current state of Y&Y web site

[Ganz, Frank, SV USA]

Hi Karl,

>From the standpoint of a commercial publisher, Y&YTeX was ideal. On occasion we have purchased the package for our authors to use just because it came with Mathtime and/or Lucida. Easy installation made the fonts available without much setting up to do on our authors' end. Even though recently we've encountered a problem when Mathtime fonts were used. This was probably due to the fact that .fd files weren't provided or setup to accommodate the latest release of LaTeX 2e. I haven't investigated this further. So, this is just conjecture.

Most of our authors who use DVIPS still provide PS files with Metafont-generated bitmap fonts (PK fonts), which are unacceptable in the publishing and print industries. Most of our authors have a hard time setting up DVIPS appropriately so that Type 1 fonts are used. It's regrettable if Mathtime and Lucida will no longer be part of the installation package.

Sometimes I need to use DVIPS. I don't know and have yet to find out how to tell DVIPS of an alternative location for EPS files. This is important when you share files with others, esp. if someone's DVI provides fixed file paths. DVIPSONE provides a command flag option for overrides.

A nice feature in DVIWINDO is that you can call up each font to check the position of each letter.

What I don't like:

If you use DVIWINDO to run TEX and create PostScript, the window that is supposed to show the log doesn't refresh (it remains gray) and only does so when an error occurs or the job is finished.


Thanks,
Frank


>-----Original Message-----
>From: Support for users of Y&Y's TeX system
>[mailto:YANDYTEX at LISTS.UCC.IE]On Behalf Of Karl Berry
>Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2005 3:05 PM
>To: YANDYTEX at LISTS.UCC.IE
>Subject: Re: current state of Y&Y web site
>
>
>Several people have written wondering about possible Y&Y futures.
>
>It is far too early to say for sure, but it is *possible* that it will
>be reincarnated, though most likely as free software, rather than a
>commercial product with commercial support.  (I'm intentionally being
>rather vague, since the outcome is so unsettled; sorry.)
>
>Such a reincarnation would *not* include the Lucida or MathTime fonts.
>It's likely that the Lucida fonts will be available, as a commercial
>product, perhaps within a few months (if we're lucky).  But
>this will be
>completely separate from the software.
>
>I have two general questions for this group.  First, what makes Y&Y TeX
>special?  That is, why do you like it, compared to other
>implementations, such as miktex?  I know there is no virtual font
>support; are there are other important features you found lacking?
>Other features that are especially nice and could be integrated into
>other implementations?
>
>Second, free software lives and dies by volunteers.  If anyone
>here is a
>Windows programmer who would be interested in working on the
>project, or
>if you know any Windows developers who might be interested,
>*please* let
>me know.
>
>Hearing some discussion from enthusiastic and knowledgeable users will
>weigh heavily in the outcome.
>
>Thanks,
>Karl (one of the negotiators)
>