From: barry@reed.edu (Barry Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: LaTeX for the Mac
Summary: OzTeX Textures comparison
Keywords: TeX Macintosh
Date: 3 Oct 92 06:28:29 GMT
Organization: Blue Sky Research, Portland, Oregon

In <some expired article>, carlip@oucsace.cs.ohiou.edu (Walter C3arlip) says:

> In any case, Textures is a good product.  I'd be very interested if Barry
> would post (1) a more comprehensive list of Textures' features and (2) an
> approximate *price* for the student version of Classic Textures.  (And lets
> have no flames for advertising!)
>  
> --Walter
Thanks for the invitation. Here's a quick overview of Textures 1.5.  (I'm not an
expert on OzTeX, so some specifics may be fuzzy; in some sense, this might be
better read as a comparison of Textures with a mythical generic TeX platform.)
(BTW, IMHO OzTeX is an excellent public-domain TeX system; I don't want to slam
it, just to point out that it's not Textures.)

Let's compare TeX implementations: the TeX portion of Textures is coded in
hand-tuned assembly language, so it's roughly 4 times as fast as OzTeX; it has
dynamically extensible string space, very large hash and hyphenation tables,
and possibly the largest memory model of any TeX implementation (|mem_max| is
536,870,911, compared to the 262,144 of most "big" TeX systems). This large
memory makes possible new TeX programming paradigms: for example, you might lay
out a 12 page newsletter from 20 separate articles by setting all 20 articles
"internally" and making up the 12 output pages "simultaneously" using \vsplit
and \shipout.

The Textures preview is at least twice as fast as OzTeX, and has a "pop-up"
magnifying glass for instant spot checking; the Computer Modern fonts supplied
with Textures are PostScript Type 1 fonts, well hinted, so you never see scaled
CM bitmaps and never wait for Metafont.

The Lightning Textures interface is, well, beyond description.  You have to see
it to believe it.  It eliminates the <edit><TeX><preview> cycle, and reduces
the delay in seeing the effect of TeX coding changes by orders of magnitude.
(Literally: on a Quadra, the time from pressing a key to seeing the finished
preview is less than .05 seconds for small documents.)  No flicker, no fuss.

At the tools and features level, I think it's fair to say that Textures is a
complete superset of OzTeX. (I can't think of much, if anything, that you can do
in OzTeX that you can't do in Textures faster and more easily.)  At the support
and development level, there's just no comparison: we have 4 full-time
programmers working on Textures, in addition to a full-time technical support
manager with an 800 number for customer access, and an unconditional guarantee
of customer satisfaction.

Really, though, there's a product conceptual focus that helps to explain the
differences. Textures is (or attempts to be) a single integrated application and
user interface devoted to TeX; this includes support for functions of editing,
typesetting, viewing, and printing, among others. All of these are available
more or less simultaneously and seamlessly. (The concept is that of the "total
TeX system"; Textures is not a perfect realization of this, but that's the
general direction.)

OzTeX (like most TeX systems) is more like a collection of separate tools held
together by the user; for example, there is no editor, so there is no user
document modification focus within the system. (OzTeX is still much better here
than the "generic" TeX system, which requires that you invoke separate tools for
each function, and specify the focus for each tool at each invocation.)

Another part of the Textures concept is integration with the "total Macintosh
system". Again, Textures is by no means ideal at this integration, but it does
have some surprising consequences. For example, it's possible in Textures to
copy a picture from, say, MacDraw, then to paste that picture into a Textures
document, and then to copy a complete typeset TeX page containing that picture
and paste that page into a Microsoft Word document. Similarly, Textures works
with all Macintosh fonts, whether bitmap, PostScript, or TrueType, and with all
Macintosh printers, whether PostScript or QuickDraw, in a transparent fashion.

Because of this user-level orientation, Textures often uses data structures that
are not identical with those of other TeX systems.  For example, as a Textures
user you will not find any .dvi or .tfm or .pk files. (Tools are provided to
read and/or write these formats for other TeX systems, if desired, but within the
Textures system, you simply don't need to see these things.)  We work hard
to eliminate as much TeX arcana as possible, but this sometimes results in
disorientation on the part of experienced TeX users.

Anyway, Textures is a commercial TeX system that WE think is the best in the
world. (And getting better all the time; we listen to our users, and sometimes
have a few ideas of our own). If you use TeX much at all, and if Textures is
within your budget, please take advantage of our money-back guarantee.  Buy a
copy and try it out yourself.  Send it back if it's not worth it, in YOUR
judgement.  (Really. This isn't marketing crap, we live this product!)

Price: $695, academic $495, student $195.

Barry Smith, Blue Sky Research
800-622-8398, 503-222-9571
fax 503-222-1643

barry@reed.edu