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From:
Marcel Oliver <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 31 Aug 2001 21:26:38 +0200
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Frank Mittelbach writes:
 >  > Good news, I think. Formerly, in the discussion previous to the
 >  > meeting in Tsukuba, Omega was only *another* possibility, even in your
 >  > messages. (In other words, I didn't misinterpret the Robin's opinion
 >  > as the team's opinion, I just included a "deprecated" opinion
 >  > ;-) ) Now Omega is the main candidate (if the suggested improvements
 >  > are fulfilled in a successor, of course) by far.
 >
 > well yes, but what i was indicating in my last message is that i wont be able
 > to put as much time into it than i had originally hoped --- so it is up to you
 > (plural) to help or even make it happen.
 >
 > as i said, we have covered a lot of ground in Metz so there are specs (though
 > incomplete) and i wouldn't mind seeing discussions on those on a broader scale
 > (either on this list or elsewhere). problem is that i don't know when i will
 > find the time to make those specs available (some of them exist only in John's
 > scrapbook and as huge jepg's since i photographed the pages :-)
 >
 > and i don't know what the state of the whole enterprise is (at the other side
 > of the world that is --- John wanted to put some students onto it to test
 > certain ideas) that's something that needs finding out. People seriously
 > interested in putting more than one or the other email into it should indicate
 > that; we might then be able to to get something going after all

I'd be willing to put in some effort in documentation, something more
concrete than the stuff I wrote up this spring.  However, I will be
off-line from Sunday until October 12, so this is more medium term.

 > frank
 >
 >
 > ps on the more easier aspects of a future LaTeX (as it isn't so much depending
 > on the underlying formatter): has anybody ever bothered to look at the new
 > frontmatter stuff that i presented in Metz and put onto the WWW just before
 > the holiday time? if so i would be interested in some comments; personally i
 > thought it does its job rather well, but not hearing anything either way makes
 > me wonder ...

I tried the frontmatter stuff.  It so good that it doesn't lend itself
to cheap-shot criticism.  I think it's really necessary to code up a
few real-world journal front matter pages to see if there are real
shortcomings.

Two things which came up when I was doing front-matter stuff some time
back, taking a lot of time to sort out, and do not seem to be covered
by the current prototype:

- Some specs say "start this element x cm from the top of the page".
  In other words, can we do absolute rather than relative addressing
  of layout elements on the page?

- Often specs call for letter spacing.  This issue is strictly
  speaking outside your domain of concern, and purists will say "get a
  letterspaced font".  However, such fonts are not easily acquired (in
  particular if there are other constraints on font selection).

  In any case, we probably need a well-defined letterspace API.

  As a first "backend" one could take the Phil Taylor/Donald Arsenau
  hack, which works very nicely for most practical purposes (but is
  certainly easy to break).  The next best solution could be a clean
  implementation within a future Omega.  Finally, in the case that
  letterspaced fonts are available, they should certainly be used.

Hopefully I'll get to look at the actual code more closely, but not
any time soon.

Best,

Marcel

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