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Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <[log in to unmask]>
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David Kastrup <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 24 Jan 2003 01:28:19 +0100
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        Timothy Murphy <[log in to unmask]> writes:

> On Thursday 23 January 2003 21:58, David Kastrup wrote:
>
> > To put it bluntly: why would I need to persuade people like you?
> > The question of the right tool for the right job needs to get
> > decided by the people _doing_ the job.
>
> As far as I am concerned the job is printing mathematics, not
> writing packages which -- to return the bluntness -- nobody uses.

The title of this mailing list is "mailing list for the LaTeX3
project".  While a plea of "I don't ever want a LaTeX that could do
more than LaTeX2e" is perhaps on-topic more or less, I doubt that the
main focus of the LaTeX3 project should be on avoiding improving
LaTeX.

If you take a look at printed mathematics in journals, you'll find
things like display equations spanning two of three columns.  This is
the sort of thing that is utterly impossible to do with LaTeX2e, and
that is part of the development efforts of LaTeX3.  That's printing
mathematics, and some of the tasks necessary for tackling that get
easier with better tools.

> > "what has been good enough for Knuth is good enough for us."
>
> Not good enough _for_ Knuth, good enough _by_ Knuth,

Good.  Nobody keeps you from staying with your current version of
LaTeX and TeX.  I am just wondering why you are subscribed to this
list when your opinion is that LaTeX should not be improved.

> > LaTeX contains hundreds of bugs that are triggered not
> > infrequently.
>
> Not by me.

Take a look at the bug archive.  And even TeX itself is not safe from
trouble.  Just try something like
tex
\def~{\if~}~
and see where it takes you.

> > LaTeX has outgrown TeX painfully already.
>
> You keep saying things like this.  You may feel pain.  but as far as
> I'm concerned LaTeX works pretty painlessly.

We are not talking about letting LaTeX work, but about making LaTeX
work.

> In all the acres of argumentation you've propounded on the topic you
> have never -- as far as I am aware -- produced a single LaTeX file
> which would be better -- more easily, more elegantly -- processed by
> elatex than latex.

Because we are not talking about using LaTeX, but implementing it.
Don't worry, I'll be contributing code soon enough.  Code, not "LaTeX
files".  Stuff aimed at helping document class designers design
classes beyond the narrow restrictions of LaTeX's current base
classes.  That is what the LaTeX3 team is concerned with and this
mailing list is about.  It will take probably a few months, and I
don't want to waste more time and functionality than is necessary by
backward compatibilities for the sake of mistaken loyalty to an old
code base.  Perhaps I am more selfish in that regard than other
developers have been.  I can live with that.

--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

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