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And your wrong assumption is a) that a problem has to be bug free to be useful or b) that a new effort can't produce a relatively bug free codebase? How are ei

And your wrong assumption is a) that a problem has to be bug free to be useful or b) that a new effort can't produce a relatively bug free codebase? How are either of those requirements wrong? I certainly expect my programs to be bug free. LaTeX is a tool that's older than many GNU utilities. It's been reviewed and tested numerous times over by the harshest test suite of all: the real world. Yes, in theory, you could rewrite TeX to be cleaner, while maintaining backwards compatibility and lack of bugs and regressions. In practice, this is very very hard. It's so hard that no one, no individual or company has managed to pull it off. But hey, who knows? You could be the first. The LaTeX codebase is open-source. If you think you can pull off what the most talented software engineers in the world haven't been able to do, go right ahead.

dextorious 15y ago
"""How are either of those requirements wrong? I certainly expect my programs to be bug free.""" Good luck with that. What I said, though, was that "a problem has to be bug free to be useful" is a wrong assumption. We all use programs that have bugs, and still found them immensely useful. """Yes, in theory, you could rewrite TeX to be cleaner, while maintaining backwards compatibility and lack of bugs and regressions. In practice, this is very very hard. It's so hard that no one, no individual or company has managed to pull it off.""" What are you talking about? Tons of people have written TeX versions of their own, even in Lua, and most of those are widely used. """But hey, who knows? You could be the first.""" Hardly. There is LuaTex, XeTeX (even more widely used) and others. Are you just talking out of your ass? (Not to mention several other modern typesetting engines that are not TeX based. You make it sound like TeX is an impossible achievement). Now, what I said I'd like to see was not a rewriting of TeX itself, but a modern version of a TeX like engine, with or without compatibility. Programs like XeTeX and Omega for example provide Unicode support and TTF/OT support to TeX, but I'd like to see something more modular, and with a more streamlined markup than TeX+LaTeX. While we're at it, even scriptable. There are also some improvements found since in typesetting, like those employed in the InDesign layout engine concerning edge text and hyphenation.
- zem 15y ago
  give lout a look - it was designed to have machine-generation-friendly markup
  - dextorious 15y ago
    Thanks. A have given lout a look in the past, but I though it wasn't actively developed anymore. I also liked Prince, but it is proprietary unfortunately.
    - zem 15y ago
      yeah, lout is dead as far as active development goes, but it's still pretty usable, particularly for non-mathematical stuff.
- microtherion 15y ago
  Both LuaTeX and XeTeX have the original TeX code at their core, so they are not bottom-up rewrites. The purpose and benefit of backward compatibility for TeX is that a 30 year old manuscript written in TeX can be fed to the latest version and produce identical output to what was produced 30 years ago. (Of course, you'd also have to archive the macro packages and font files you were using, but those were never machine dependent).

dextorious 15y ago

"""How are either of those requirements wrong? I certainly expect my programs to be bug free.""" Good luck with that. What I said, though, was that "a problem has to be bug free to be useful" is a wrong assumption. We all use programs that have bugs, and still found them immensely useful. """Yes, in theory, you could rewrite TeX to be cleaner, while maintaining backwards compatibility and lack of bugs and regressions. In practice, this is very very hard. It's so hard that no one, no individual or company has managed to pull it off.""" What are you talking about? Tons of people have written TeX versions of their own, even in Lua, and most of those are widely used. """But hey, who knows? You could be the first.""" Hardly. There is LuaTex, XeTeX (even more widely used) and others. Are you just talking out of your ass? (Not to mention several other modern typesetting engines that are not TeX based. You make it sound like TeX is an impossible achievement). Now, what I said I'd like to see was not a rewriting of TeX itself, but a modern version of a TeX like engine, with or without compatibility. Programs like XeTeX and Omega for example provide Unicode support and TTF/OT support to TeX, but I'd like to see something more modular, and with a more streamlined markup than TeX+LaTeX. While we're at it, even scriptable. There are also some improvements found since in typesetting, like those employed in the InDesign layout engine concerning edge text and hyphenation.

zem 15y ago
give lout a look - it was designed to have machine-generation-friendly markup
- dextorious 15y ago
  Thanks. A have given lout a look in the past, but I though it wasn't actively developed anymore. I also liked Prince, but it is proprietary unfortunately.
  - zem 15y ago
    yeah, lout is dead as far as active development goes, but it's still pretty usable, particularly for non-mathematical stuff.
microtherion 15y ago
Both LuaTeX and XeTeX have the original TeX code at their core, so they are not bottom-up rewrites. The purpose and benefit of backward compatibility for TeX is that a 30 year old manuscript written in TeX can be fed to the latest version and produce identical output to what was produced 30 years ago. (Of course, you'd also have to archive the macro packages and font files you were using, but those were never machine dependent).