From: clueless@bradley.edu (Mark Kristie)
Subject: Re: Help with PasTeX 1.3
Organization: J. Random Misconfigured Site
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 05:55:31 GMT
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Eric Gottlieb (egott@triton.unm.edu) wrote:
: In article <1992Dec11.155443.29541@cs.mun.ca> robertr@odie.cs.mun.ca (Robert Randell) writes:
: >Hi.
: >
: >I am looking for help getting PasTeX 1.3 up and running. I have the entire
: >package installed on my hard drive, but I really have no idea how to get the
: >thing to work. The docs are all TeX files, and when I double click on their
: >icons, I just get an error message "can't find default format file".
: >
: >Ideally, I would like someone to give me instructions on how to set up the
: >program so that I can run LaTeX on a file in the form "latex <filename>".
: >Also, of course, I would like to be able to process those TeX files
: >containing the English docs.
: >
: >Also, I notice that there is no executable called 'tex' in 'bin', but 2
: >programs called 'initex' and 'virtex'. What's the deal? 
: >
: >Please excuse my ignorance. Up to this point, I've only been using LaTeX
: >on my University's system. I no nothing about TeX proper.
: >
: >Thanks for any help.
: >
: >- Robert Randell 

: virtex (Virtual Tex?) is the main executable...to make it be tex
: you type "virtex &plain"; to make it be latex you type
: "virtex &lplain".  plain and lplain normaly live in your "formats"
: directory....they are formats (duh) and are created by initex with
: the comands "initex plain.tex" and "initex lplain.tex" respectivly.
: plain.tex and lplain.tex live in the macros directory I believe.
: Btw, gnplain and glplain are the corisponding german versions of the
: plain and lplain formats.

: Now, in order for initex and virtex to be able to find the files they
: use, they do two things...first they look for a set of environnment
: variables, the most important of which is TeXconfig which tells them
: the path to the configuration file tex.cnf.  In tex.cnf (located in
: the config directory) is a set of path lists telling the executables
: where to find the various types of files they use.  you may need to edit
: this file to reflect your set up....snoopdos would probably be a good
: tool to help you in this task (snoopdos is in the fish collection).

: Steps to complete your installation:
:   1.  Assign Tex: to the directory where you decompressed everything.
:   2.  Make an environmet variable TeXconfig which points to TeX:config.
:   3.  Edit TeX:config/tex.cnf as neccisary to reflect your setup.
:   4.  Alias tex to "virtex &plain" and latex to "virtex &lplain".
:   5.  Add TeX:bin to your path so you can easily make use of it's files.
:   6.  Make sure plain.fmt and lplain.fmt are in your formats directory;
:       if they are not there, then create them with initex.
:   7.  Tex your documentation (I think it's mostly tex, not latex, and
:       the german stuff is done with gplain or glplain instead of plain
:       or lplain).
:   8.  View the resulting .dvi files with showdvi (maybe print them with
:       dviprint).

: I've probably forgotten lots of stuff...but this should be enough to get
: you going...Two last points: first of all, you can always TeX your
: documentation on your university's computer and second of all, TeX files
: are just plain ascii, so, although they don't look pretty this way, they
: can be read directly with a text displayer like more or a text editor
: (IE: you don't have to tex your documentation in order to read it...).

: Have fun!  I've been using PasTeX with the amstex, revtex, and dvips
: packages and have been really quite thrilled with the output I've
: generated.

: 	--egott@triton.unm.edu

Now that we've got the viewing settled, how about printing and getting it to 
make the right sized fonts for you, etc, etc, etc, ad infinitum...