[OS X TeX] (OT?) TeX and MacOSX (or what we should pretend from OSX applications).

[Massimiliano Gubinelli]

On 3 Dec 2004, at 14:51, Frank STENGEL wrote:

>
> Le 3 déc. 04, à 13:13, Bruno Voisin a écrit :
>
>>
>> But then forget about the ability to collaborate with people, to send 
>> PDF files to them, to submit papers electronically. (Exactly what 
>> Peter Dyballa just wrote, I realize.) Doing that would, I think, just 
>> alianate the whole academic community to TeX, and this is precisely 
>> where it comes from.
>>
>
> Indeed. However, when working on a paper, one wants to have a system 
> that is quick, reads easily and is basically well integrated in the 
> system. When it comes to exporting/sharing documents, one can accept 
> the route to be a bit more circuitous.
>
> This means that there could be a dual system:
>
> -- one side for preparation/personal work that, a the price of 
> diminished compatibility, gives the user an environment that takes 
> advantage of the specificity of Mac OS: Quartz, bundles etc. and would 
> also permit things like synchronicity on a finer level than pdfsync 
> -- one side for exporting/sharing that goes the ``standard'' route.
>
> The switch between both sides should be as simple as selecting an 
> option like ``sharing mode'' in the integrated TeX environment one 
> would use.
>

This was exactly what I had in mind. Just think about TeXture: we 
should have tools optimized for the usual revision loop 
(modify-compile-view) and then tools to distill device-independent 
representation of the output. the dvi format was (and is) a very smart 
solution since rely on the fact that the viewer knows the fonts. I 
agree also that if one wants to use fine typographical tools (like font 
protrusion) then this does not work and fonts can be embedded by TeX 
(or the font protrusion algorithm extended to the viewer...). there are 
many points that I did addressed.

I do not say that computing power is not useful, quite the contrary, 
that we are wasting or just misusing the huge computing power we have.
As far as Quartz optimization, Bruno noticed that Apple PS distiller is 
very slow and I agree with him. But I also think that Apple does not 
care very much about this detail and maybe it just implemented a quick 
feature (like the first Help System). I'm just amazed by the speed of 
the internal PDF rendered (note that each time you change a page in 
Preview, the next page is composed real-time on screen).
On the other side I made some experiments tracing the execution of 
dvipdfm and noticed that (for mathematical document of 10-20 pages 
without figures) at least half of the time is spent in reading Type1 
font files, decompressing them, subsetting, recompressing, and 
including in the PDF.... From this I conclude that there is a margin 
for a net improvement of performances without any drawback (if we 
exclude maybe font-protusion).

(random thoughts from a frustrated programmer....)

Massimiliano

> -- 
> Frank STENGEL (stengelf<at>menara.ma)
>               (fstengel<at>mac.com)
>               (fstengel<at>nordnet.fr)
>
> --------------------- Info ---------------------
> Mac-TeX Website: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
>           & FAQ: http://latex.yauh.de/faq/
> TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
> List Post: <mailto:MacOSX-TeX at email.esm.psu.edu>
>
>

--------------------- Info ---------------------
Mac-TeX Website: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
           & FAQ: http://latex.yauh.de/faq/
TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
List Post: <mailto:MacOSX-TeX at email.esm.psu.edu>