From: pfaffman@pilot.njin.net (Jay Pfaffman)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: Emtex
Date: 22 Dec 92 05:32:42 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

There have been quite a few request for emTeX lately.  I mail this to
at least most people who post.  Maybe posting it will save some people
from asking . . .  corrections & comments are invited.  I don't read
this file often.

Included file follows:

-----------------------------------

It took me longer to get emTeX than I though it should.  I send this
file to anyone who asks about TeX for MS-DOS.  This file probably
contains more than you want to know about emTeX. It is not especially
well organized, but I think it's fairly complete.

emTeX is a free TeX for the PC.  It is as good as or better than most
(all?) commercial TeX's.  Many people have switched from commercial
TeX's to emTeX.  It comes complete with TeX, METAFONT, LaTeX,
previewer, DVI printers for dot matrix, laserjet & deskjet printers.
The package called DOS TeX, currently available on SIMTEL, is no
longer supported. sbTeX is supposed to be pretty good.  See notes
below.

It installs quite easily for laserjets and requires only a little
tweaking for dot matrix printers.  The previewer is capable of
scaling printer fonts acceptably, so you need only one set of fonts.
You'll need fonts your your printer's resolution (300 for LJ, 360
for 24 pin dot matrix).

TeX, LaTeX, et al come on 5 high density disks.  The complete font set
is on ~5 more (depending on resolution).  Installing TeX, LaTeX &
fonts takes about 10 MBytes of disk space.  Much of that is fonts and
can be cut down to less than 5 fairly easily, but plan on making room
for 10 to start with.  You can build fonts with METAFONT, but I
wouldn't recommend it unless you already know about configuring TeX &
Metafont.  (Vargish@sura.net reported that with a large (2 meg) drive
cache and a 386DX-33, the complete set that comes with emTeX (in six
magnifications) only took about 11 hours.)  Fortunately, MFJOB will
allow you to stop at any point without losing much processing time.

anik@bach.crhc.uiuc.edu (Sadun Anik) says that the newer dvi drivers &
mfjob will build fonts on the fly & that fonts for the few papers he'd
done @ 300dpi & 360x180dpi take only 500K.  It may be time to get the
newer version.  :-)

The TeX FAQ is available from 18.72.1.58, in the directory
./pub/usenet/news.answers/tex-faq. If you do not  have anonymous
ftp, send an e-mail message containing the lines  ``SENDME FAQ.'' to
fileserv@shsu.edu (fileserv@shsu.bitnet). 

Documentation is available in both German and English.

The official source is:  rusinfo.rus.uni-stuttgart.de (129.69.1.12) in 
       ./soft/tex/machines/pc/emtex

also try ymir.claremont.edu (134.173.4.23) in [.tex.ibm_pc.emtex]. 
niord.shsu.edu is also usually quite up to date for emTeX & other TeX stuff.

You can also have TUG mail you disks.  They take VISA.
                  TeX Users Group
                  P. O. Box 9506
                  Providence, RI 02940 (USA)
                  401-751-7760
                  tug@math.ams.org

For those in the UK:
The basic package is 9 High density 3.5" disks (5 for EmTeX and 4 for
th LJ fonts) for 15 UK Pounds.  Other sets are available.  Contact
Peter Abbot: P.Abbott@uk.ac.aston 
Tel  44 (0)21 359 5492 direct
FAX 44 (0)21 359 6158

Another package is sbTeX.  It is available from SIMTEL mirrors in
msdos/tex.  Wayne G. Sullivan <WSULIVAN@irlearn.ucd.ie>, it's author
offers this info:

   The main advantage of emTeX is the extensive material and programs it
   provides.  On the other hand, a beginner might be flummoxed by 6
   megabytes of compressed files. sbTeX and sbMF including Plain and the
   computer modern MF source files can be packed into less than 1 MB.  In
   my opinion the best way to set up LaTeX is with the Mittelbach-Schoepf
   font selection and the Sauter parameterized cm fonts.  The version of
   emTeX we have here has neither of these.

This sounds like sound advice.  I have not yet installed sbTeX, but I
may give it a try soon.

barr@triples.Math.McGill.CA (Michael Barr) offers this timing info:

... I begin to understand the almost religious zeal that people have
for [emTeX386 beta].  Without further ado, here are the timings with the
emtex386 timing added to compose Michael Doob's incomparable Gentle
Introduction on my 386SX-16:

PC-TeX386 (128K): 1:50
emtex (64K):      2:02
emtex286 (64K):   1:59
emtex (256K):     3:34
emtex286 (256K):  3:31
emtex386 (256K):  1:39