Is there someone from Y&Y

[Christina Thiele]

Aqua writes:
>
> Dear All,
>
> After seeing all these mails and state of Y&Y....
> I would like to know what was the last version released by Y&Y.

Latest version was 2.2.8 -- if you look in your dviwindo.ini file, and
do a search on 2.2.*, you should find the necessary info. It's in the
last upgrade, 2.2.8, where a number of small glitches really started
to be annoying. But I think we've managed to document just about all
of them, so it's not difficult to get around the problems (many seem
to result from doing a custom installation + choosing to add the CTAN
collection during the installation).

>From what I understand, even though that 3rd digit (the .8, I mean)
was supposed to be for sub-version upgrades, there was a bit of
tweaking going on almost all the time, in between the changes to that
last digit.

I'm not sure what substantive differences there are between, say,
2.2.6 and 2.2.8 ... On the other hand, I'd say an upgrade from 2.1 to
2.2 is probably worth it.

> Is there any way I could buy/get! an upgrade.

Only Y&Y sold the Y&YTeX implementation so, on the face of it, I'd
guess there's no way to buy an upgrade. However, stay tuned here to
see how and where Y&YTeX, as a product, goes. If it still works for
you, stick with it while you shop around.

If you need a lot of pdf, then maybe you want to look at pdfTeX from
the public domain distributions such as the TeXLive CDs. Y&YTeX won't
do that, but there are others which can.

> Could some one suggest me a good alternate system which could replace Y&Y in
> a STM publishing enviroment.

Try checking the TUG website for some options:

  www.tug.org > TeX web resources [under `Software']
                     > 4. Free TeX implementations
                 and
                     > 8. Commercial/shareware TeX vendors and ...

I know it sounds kind of obvious -- or even a bit dumb to even say
this, but you may want to first make a list of what sorts of things
you need:

   a. .ps or .pdf output that's solid and transportable
   b. +/- lots of graphics
   c. what platform do most of the client projects come in on
      (PCs with Word + CorelDraw or something else; Macs; a
       hodge-podge, which has to converge down to one platform;
       already mostly in (La)TeX; etc.)
   d. what platform do _you_ feel most comfortable with, have good
      support for, level of reliability/weakness

That is, there's no point in someone saying TeX for Linux is the best
solution -- if you have no experience with it, no technical person
who's familiar with it, and all your files come in from Macs, using
Word and some almost-Mac-specific graphics programs ;-) . It's just
too hard to have to keep converting and coping with system
incompatibilities.

All of which seems a bit simple-minded ... But if you have a choice
and some time to think about it, these are some of the considerations
which are more important, I think, than how whiz-bang new or leading
edge an implementation might be ... from what I've seen, choosing
Omega, for example, is not for the faint of heart ;-) It's stunning
what it can do, but if you don't need multi-lingual or Unicode support
in fonts and such, then its niftiness is kind of wasted. So that's
another aspect: are your documents mainly in English or do they need
lots of special fonts, behond the usual math sets one can get (CM or
some of the other combinations alreadya mentioned here).*

*There have been several articles now on moving beyond CM for math --
 look for Thierry Bouche's article(s) in TUGboat and in _Les Cahiers
 GUTenberg_ for details. Alan Hoenig's massive book, _TeX Unbound_,
 also goes on and on about alternatives to CM maths and how to do
 them. Hmmm ... I guess that's yet another criterion to add to the
 list: what kind of fonts are you hoping to use and can you get them
 set up to your liking?

> Thanks and Regards

Hope some of the above helps ... and that it isn't too obvious to have
even mentioned.

> Dominic
>

Ch.