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Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 23 Jan 2003 18:43:18 +0000
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Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <[log in to unmask]>
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Timothy Murphy <[log in to unmask]>
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School of Mathematics, Trinity College Dublin
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On Wednesday 22 January 2003 15:40, David Kastrup wrote:

> I have sent a message to the tetex-pretest list telling people that it
> is possible that there would come a time when it would be appreciated
> if using eTeX as default engine for "latex" might be reasonably easy
> to do and that the way of achieving that should be well-documented.
> teTeX already comes with a separate "elatex", but most TeX shells and
> users of course will use "latex" instead.

First of all, I should say that I regard myself as an "ordinary" LaTeX user.
When I see the names Arsenau, Mittelbach or Kastrup
I know my brain is about to be assaulted mercilessly,
causing me grave depression at the degeneration of my mental faculties.

But to return to the subject at issue, as far as I can see your belief is

(1) eTeX is better than LaTeX

(2) But people are not using eTeX as they should be

(3) Therefore eTeX should be renamed LaTeX,
and LaTeX renamed dinoTeX.

But speaking (I believe) for the hoi polloi,
I am perfectly happy with LaTeX as it is.
If there were something I wanted to do
which I could do with eTeX but not with LaTeX
then I would use eTeX.
But I do not at the moment feel any urge to use \splitdiscards
or any of the other macros you suggest,
and in fact wouldn't have the slightest idea how to use them anyway.

It seems to me that if eTeX is so much better than LaTeX
then it is up to you to proselytize for eTeX,
by pointing out the wonderful things one can do
if only one uses eTeX in place of LaTeX.
If you could persuade people that eTeX offered
much better facilities then more and more people would use eTeX,
and when say 40% (or even 20%) of LaTeX users had switched to eTeX
it might be reasonable to make it the default.

After all, many (most?) LaTeX users have switched to pdfLaTeX,
without it being renamed LaTeX,
just because it offered us a great new facility.


--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
tel: +353-86-233 6090
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

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