From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.2 (2018-09-13) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.2 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [45.79.103.53]) by inbox.vuxu.org (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTP id e26c326a for ; Sun, 6 Oct 2019 08:04:03 +0000 (UTC) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id DD7059B9DE; Sun, 6 Oct 2019 18:04:02 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 341DE948CE; Sun, 6 Oct 2019 18:03:33 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id E9C35948CE; Sun, 6 Oct 2019 18:03:29 +1000 (AEST) Received: from freefriends.org (freefriends.org [96.88.95.60]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 815A7946BD for ; Sun, 6 Oct 2019 18:03:29 +1000 (AEST) X-Envelope-From: arnold@skeeve.com Received: from freefriends.org (freefriends.org [96.88.95.60]) by freefriends.org (8.14.7/8.14.7) with ESMTP id x9683QHQ020296 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256 verify=NOT); Sun, 6 Oct 2019 02:03:27 -0600 Received: (from arnold@localhost) by freefriends.org (8.14.7/8.14.7/Submit) id x9683QTm020295; Sun, 6 Oct 2019 02:03:26 -0600 From: arnold@skeeve.com Message-Id: <201910060803.x9683QTm020295@freefriends.org> X-Authentication-Warning: frenzy.freefriends.org: arnold set sender to arnold@skeeve.com using -f Date: Sun, 06 Oct 2019 02:03:26 -0600 To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org, nobozo@gmail.com References: <20191004042034.GS13997@mcvoy.com> <20191004145750.GA1466863@lap> <4ba947af-00c7-53ee-046a-3b6306e5d1f0@andrewnesbit.org> <389f5a69-e103-7ec3-9b95-3e6e294a86e6@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <389f5a69-e103-7ec3-9b95-3e6e294a86e6@gmail.com> User-Agent: Heirloom mailx 12.5 7/5/10 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [TUHS] eqn X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" Jon Forrest wrote: > One slightly OT fact about TeX. On my 16GB, Core i7, SATA SSD > Lenovo T430s laptop running Fedora 30, it takes ~3 seconds to run TeX on > the ~900 page TeXBook. That's pretty fast. You can thank Moore's Law for this. I remember trying to run TeX on BSD 4.[12] vax with 4 Meg of memory and it taking many minutes to format a single page. The first time it became easy to run TeX, for me, was on sparcstation class systems in the early 1990s. > TeX contains all kinds of > code to make it fit in the constraints of a 1980s computer. I wonder > whether a redesign for a 2020 computer would be faster or slower. I think it's just compute-intensive code. Moern versions of TeX use WebToC to translate Knuth's web/pascal code to C, and that has been the case for a long time. (As an aside, everyone here who's read "TeX: The Program", raise you hand. [I have, but only once.]) > I suspect, but can't prove, that classic [nt]roff might also > benefit in the same way. groff was written latter, so it might > suffer less. I don't think classic [nt]roff suffers at all. I remember (boy do I sound like an old f*art) circa 1991, having both nroff and groff on a '486 class system. nroff was noticeably faster at formatting man pages than groff was. (Groff, of course, was ditroff and gave me PostScript output, but comparing the two versions of nroff for text output, there was a noticeable difference.) Again, today, it doesn't really matter. Arnold