Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!labrea!polya!rokicki
From: rokicki@polya.Stanford.EDU (Tomas G. Rokicki)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Common TeX and Amiga TeX
Message-ID: <4610@polya.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 21 Oct 88 22:57:34 GMT
References: <8810211901.AA25840@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 28

(Timothy Stark) writes:
>     I found Common TeX around anonymous FTP and downloaded it. I uncompressed
> and unarced package. What a surprise! It is entire source code! Yes, it
> is 718K long. What is big difference between Common TeX and Amiga TeX?

Yes, Common TeX is full source for a version of TeX, hand translated
from the Pascal by Pat Monardo.  It has been superceded by the WEB2C
version of TeX, based on my original TeX to Pascal translator with
improvements by Tim Morgan.  The WEB2C stuff is included on the
standard Unix TeX distribution out of the University of Washington,
and is the recommended way to run TeX on Unix or C boxes.

> I heard that AmigaTeX commerical product probihit (spelled?) anyone from
> ports Common TeX to Amiga? I am right?

This is absolutely not true; anyone who wants to can port either
Common TeX or WEB2C TeX to the Amiga.  This is also true of Nelson
Beebe's public domain DVI drivers, WEB2C Metafont, and whatever
other tools you can find.

>     Does AmigaTeX contain source code or not? Sorry, I don't have AmigaTeX
> or a demo. (Author may send me a demo.)

AmigaTeX does not contain source code.  AmigaTeX does include a
very small and highly optimized version of TeX, along with a fast,
powerful previewer, fonts, BibTeX, LaTeX, SliTeX, a manual, and
lots of other goodies.

-tom