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From: rokicki@rocky.STANFORD.EDU (Tomas Rokicki)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: AmigaTeX
Message-ID: <405@rocky.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: Fri, 10-Jul-87 00:04:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: rocky.405
Posted: Fri Jul 10 00:04:45 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 12-Jul-87 10:18:55 EDT
Organization: Stanford University Computer Science Department
Lines: 44

%    1) Do these TeX's produce .dvi files just like standard tex?
%       (i.e. not 'improved'). If so, we can use the dvi2ps program
%       (which i think was posted not long ago, we have it here)
%       to drive a Laser Writer, or the dviqms program we have here to 
%       drive the qms 800s. 

Yes, the .dvi files produced are identical to the ones produced by any
other implementation of TeX.  You can use dviqms and dvi2ps after
kermitting up the .dvi files.  You can even borrow the laser and use
the Amiga dvips to print it out from your Amiga.

(If you are still using dviqms, there is a new version called dvilg
which supports pk files, among other things; call Norm Naugle.)

%    2) When you say you run on a 2-drive system, is that with .5Mb 
%       or do you need more ram?

You can run AmigaTeX on a 2-drive system with .5Mb, you just can't
run off extremely large documents, nor can you use LaTeX.

%    3) What is the largest document you have produced? Can i run 
%       off a 60-page chapter, for example? What resource is consumed
%       fastest, disk or RAM? Are those disks so full of fonts and 
%       such that my .tex files have to be really small?

I have run off 80-page technical reports with no problem.  The biggest
limitation is the size of the .dvi file produced (which matches the
.dvi files produced on other systems); it must fit on a floppy or RAM.
If you run a two-drive system, you can easily run off 60-page documents
with 512K; with more, change your working directory to RAM so the .dvi
file gets created there and you can run even larger documents.

% I am really tempted by the $200 price; the earlier price of $350
% was just too high. Also, i think if i could show people around
% here AmigaTex, with previewer, and then tell them they could 
% build such a system for under $2000, that they would be sold.

The price was *never* $350.  Initially it was $300, but everyone who
paid that should have gotten a $100 rebate, unasked for.

One last comment.  If anyone is interested printing with AmigaTeX
directly to a dot-matrix printer, please consider a 24-pin printhead
printer.  They are much cleaner, faster, and generate much prettier
output than any other dot-matrix printers.