Commercial TeX implementations

There are many commercial implementations of TeX. The first appeared not long after TeX itself appeared. Of the vendors, ArborText (formerly Textset) and Personal TeX are those who have survived longest (since the mid or early 80s).

What follows is probably an incomplete list. Naturally, no warranty or fitness for purpose is implied by the inclusion of any vendor in this list. The source of the information is given to provide some clues to its currency.

In general, a commercial implementation will come `complete', that is, with suitable previewers and printer drivers. They normally also have extensive documentation (i.e., not just the TeXbook!) and some sort of support service. In some cases this is a toll free number (probably applicable only within the USA and or Canada), but others also have email, and normal telephone and fax support.

Unix; TeX

Silicon Graphics Iris/Indigo, Solaris 2.1, IBM RS/6000, DEC/RISC-Ultrix, HP 9000. ``Complete TeX packages. Ready to use, fully documented and supported.''

ArborText Inc
1000 Victors Way
Suite 400
Ann Arbor MI 48108
USA
Tel: (+1) 313-996-3566
Fax: (+1) 313-996-3573

Source: TUGboat 15(1) (1994)

VAX/VMS; Convergent TeX

Complete system for VAX/VMS machines (a version for Alphas is in preparation); includes LaTeX, multinational typesetting support, METAFONT and Web.

Northlake Software, Inc.
812 SW Washington, Ste 1100
Portland, OR 97201
USA
Tel: (+1) 503-228-3383
Fax: (+1) 503-228-5662
Email: rau@nls.com

Source: Email from Pat Rau, November 1994

PC; TrueTeX

Runs on Windows 3.1, Window NT and Windows 95.

Richard J. Kinch
6994 Pebble Beach Court
Lake Worth FL 33467
USA
Tel: (+1) 561-966-8400 Fax: (+1) 561-966-0962 Email: kinch@holonet.net
Web: http://idt.net/~truetex

Source: News posting from Richard Kinch, October 1997

PC; TeX

``Bitmap free TeX for Windows.''

Y&Y, Inc.
45 Walden Street
Concord MA 01742
USA
Tel: 800-742-4059 (within the USA)
Tel: (+1) 508-371-3286
Fax: (+1) 508-371-2004
Email: sales-help@YandY.com and tech-help@YandY.com
Web: http://www.YandY.com/

Source: Y&Y announcement, February 1995

pcTeX

Long-established: now has a Windows implementation.

Personal TeX Inc
12 Madrona Street
Mill Valley, CA 94941
USA
Tel: 800-808-7906 (within the USA)
Fax: (+1) 415-388-8865
Email: texsales@pctex.com and texsupp@pctex.com
Web: http://www.pctex.com/

Source: Mail from Personal TeX Inc, September 1997

PC; VTeX

Also ``Bitmap-free''.

MicroPress Inc
68-30 Harrow Street
Forest Hills, NY 11375
USA
Tel: (+1) 718-575-1816
Fax: (+1) 718-575-8038
Email: support@micropress-inc.com
Web: http://www.micropress-inc.com/

Source: MicroPress home page, April 1996

PC; microTeX

MicroTeX and TeX tools.

Micro Programs, Inc.
251 Jackson Ave.
Syosset, NY 11791
USA
Tel: (+1) 516-921-1351
Email: sales@microprograms.com

Source: AMS listing, November 1994

PC; Scientific Word

Scientific Word and Scientific Workplace offer a mechanism for near-WYSIWYG input of LaTeX documents; they ship with TrueTeX from Kinch (see above). Queries within the UK should be addressed to Scientific Word Ltd., others should be addressed directly to the publisher, TCI.

Dr Christopher Mabb
Scientific Word Ltd.
98 Pont Adam
Ruabon
Wrexham
Clwyd, LL14 6EF
UK
Tel: 0345 660340 (within the UK)
Tel: +44 1978 824684
Fax: 01978 823066 (within the UK)
Email: christopher@sciword.demon.co.uk

TCI Software Research Inc.
1190 Foster Road
Las Cruces NM 88001-3739
USA
Tel: (+1) 505-522-4600
Fax: (+1) 505-522-0116
Email: info@tcisoft.com
Web: http://www.tcisoft.com/tcisoft.html

Source: Mail from Christopher Mabb, November 1995

Macintosh; Textures

``A TeX system `for the rest of us' ''; also gives away a METAFONT implementation and some font manipulation tools.

Blue Sky Research
534 SW Third Avenue
Portland, OR 97204
USA
Tel: 800-622-8398 (within the USA)
Tel: (+1) 503-222-9571
Fax: (+1) 503-222-1643
Email: sales@bluesky.com
Web: http://www.bluesky.com/

Source: TUGboat 15(1) (1994)

AmigaTeX

A full implementation for the Commodore Amiga, including full, on-screen and printing support for all PostScript graphics and fonts, IFF raster graphics, automatic font generation, and all of the standard macros and utilities.

Radical Eye Software
PO Box 2081
Stanford, CA 94309
USA

Source: Mail from Tom Rokicki, November 1994