InstantTeX 3.11d Release date: 060996 *** Release 3.11d adds a Color panel and a coloured icon to TeXEdit *** *** Release 3.11c includes a workaround for TeXEdit crashing on Ctrl-t *** *** Release 3.11b fixes a bug with missing icons in TeXEdit and TeXWorks *** This is InstantTeX 3.11, the first quad-FAT release of InstantTeX. Starting wit h this release, InstantTeX is no longer maintained by Dmitri Linde. The new mai ntainer is Gregor Hoffleit (flight@mathi.uni-heidelberg.de). Dmitri was so kind to hand me over the sources, since he has no more time to work on it. The list of changes compared with version 3.1 is fairly short, it's just a main tenance release with no really new features: - First quad-FAT (NeXT, Intel, HP-PA and SPARC) release. - Replaced XText with a more recent version. Emacs keybindings should finally work on all platforms! - Changed recipient's email address for suggestions. - Added Preface to the documentation. * Known bugs - Starting from page 2, this documentation is strongly out of date. - Feynman.app's documents aren't portable across platforms (tested with HP-PA and Intel). - Therefore, Feynman.app's help doesn't work on Intel machines. * The future I don't know how many time I will spend on InstantTeX in the future. At least, I'd like to make this a stable release on all existing four NEXTSTEP architectu res. But don't hesitate to send me bug reports for this version or suggestions and w ishes for future releases. I'll try to evaluate them, and maybe put out enhance d releases of InstantTeX. Heidelberg, March 1, 1996. * Installation Instructions To install InstantTeX you should login as root and double click on the InstantTeX.pkg file. Then click on the Install button in Installer. You should then place TeXWorks, TeXEdit from /LocalApps to the dock (a row of icons on the right of the screen). InstantTeX 3.11 and above no longer use the customized version of TeXview. P.S. Make sure to look over the manual. (Use the Help menu in TeXEdit or TeXWorks, and the manual will open in TeXview.) Here is the original README file... ----- InstantTeX is distributed for free. * Why InstantTeX? There are many programs which can be used for writing simple text. Some of these programs are capable of writing papers with complicated equations. However, only one of these programs, TeX, works at all existing computers. TeX files can be easily sent by e-mail to people who use different computer systems. This is a decisive advantage of TeX, which makes it a unique computer language for international scientific collaboration. At present, many journals accept papers submitted electronically as TeX files. Even before these papers are published or appear as preprints, they can be obtained electronically as TeX files stored in such databases as hepth@xxx.lanl.gov, hepph@xxx.lanl.gov, etc. There is no doubt that with a future development of electronic communications the importance of TeX will only grow. Arguably, the best computer for electronic communications is NeXT. NeXT has all necessary features to become a very good computer for TeX as well. However, TeX is a very complicated program, and until now TeX on NeXT was not very user friendly. The standard way to use TeX on NeXT was to write the text in Edit and to use Terminal to TeX it. To TeX the file, it was necessary to type a unix command in Terminal. To locate the line with an error, it was necessary to open the line panel in Edit and type the line number there. This was rather inconvenient. It was extremely difficult to insert pictures into the text. And it was necessary to memorize hundreds of TeX symbols and commands. There exist some nice public domain programs for TeX on NeXT, such as TeX menu by Harald Schlangmann, and TeXit, by Paul Griffin. However, neither of these programs is as user friendly as, for example, Textures for Macintosh. There is also a very good program loTeX, by Derek Beatty. It can be useful for writing complicated equations in TeX, but it does not provide a complete environment for writing TeX documents. That is why we are very pleased to present InstantTeX, a user friendly interface to TeX for the NeXT computers. We believe that InstantTeX makes NeXT the best computer for writing papers in TeX and for sending, receiving and TeXing multiple files written in different TeX formats. Main features of InstantTeX With InstantTeX you can TeX your file in any format you wish, directly from Edit, just by pressing a key. The format of your TeX files can be determined automatically. If TeX notices an error in your file, you can press a key and InstantTeX will go to the line which contains the error. This considerably simplifies editing your text. The main advantage of InstantTeX is that it has an Instant mode, which allows you to TeX your file automatically as you are writing it and preview the results in TeXview almost instantaneously. A few seconds after you type a key, the new output appears in TeXview . This is very useful for writing equations, macros, adjusting the spaces and sizes in your file, and almost everything else that you can do with TeX. In this respect InstantTeX is very similar to Lightning Textures for Macintosh computer. Our program works well even on multiple-page documents, due to the speed of the NeXT computers. Moreover, Instant mode now can be used even with multiple-file documents. One can also select only a portion of text to be TeXed in InstantTeX mode. Another advantage of InstantTeX is the existence of TeXPalette, which contains buttons corresponding to Greek letters, operators, relations, and other TeX symbols. Now you should not memorize how to write an integral or a matrix, just click the button, and you will see the result. This means that there is no need to write your equations separately and insert them later into your document; you do everything on the fly. In addition to PlainTeX symbols and commands, TeXPalette contains separate palettes with buttons corresponding to commonly used commands from LaTeX, Phystex, Harvmac and AmsTeX. Do you like typing \begin{equation} \label{...} ... \end{equation} each time when you write a new equation in LaTeX? Do you like typing (\ref{...}) each time you refer to any equation in the text? No such suffering anymore for those who use NeXT! (We are unaware of any similar product for other computers.) InstantTeX has a panel containing buttons `Edit File', `Go On', `Ignore All Errors', `Help With Error', `Quit TeX', `Use Another File', `TeX Again', `Preview'. It is very convenient for TeXing and editing files. You can insert pictures into your TeX files, just by dragging them into the TeX file window. You can easily import pictures from many other applications, such as Adobe Illustrator, Draw and Mathematica. You can also send the files with pictures to people who do not have NeXTs. Now InstantTeX can spell check your TeX files just as easy as any other files. Do you know why more than a half of electronically distributed physics papers contain misspelled words? The reason is that it is hard to spell check TeX documents and few people bother to do it. TeX commands, definitions, references, equations, citations make the spelling process long and difficult. However, InstantTeX can spell check your files TeX-smart, while using the same NeXT graphics user interface to spelling checker. You may send TeX files to people who do not have NeXTs. The files you are going to send will be automatically truncated to 80 or 70 characters a line, and will not contain errors that Mail makes when it truncates TeX files. InstantTeX includes two other programs: Feynman.app and TeXTables.app. Feynman.app allows you to draw Feynman diagrams and other diagrams. TeXTables.app allows you to make and edit tables and then include them into your TeX files. Thank you, - Dmitri Linde Please reply to dmitri@StarConn.com InstantTeX 744 Mayfield Avenue Stanford, CA 94305