Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!uxc!garcon!garcon.cso.uiuc.edu!grunwald From: grunwald@guitar.cs.uiuc.edu Newsgroups: comp.text Subject: Re: What is the difference between CTeX and CommonTeX? Message-ID: Date: 17 Mar 89 05:54:37 GMT References: <307@laas.laas.fr> Sender: news@garcon.cso.uiuc.edu Organization: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Lines: 21 In-reply-to: ralph@laas.laas.fr's message of 16 Mar 89 16:34:44 GMT In article <307@laas.laas.fr> ralph@laas.laas.fr (Ralph P. Sobek) writes: The subject says it all? There is CTeX which comes with the Unix(tm)-based distribution of TeX. And there is CommonTeX by Pat Mondaros. Both are in C. Both seem to be at version 2.9. Can some say what the differences are? CommonTeX is a hand-translated version of TeX. CTeX is automatically derived from the Web sources (first, from web -> pascal -> C). Ergo, with CTeX, you can apply fixes, etc, easier. It's a bit more standard, and the same Web2C software can be used to generate Metafont & several other tools. I used to use CommonTeX, but switched; CTeX is a little smaller & faster, and it's at 2.93 right now. But CommonTeX is good too. -- Dirk Grunwald Univ. of Illinois grunwald@flute.cs.uiuc.edu