>We have Common TeX, Version 2.1, and it doesn't seem to work.
>**foo  
>(./foo.tex
>Runaway definition?
>->
>! Forbidden control sequence found while scanning definition of \blort.
><inserted text> 
>                }
><to be read again> 
>                   \bye 
>l.2 \bye
>        
>? x

The problem is that Pascal TeX undex UNIX requires you to do absurb
things to create a loaded TeX. I have never worked with that version
so I dont know why, but it seems that people would do this:

This is TeX (no format preloaded)

*\read-1to\blort^\
Quit (core dumped)

or something like that.

DONT DO THIS!
Simply kill the program and undump it:

This is Common TeX (no format preloaded)

*^\
Quit (core dumped)

and you're ready to go.

	^\pat