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Yes, that's what I meant to imply. So yes, TeX is finished software but the boundary between what is known as TeX and "not TeX" is blurred by the thousands of e

Yes, that's what I meant to imply. So yes, TeX is finished software but the boundary between what is known as TeX and "not TeX" is blurred by the thousands of extensions in the TeX environment that people must use when using anything beyond the basics. Basically what I'm saying with that example is that you can draw a line around some code and say "this is TeX, and it is finished." But what users mean when they say "I use TeX" will never be finished and will be forever expanding. TeX is the hardest to argue because it is probably the most stable software in existence for what it's capable of, so any other software you use is much less finished.

derefr 9y ago
> the boundary between what is known as TeX and "not TeX" is blurred by the thousands of extensions in the TeX environment that people must use when using anything beyond the basics I would say the boundary is very well defined. Consider Internet wire protocols: to access this website, you're using HTTP over TLS over TCP over IP [etc.] That doesn't mean that TCP or IP are "changing" when HTTP or TLS change. TCP and IP are feature-complete, low-level layers that each just do one thing well. We add on more layers to get the effect we want, and those layers change frequently, but changing those layers doesn't mean the lower-level thing "changes" as a part of it. I think the problem with TeX is just that people have the nomenclature flipped. People think of things like LaTeX as being "what TeX is"—that LaTeX "is an implementation of" TeX. But that's off; it'd be like saying that HTTP is an implementation of TCP/IP, or that Ubuntu is an implementation of the Linux kernel. In reality, LaTeX et al are software distributions—they include TeX as their text-constraint-processing engine, just like a Linux distro includes the Linux kernel, or a Unity game includes the Unity engine. It's one component, with a well-defined function.

derefr 9y ago

> the boundary between what is known as TeX and "not TeX" is blurred by the thousands of extensions in the TeX environment that people must use when using anything beyond the basics I would say the boundary is very well defined. Consider Internet wire protocols: to access this website, you're using HTTP over TLS over TCP over IP [etc.] That doesn't mean that TCP or IP are "changing" when HTTP or TLS change. TCP and IP are feature-complete, low-level layers that each just do one thing well. We add on more layers to get the effect we want, and those layers change frequently, but changing those layers doesn't mean the lower-level thing "changes" as a part of it. I think the problem with TeX is just that people have the nomenclature flipped. People think of things like LaTeX as being "what TeX is"—that LaTeX "is an implementation of" TeX. But that's off; it'd be like saying that HTTP is an implementation of TCP/IP, or that Ubuntu is an implementation of the Linux kernel. In reality, LaTeX et al are software distributions—they include TeX as their text-constraint-processing engine, just like a Linux distro includes the Linux kernel, or a Unity game includes the Unity engine. It's one component, with a well-defined function.