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LaTeX is plain text markup so old LaTeX documents can usually just be read without processing. (The major exception is that graphics are hard to visualize as a
by todd8 11y ago
LaTeX is plain text markup so old LaTeX documents can usually just be read without processing. (The major exception is that graphics are hard to visualize as a sequence of draw commands!). Further, ordinary LaTeX from the last few decades can still be processed without difficulty. The older versions of LaTeX are still available online.
Of course, things are never as simple as they should be. LaTeX is a markup language that through macro expansion ends up expanding into TeX. Since TeX 3.0 in 1989, Knuth has attempted to keep the TeX system stable. Since then TeX documents should produce the same output, pixel for pixel, as they do now running on the current version 3.14159265 (yes, the version number is converging to pi, there won't ever be a TeX 4.0).
Few people, however, produce documents in plain TeX--the LaTeX markup is so much more convenient than the lower level TeX. LaTeX has been slowly evolving and there are some backward compatibility issues, but they are minor. The first release of LaTeX seeing general use was described by Leslie Lamport (the creator of LaTeX) in his 1985 book[1]. That version of LaTeX, 2.09, can still be processed by today's LaTeX 2e in compatibility mode. LaTeX 3 is supposed to supersede LaTeX 2e someday, but it's not clear how many more years that will be.
Since LaTeX is open source the distributions from TUG (the TeX User's Group) are easily obtained and they have all the historical versions of LaTeX and TeX available.
This all makes LaTeX/TeX seem like one of the best ways to maintain a document's source for the future. A few tips:
- Fonts can be a problem because fonts evolve. Either use something like TeX's extensive collection of "built in" Computer Modern fonts or save the font files along with the source of anything that you might want to work on in twenty years.
- LaTeX has a wide number of very sophisticated third party extensions. Along with the document source it would be a good idea to keep the contemporaneous versions the extensions used by the document. (These extensions are just files of additional macros.)
- If one is only interested in the typeset results of a LaTeX document, use a LaTeX extension like pdfx (or Adobe Acrobat) to generate a PDF/A version of the document (LaTeX programs normally generate pdfs). PDF/A is a pdf specification from Adobe that is intended for archival use and rendering far in the future (fonts are embedded in the output, etc.).
- Pandoc can convert LaTeX to a wide number of alternative formats (HTLM etc.) with some success depending on the target language and the document complexity.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Latex-Document-Preparation-System-Users/dp/020115790X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1460728027&sr=8-2&keywords=latex+lamport http://www.amazon.com/Latex-Document-Preparation-System-User...
- merb 11y agoActually PDF/A is a pdf specification from Adobe that is intended for archival use and rendering far in the future (fonts are embedded in the output, etc.). Maybe they state that, however as long as there is no reader that is working on the newest hardware this is just wrong. And the Specification for PDF/A-1 - PDF/A-3 (a,b,u) is really really long and hard to implement correctly. I doubt that 70% of the solutions (even for money) incorrectly parses the spec. Actually I doubt that only Adobe Acrobat (Reader) would actually print a 100% correct PDF/A-3a file to the screen. Actually this is the (inofficial/offical) spec: http://www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/acrobat/pdfs/PDF32000_2008.pdf It should be really close to the iso one (http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=57229 http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_det...)
- hvidgaard 11y agoUunfortunately that has not been my experience. Between various linux distros LaTeX environments and 3rd party plugins, I've yet to be able to easily recreate the environment to produce similar output. If I struggle with it now, I have little hope that I can do it in 10 years - and I have more faith in VM containers.
- todd8 11y agoI agree; you're right. It isn't easy. I wouldn't want to go back and figure out my TikZ/PGF diagrams if that package lost backwards compatibility. But at least there is hope that a straightforward LaTeX document can be read in the future. You can always run the LaTeX source through Pandoc or just read it as it stands as text with markup. It's better than having a WordPerfect or XYWrite document (I liked both of those better than Word way back when). Your idea of a VM container is interesting--I hadn't thought of that, but what about the software to run the VM. Does VirtualBox stay backward compatible over the next 10 or 20 years? Maybe the way to go is Markdown, that is so easy to read even without processing it.
- hvidgaard 11y agoI don't expect it to be 20 years backwards compatible, but since I use VMs daily, I have a good idea of when to start looking for a way to convert the machine to a different more modern format. Re: markdown or similar like restructuredtext, I don't have any experience with advanced markup in them, but I think you'll have the same plugin problem as with LaTeX. The readability of the source isn't that important, since you'll probably have the rendered output as well, and that is,or should be, copy/pastable if needed.