Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!elroy!orion.cf.uci.edu!vmsa.cf.uci.edu!ggiergiel
From: ggiergiel@vmsa.cf.uci.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: (La)TeX for the Mac
Message-ID: <1555@orion.cf.uci.edu>
Date: 7 Mar 89 19:58:25 GMT
Sender: news@orion.cf.uci.edu
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Lines: 24

In article <970@swisun.swivax.UUCP>, jansweij@swivax.UUCP (Wouter Jansweijer
wants to know if there is a TEX implementation for MAC.
There are two: Textures and MacTeX. Both are way overpriced ( after all, 
TEX is public domain, and an excellent generator for TEX program is 
freely distributed. Both will run LAtex and whatever macro packages you
want to use, provided that you have at least 2Mb of memory. Both have pro
blems with memory handling. You will be rebooting your Mac more often than
you ever done before. Both have decent screen previewer,(texture's is better)
Prepare yourself for a lot of confusion with fonts. The two font systems
(MAC and TEX) are drastically different and MacTex and Textures handle font 
interface differently. I am not much familiar with MacTex. Texture (which
has better reputation) does not allow access to most MAC characters. 
Graphics incorporation is possible but again since TEX was never meant 
to use graphics the two packages implement it differently. 
Textures allows rigid placement of PICT EPS
and raw postcript in your output. I am not sure about MacTex. CAll them
to get free working demo package. MacTeX has excellent TEX help
feature. ( I find D.Knuth book totally unacceptable for anyone
who wants to use programming capabilities of TEX.)
I will finish with a word of advise. Do not use TEX on
any machine MAc or otherwise. After all it was written in early 70's for
primitive 7-bit computers, with crimminally crude interface. About the only
place TEX is still acceptable in late 80's is automatic typesetting of 
data base output.