Date: Thu, 17 Nov 1994 18:44:27 +0100
From: Thomas Eifert <EIFERT AT reze-1 DOT rz DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
Subject: Re: Docs: why not plain understandable ascii?
To: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Reply-To: eifert AT rz DOT rwth-aachen DOT de
Organization: Rechenzentrum RWTH Aachen

>   Someone wrote:-
>   >Hello! Where can I ftp '/djgpp/src/gdb-4.12/gdb/doc/*.tex' in '*.ps' or
> '*.dvi' format? ( I have some problems with TeX under dos :-( )
> 
>   Aaron Ucko <UCKO AT VAX1 DOT ROCKHURST DOT EDU> replied on Wed 16 Nov 1994 20:03:55
> -0500 (CDT) (Subject: Re: Docs):-
>   > What sort of problem? gTeX works fine for me ... If you _really_ need them
> and still have problems, I can run TeX myself and uuencode the dvi's, but that
> sounds rather tedious, so I'd rather not unless strictly necessary.
> 
>   Everybody hasn't got all these funny word processing packages! Can't this
> info be sent out as plain legible ascii!?!? djgpp is enough to cope with
> without having to wrestle also with the intricacies of the Tex system and its
> various dialects. Often people lack the money or the hard disk room or the
> need for these word processing packages. I get tired of having to manually
> edit Tex matter into readable ascii text. Today an important article (not
> about Gnu C) circulated by email came in Microsoft Word and I had to manually
> edit it into ascii, since I have Word Perfect 5 for DOS and not Microsoft Word
> and I don't use Windows unless I have to.
> 
You've never TEXed, I suppose ?

1) TEX has no dialects (of course there are several macro packages, 
   but not plain TEX)
2) TEX/Latex is public domain (best I know is the emTEX-
   Implementation)
3) fully featured TEX (without all style-docs, metafont etc. needs 
   about 7 mb
   
Thomas Eifert

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 | Thomas Eifert                                                    |
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