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- From: gouvea@zariski.harvard.edu (Fernando Gouvea)
- Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
- Subject: Re: DirectTeX
- Message-ID: <1992Sep1.172819.15282@husc3.harvard.edu>
- Date: 1 Sep 92 21:28:18 GMT
- References: <1992Aug31.233934.1@cbrown.claremont.edu> <1992Sep1.130513.15275@husc3.harvard.edu> <1992Sep1.105759.1@hmcvax.claremont.edu>
- Organization: Colby College Dept. of Math/CS
- Lines: 65
- Nntp-Posting-Host: zariski.harvard.edu
-
- 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
-