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From: laser-lovers@uw-beaver (laser-lovers)
Newsgroups: fa.laser-lovers
Subject: One man's experience with TeX vs troff: timings
Message-ID: <1749@uw-beaver>
Date: Fri, 21-Sep-84 20:21:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-beave.1749
Posted: Fri Sep 21 20:21:22 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Sep-84 21:49:55 EDT
Sender: yenbut@uw-beave
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
Lines: 37

From: chris@maryland (Chris Torek)
Here is a benchmark from William Sebok, comparing TeX and troff speeds
(remailed by permission).  The machine is a VAX 11/750 running 4.2BSD.

>From astrovax!wls Tue Sep 18 22:55:08 1984
Subject: TeX versus troff benchmark.

The results of a race-off between TeX and vtroff are as follows.  The file
is a tex chapter of Todd Lauer's thesis translated into troff'ese by Bruce
Draine.

TeX:					cpu time
	tex				 77 sec
	dvipr (1st pass)		 22 sec
 	verser2 (called by spooler)	 43 sec
	----				-------
	Total				142 sec

roff
	roff (tbl + eqn + vtroff)	175 sec
	rvcat (called by spooler)	 36 sec
	----				-------
	Total				211 sec

Conclusion:  In this benchmark TeX uses 33% less cpu time.  Whether this is
enough of a difference to make you switch is up to you.

[And a small appendage]
	"roff" here is a local shell script written by Bruce Draine that
	invokes tbl, eqn and vtroff and adds in some local macros.
	--- Bill
--
(This page accidently left blank.)

In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci (301) 454-7690
UUCP:	{seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!chris
CSNet:	chris@umcp-cs		ARPA:	chris@maryland