🚀 go-pugleaf

Direction (review; long)
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Organization: Stanford University
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I've written several msgs in the past praising TeX and especially the
Textures implementation of TeX for the Mac.  I've just installed the
Textures 1.3 upgrade with the Computer Modern Postscript 0.9 fonts,
both from Blue Sky Research in Portland OR; and I'm sorry to have to
say in my opinion doing this at this time is several steps in the
wrong direction.

Textures 1.3 by itself would be fine.  It implements a major ``final,
final'' rewriting of the basic TeX program which has just been carried
out by its original author Don Knuth, five years after the original
``final'' version was released.  The major changes in TeX itself,
however, are virtually all internal and invisible.

In brief the internal structure of the program was rewritten in a
major way so it will now accept 8-bit character input (256 separate
characters) instead of the conventional 7-bit ASCII input, for those
who have and want to use 8-bit keyboards.  A few minor new
capabilities were also added; but the commands and user interface of
the program are otherwise virtually unchanged, and the ``new TeX'' is
completely upward compatible with previous versions and their source
files.  You will hardly notice the difference between Textures 1.2 and
1.3 in action.

The accompanying Computer Modern Postscript fonts package, labelled
version 0.9, is, however, a disaster.  It should have been held off
the market until it could be finished and done right.

First of all, installation of this package ranges from headache to
nightmare.  If you have Adobe Type Manager (ATM), which is
recommended, it's headache; if you don't it's nightmare.

To start with you _must_ install _forty_ separate Postscript font
files as individual files cluttering up your System Folder.  They
can't go in a subfolder; they can't go anywhere else except the System
Folder.

You also have to make 40 separate and individual removals and possibly
40 replacements, using Font/DA Mover, to 40 of the 73 fonts appearing
in 7 different TeX font suitcases in the Tex Fonts folder.  This
actually empties two of the standard Textures font suitcases from
version 1.2, so that they then disappear; but the instructions don't
tell you that.

And when you're done you end up with all 40 of these Computer Modern
fonts in your font menu, so that 40 names like ``cmssbx10'' and
``cmssqui8'' appear in the font menu for every application, even
though you're not likely to want to use these fonts in any other
application than TeX.  Since they all begin with "cm" they all come
after Chicago and before Courier, Geneva, Helvetica, or any of the
other ordinary fonts you're likely to use; so you have to scroll
through all of them to get at your usual fonts.

The people at Blue Sky Research's 800 number were cheerful and helpful
when called for assistance with the headaches of installation; they
even called me back on their nickel.  But it's not worth it; and the
results leave you worse off than when you started.  I recommend giving
it a miss.

--AES  siegman@sierra.stanford.edu