Commercial TeX implementations

There are many commercial implementations of TeX. The first appeared not long after TeX itself appeared.

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.

PC; TrueTeX

Runs on all versions of Windows.

Richard J. Kinch
TrueTeX Software
7890 Pebble Beach Court
Lake Worth FL 33467
USA
Tel: +1 561-966-8400
Email: kinch@truetex.com
Web: http://www.truetex.com/

Source: Mail from Richard Kinch, August 2004.

pcTeX

Long-established: pcTeX32 is a Windows implementation.

Personal TeX Inc
725 Greenwich Street, Suite 210
San Francisco, CA 94133
USA
Tel: 800-808-7906 (within the USA)
Tel: +1 415-296-7550
Fax: +1 415-296-7501
Email: sales@pctex.com
Web: http://www.pctex.com/

Source: Personal TeX Inc web site, December 2004

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 and Ireland should be addressed to Scientific Word Ltd., others should be addressed directly to the publisher, MacKichan Software Inc.

Dr Christopher Mabb
Scientific Word Ltd.
990 Anlaby Road,
Hull,
East Yorkshire,
HU4 6AT
UK
Tel: 0845 766 0340 (within the UK)
Fax: 0845 603 9443 (within the UK)
Email: christopher@sciword.demon.co.uk
Web: http://www.sciword.demon.co.uk

MacKichan Software Inc.
19307 8th Avenue, Suite C
Poulsbo WA 98370-7370
USA
Tel: +1 360 394 6033
Tel: 877 724 9673 (within the USA) Fax: +1 360 394 6039
Email: info@mackichan.com
Web: http://www.mackichan.com

Source: Mail from Christopher Mabb, August 2007

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

Note that the company Y&Y has gone out of business, and Y&Y TeX (and support for it) is therefore no longer available. Users of Y&Y systems may care to use the self-help mailing list that was established in 2003; the remaining usable content of Y&Y’s web site is available at http://www.tug.org/yandy/

This question on the Web: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=commercial