🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Sep1.105759.1@hmcvax.claremont.edu> dhosek@hmcvax.claremont.edu writes:
>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.

I don't want to start a war, but note that, first, Type 1 fonts of any
quality cost real money, and second, there are still things available in MF
format that I haven't seen as Type 1 fonts (Levy's greek fonts, the lamstex
fonts, etc.) The only real Type 1 alternative to CM seems to be
LucidaBright, at least if one wants to do mathematics.

>>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.

Won't help with non-Type 1 fonts, of course.

>>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.

True, but it's all rather clumsy. And I wouldn't want to convert each of
the AMS fonts at each magstep using it... Much simpler to download either
the mf source or the pre-built pk files.

>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?

Probably cheaper than buying MPW, which is why I qualified my initial
statement. If MPW is already there, DIrectTeX is quite attractive. If not,
it becomes pretty expensive, and Textures (or OzTeX, for that matter) is
probably a better choice.




-- 
============================================================================
Fernando Q. Gouvea				fqgouvea@colby.edu
Dept. of Math/CS				(207)-872-3278
Colby College					Mudd 407