🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Sep1.130513.15275@husc3.harvard.edu>, gouvea@zariski.harvard.edu (Fernando Gouvea) writes:
> In article <1992Aug31.233934.1@cbrown.claremont.edu> dhosek@cbrown.claremont.edu writes:
>>In article <1992Aug31.172419.15257@husc3.harvard.edu>, gouvea@zariski.harvard.edu (Fernando Gouvea) writes:
>>> By the way: for Mac users who have access to the MPW shell, this
>>> implementation of TeX is hard to beat!

>>Well, I haven't seen DirectTeX in person, but Textures is not too
>>shabby. The most recent release has had a great deal of the inner
>>loop optimised in 68000 assembly resulting in speed increases of
>>200% or more. On a Quadra they're claiming TeXbook processing at
>>rates of about 40 pages per SECOND. That's slick. I have my
>>doubts about the utility of "Flash mode", but some people like
>>it.

> Yes, but no metafont, 

A point of sorts, but much as I hate to admit it, MF is a dying
format. Blue Sky supplies the CM fonts in Type 1 PS format
standard now (which means life is a little unpleasant on a low
memory low end Mac) and most of us are moving to Type 1 as our
font format anyway.

Blue Sky did develop a MF, but haven't released it (or is this
one of the secret call us and we'll send it to you deals) since
there isn't a real big market for it.

> no integrated BibTeX and Makeindex, 

That's a valid point. They ship with standalone BibTeX and
Makeindex, but they're a pain to work with even with task
switching.

>no
> (semi-)automatic font generation, 

Yes there is. It's called ATM. I've never seen Textures come up
blank on a font bitmap request.

>and proprietary formats for everything... 

Hmm, dvitool lets one export/import DVI files, reading
from/saving to text files for the source is likewise trivial. And
if you must use bitmap fonts, you can get a utility from Blue Sky
(for free!) for doing the translation.

Plus, at many educational institutions, a site license is held
and the package can be had relatively inexpensively. Probably at
a price comparable to buying MPW, no?

-dh