TeX status

[Scott R. Presnell]

Dan Karron at UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU writes:

>I want to upgrade my TeX installation (i.e., I want to make it work right!).

>What is the current status of TeX for sgi machines ? What is the official
>latest revision, and where do I get it ? Who has the best installation
>available ?

labrea.stanford.edu:/pub/tex/unix3.0 has TeX3.0 and MF2.0 These installed
without a hitch.  I just now got finished installing dvips (5.47) also from
labrea in /pub.

>What about a sgi previewer ?

texsgi still seems to be the only one (?)

>Who is really happy with their TeX, and why ?

Since I've installed TeX3.0 and MF2.0, I really haven't had any problems.
Though our site still don't know TeX well enough to put a strain on the
tools.

Though our trouble has always been with the dvi->ps translation tools.  As
it stands now:

dvi2ps, which comes with the TeX3.0 distribution, seems to be the best at
extrapolating the requried rasterized fonts from existing raster files.

However, dvips has now become my translator of choice - among other
features, it has MF *make* the exact raster files, on the fly, if they
don't exist.  Not that any of this is new, just that now it seems to work
(owing both to some changes in the distribution and probably more to my
better understanding of TeX).

I'd be willing to offer up config files and help if anyone can use it.

	- Scott Presnell (srp at cgl.ucsf.edu)
 
P.S. "on the fly" - where does that come from?
--
Scott Presnell				        +1 (415) 476-9890
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