Although Stanford University's Donald Knuth released the initial version of TeX (pronounced "tech" nearly 10 years is still one of the most powerful and flexible typesetting programs available. In 1982, Knuth rewrote the program extensively, producing the TeX that today remains unsurpassed in typesetting mathematical and scientific sumbols. Until 1984, it ran almost exclusively on mainframes, minicomputers and workstations; since then, however, a number of implementations have appeared for microcomputers.
Two versions of TeX have been developed for the IBM PC (and compatibles): MicroTeX from Addison-Wesley and PCTeX froM Personal TeX. Two are also available for the Apple Macintosh TeXtures from Addison-Wesley and MacTex, developed by FTL Systems of Toronto.
It is useful to distinguish between an implementation of TeX (the installation of TeX in some specific computer environment, together with supplemental programs such as printer drivers) and the program TeX. The latter takes a source file (consisting of text...
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