Subject: latex on pc 's

last month i posted a query about latex on pcs . here 's a summary of the responses i got and my own experience in making my choice ( gtex ) work ( if you plan to adopt gtex , especially for windows nt , be sure to read my comments - - it will save you time . . . ) first , i 'd like to thank the following persons for proving , yet again , the power of the virtual community : alderson @ netcom . com ( richard m . alderson iii ) mark robert hale ( hale1 @ alcor . concordia . ca ) michael covington ( mcovingt @ ai . uga . edu ) stewart nichols ( nichols @ ccwf . cc . utexas . edu ) knappen @ vkpmzd . kph . uni - mainz . de ( j " org knappen ) sl70 @ musuko . spc . uchicago . edu ( stuart luppescu ) achim @ chianti . philosophie . uni-stuttgart . de ( achim stein ) terdoest @ cs . utwente . nl ( hugo ter doest ) wilhelm weisweber ( ww @ cs . tu-berlin . de ) alex schoenmakers ( alex . schoenmakers @ ccl . kuleuven . ac . be ) peter - arno coppen ( u250005 @ vm . uci . kun . nl ) koontz @ alpha . bldr . nist . gov ( john e . koontz ) syang @ uvvm . uvic . ca ( suying yang ) robert dale ( rdale @ microsoft . com ) alfredo arnaiz ( arnaiz @ scf . usc . edu ) c . l . thiersch @ kub . nl ( craig thiersch ) alice drewery ( alice @ cogsci . edinburgh . ac . uk ) all the messages were extremly helpful . they provided fairly detailed information and many offered further help if i needed it . thanks ! i have divided the information into the following categories : 1 . general tex info 2 . the unix option 3 . the commercial option 4 . the mac option 5 . emtex 6 . gtex ( including my own experience in installing and using it ) hope it is useful for others as well . ami kronfeld natural language inc . 1 ) general tex info - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - " you might want to check out the usenet group comp . tex . tex , and its faq . also , the book mking tex work , by norman walsh , from o'reilly associates . " " you can also check out the tex archives on the us ctan site : ftp . shsu . edu . " " the most comprehensive distribution is called 4alltex , it 's available at the standard ctan - archive sites ( like ftp . shsu . edu ) and on the cd - rom " snapshot " of same from prime time ( prime time texcetera ) . " special thanks to suying yang who sent a very useful page from walsh 's _ making tex work _ . here it is : tex and the other programs mentioned in this book are available from a number of places . it 's impossible to list all of the places where you might find any given tool , but there is one place where you will almost certainly find every tool : the comprehensive tex archive network ( ctan ) . this network is a fully-mirrored anonymous ftp hierarchy on three continents . always use the ftp site that is geographically closest to you . the following table lists the current members of ctan as of july 1993 : % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % location site ip address top level directory united states ftp . shsu . edu 192 . 92 . 115 . 10 / tex-archive england ftp . tex . ac . uk 131 . 151 . 79 . 32 / tex-archive germany ftp . uni-stuugart . de 129 . 69 . 8 . 13 / tex-archive % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % you may also access the ctan archives by electronic mail if you do not have ftp access . for up-to - date instructions about the mail server , send the single-line message help to : fileserv @ shsu . edu . where are the files ? every ctan mirror site has the same well-organized directory structure . the top-level directory also contains a complete catalog of current files organized by name , date , and size . the catalogs are named files . byname , files . bydate , and files . bysize , respectively , in the top level directory . the top-level directory contains the following subdirectories : % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % directory description of contents tools archiving tools ( unzip , tar , compress , etc . ) biblio tools for maintaining bibliographic databases digests electronic digests ( texhax , uktex , etc . ) info free documentation , many good guides dviware printing and previewing software fonts fonts fo tex graphics software for working with pictures and figures help online help files , etc . indexing indexing and glossary building tools language multi - national language support macros macro packages and stule files misc stuff that does n't fit in any other category support tools for running and supporting tex systems os - specific programs and files web sources for tex programs ( in web ) % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % the archives at ftp . shsu . edu and ftp . tex . ac . uk also support gopher access to the archives . the uk gopher supports indexed access to the archives . a world wide web ( hypertext ) interface to the archives is available from : http : / / jasper . ora . com / ctan / ctan . html this interface includes brief descriptions of many packages and the ability to perform keyword and date searches . 2 ) the unix option : - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - many have pointed out that i could run linux ( freely distributed unix clone ) on my pc , and that it has great tex support ( ntex 1 . 3 ) . this turned out to be impractical for me . but it is an option i did not know existed : " check out freebsd , freely downloadable from ftp . freebsd . org , or available as a cdrom from cdrom . com ( about $ 40 or less ) . you can maintain dos and unix on the same hardware and switch between the two , and therefore have your latex , too . " 3 ) the commercial option : - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - " there is a commercial version of ( la ) tex available for pcs from y&y , who just today have announced a sales-help @ yandy . com ( among other addresses ) . " " re your linguist query - - we looked at the blurb describing both y&y tex and truetex and chose the former . " for info on truetex email richard j . kinch ( kinch @ netcom . com ) ; for info on y&y tex email louis vosloo ( 71172 . 524 @ compuserve . com ) . both are in the $ 400 - - 500 area from memory . seemed to me that y&y tex was a bit more abreast of changes ( like latex 2e ) than truetex but you 'd be best to get info from both of course to make up your own mind . " 4 ) latex on the mac - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - " if you are not set on an intel - based processor , oztex 1 . 8 is the best shareware version for the mac , while textures ( from blue sky ) is a highly regarded commercial implementation . " " i ' ve used textures for years on a mac and still have n't seen anything to compare in terms of ease of integration of graphics . " 5 ) emtex - - - - - - - - - emtex seems to be the overall favorite for dos machines . it is said to be much more widely used ( than gtex ) and easier to install . a summary of how you can get it : " the most painless way to get latex on your pc is to download emtex from the university of georgia ( ai . uga . edu , / pub / emtex ) . we give additional installation instructions besides those provided by the author . " other cites : ftp . rus . uni-stuttgart . de / pub / tex / sytems / msdos / emtex and emtex-fonts ponder . csci . unt . edu [ 129 . 120 . 3 . 16 ] pub / tex / emtex ymir . claremont . edu [ 134 . 173 . 4 . 23 ] [ anonymous . tex . ibm _ pc . emtex ] there was also a particular enthusiastic endorsment of emtex for emacs users on os / 2 : " i use the os / 2 version [ of emtex ] which is truly excellent ( not being limited by memory , it is much better than the dos version ) . there are also available for os / 2 , a graphical dvi viewer ( dvipm ) , ghostscript , dvips , etc . in addition , em has ported gnu emacs to os / 2 ( the current version is 19 . 27 ) . imho , if you are going to work in latex , you should be using emacs in latex mode as your editor . emacs + emtex under os / 2 has pretty much supplanted other use of word processing software " 6 ) gtex - - - - - - - - the gtex package was said to be more complete ( amslatex , amstex , dviwin etc . ) and more windows - friendly than emtex . this is , more or less , what sold me on it . i got it from : gtex ftp . shsu . edu / tex-archive / systems / msdos / gtex1 . 0 for ms windows / dos users . microemacs for windows is the host interface whose menus allow easy access to tex / metafont / amspell / bibtex / etc . also included are complete macro sets for plain tex , latex , nfss , e - tex , amslatex , and amstex . one person who responded to my query commented that gtex is less mature than emtex . i must say that he is probably right . installation took me much longer than i anticipated . here is a summary of the problems and their workarounds : 1 ) to begin with , the main tex . exe in the base directory does not accept arguments . i may have missed something , but i could not make latex work by the standard $ ) tex &lplain ( file-name > what i got was simply the tex environment . i could , of course , load lplain at this point and then load my file . but this is rather cumbersome . i found a workaround through micro-emacs , which is part of the package . 2 ) i did n't realize that if you unzip latex2e after unzipping latex , you clobber some of the latex 2 . 09 . sty files ( and you cannot use latex 2 . 09 as a result ) . there is a ( rather complex ) workaround and if you need latex2e only to begin with you are in good shape . however , it turned out that when you run latex2e . bat in the texfmts directory ( to generate the . fmt file for latex2e ) the name of the fmt file is latex . fmt , but it turned out that micro-emacs package expects a totally different fmt file for latex2e , namely a file called nfss2ltx . fmt . even changing the relevant bat file does not solve the problem . the only workaround i could find was to copy latex . fmt as nfss2ltx . fmt ( in short , if you do n't want the hassle , install latex only ) . 3 ) the dviwin package for both previewing and printing ( written by hipocrates sendoukas ) is rather nice . the feature that generates missing fonts automatically is particularly useful if your disk space is limited . however setting this option to work right was difficult and the documentation is not very helpful . if you run under windows nt ( as i do ) this is what you need to do : o select options / missing fonts . . . o select the third option ( append line to file and execute command ) o in the line text box write : call genpk $ f $ m $ x $ y $ x $ y $ d $ p $ e o in the file text box write : x : \ ( temp-dir ) \ < batch-file . bat > where x : is your hard drive , temp-dir is the value of your temp environment variable and batch-file is an arbitrary name for a batch file that will generatte missing fonts . for example , i use the following text : c : \ temp \ missing . bat o in the cmd text box write : genallnt . bat $ ( temp ) \ missing . bat where temp is the environment variable that contains the name of the directory in the file text box . note that in the cmd text box you need to use an environment variable ( you have to ) while in the file text box you cannot ( you must specify the literal name of the temp directory ) . it took me a while to figure this out and it was n't fun . if you do it wrong , dviwin takes control over your entire operating system , firing up and killing dos widows in rapid succession . you cannot even use nt 's task list to kill the runaway process .
