🚀 go-pugleaf

Greetings,

Recently, there were a few postings on whether or not it makes sense to
use TeX on a pc.  So, I thought I would run a timing test with emTeX.  I
processed a 136 page document, divided into several smaller files, of
about 380 kb in size.  The document contains about 40 figures with plenty
of bezier curves.  No, it's not a children's colouring book, it is an
instructor's manual for an undergraduate textbook in microeconomics!

  On my own pc, a 386/25dx clone with 8 mb memory running OS/2 2.0, it
took 5 minutes 11.90 seconds.  On a Dell 386/25dx with 8 mb memory at
school running MS-DOS 5.0, it took 3 minutes 57.39 seconds.  I timed the
TeX jobs with a timer program.  On OS/2, I ran emTeX on a full screen
session, with nothing else running on the desktop (except the system
clock), to make as close a comparison to the DOS system as possible.  I
ran emtex386.exe (beta 8) on both pc's.  Assuming that most people will be
working on smaller files most of the time, this is not an intolerable
performance.  So why would you need a workstation with a five figure price
just for text processing?

Regards,

Sunando Sen
sens@fasecon.econ.nyu.edu