4 ms·

TeX is fundamentally not compatible with reflowable text because it's at the lowest level about putting glyphs in positions.

• sytelus 8y ago
  I fail to see any fundamental incompatibility. Every text renderer of any kind is about putting glyphs in positions. The layout would declare few things not moveable and algorithms needs to decide how to fit text around those constraints. The algorithms for TeX are computationally expensive but I don't see why with faster computers, you can't reflow the text. About 15 years ago it used to take dozen second to compile my typical PDF, now overleaf.com does that in just a second in browser.
  • macleginn 8y ago
    Compilation seems to take place on the server.
  • chongli 8y ago
    It's still way too slow. Lots of the documents I've worked on recently have taken over ten seconds to compile on my 2017 MacBook Pro (touch bar). That's 3 orders of magnitude too slow for reflowing at 60hz when you resize a window. I doubt a laptop will ever be 3 orders of magnitude faster (in sequential execution) than the one I have now, radical post-semiconductor computers notwithstanding.
  • JulianMorrison 8y ago
    If you are outputting a layout for a reflowable medium like HTML or EPUB, you are not putting glyphs in positions. You are constructing graphical objects and defining their relationships (and how those relationships change based on form factor), and you are permitting the output device to render glyphs and put them in positions. This is why we don't use PDF for web pages.
    • jhpriestley 7y ago
      The web browser also "puts glyphs into positions." Neither HTML nor TeX source specifies positioning in the source format though. The same TeX document can be re-rendered at different page sizes, font sizes etc. Really not sure what fundamental difference you are seeing.