Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!oberon!ucla-cs!sm.unisys.com!ism780c!haddock!suitti
From: suitti@haddock.ima.isc.com (Stephen Uitti)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: (La)TeX for the Mac
Message-ID: <11985@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Date: 8 Mar 89 21:16:01 GMT
References: <1555@orion.cf.uci.edu>
Reply-To: suitti@haddock.ima.isc.com (Stephen Uitti)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Boston
Lines: 32

In article <970@swisun.swivax.UUCP>, jansweij@swivax.UUCP (Wouter Jansweijer
wants to know if there is a TEX implementation for MAC.

I previewed Textures for the Mac on my 2 MB RAM Mac II, with
General Computer's Personal Laser Printer.  It couldn't have been
written with this in mind, but it worked fine.  I've played with
TeX a little on UNIX, and it was nice, but I was comparing it to
troff.  I had a few files already written in TeX on a UNIX
machine on my Mac, and after only changing fonts these printed
fine.  On the other hand, the system required some 5 MB of hard
disk - mainly for font files.

I use MicroSoft Word (3.02) on the Mac and I like to bitch about
it and the fascinating bugs it has.  No way I'd trade it for
Textures.  Textures claims to be no harder to learn than Word -
false.  Word at least attempts to be WYSIWYG (an invisible
language - which allows stuff to be done easily, but which can be
annoying when things aren't working quite right).  TeX is yet
another line noise language.  You can see whats going on, but you
can't not see what's going on (and just see your text) during edit.
Textures at least does let you preview on the screen, which was
unavailable under UNIX until recently (a VT100 just doesn't do
it for you).

Unless you need to support documents previously written in TeX,
and all you have is a Mac, you don't need it.

Textures was not worth the space on my hard disk, let alone the
money they were asking for it.  Your mileage may vary.

Stephen Uitti	suitti@ima.ima.isc.com
disclaimer: I don't speak for anyone.