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Frank Mittelbach <[log in to unmask]>
Tue, 10 Nov 1998 23:54:17 +0100
text/plain (169 lines)
i think that we have several problems here which to some extend
pulling the ship into different directions; i think we first need to
dis-tangle some of this a bit before it really makes sense to talk
models (or even approaches)

some claims:

- one of the major driving forces of latex is not necessarily the
  quality of its output but the exchangeability and portability of its
  input while maintaining a reasonable quality output and (with the
  necessary skill/knowledge (luck?)) being able to produce without too
  much fuss really high quality output from a nearly unchanged source

- by mid 1992 this was seriously in danger because too many kernel
  dialects floated around, maintenance was poor and because of a few
  other reasons. in essence by that time it was often impossible to
  run even a moderately simple document at one site and expect it to
  compile without errors somewhere else (let alone produce the same
  visual document)

- 2e was the try to bring that chaos back into some order and by the
  same time introduce a number of enhancements (at one hand to help
  promoting the new standard but at the other to provide a basis that
  allow extensions which can peacefully live together (or at least
  better than in the past)

- i claim that we more or less actually achieved this, it is again
  possible to exchange documents quite freely as long as they are
  "clean and simple". Simple here goes a long way further than
  original latex as defined by lamport, even though Marcel thinks (and
  he is right) that it is still narrow (but it does cover graphics,
  color, fonts especially ps fonts, input and output encoding,
  language support (although i don't think that is where it should be
  one day) math via amsmath and other stuff)

- what hasn't been addressed at all (or only very very marginally) was
  style or layout design --- [ by the way, anybody who knows my talk
  given at Stanford 1990 or so about what is wrong with LaTeX 2.09
  will see that what i said back then is actually overachieved already
  with 2e --- so no need for anything like ltx3, is there? well don't
  answer that now :-} ]

- and neither has be front matter stuff been addressed unfortunately


Marcel wrote

> My basic claim is that base LaTeX is too narrowly defined, and
> therefore causes a lot of the document exchange problems which seem
> to occur frequently not only between author and publisher, but also
> between different authors.

well, as David explained, the core LaTeX is simply being defined of
what we support personally plus some extensions like amsmath or psnfss
for which we either have definite maintenance paths or thought we can
support in addition.

for this block of the core we provide very strict consistency checks
and documents that used this stuff two years ago will run now and will
do so in with the december release (will produce identical output) ---
exceptions proving the rule.

this stability is extremely important in the latex community, even
upward compatible changes are considered bad by the majority of the
users as we often had to find out because any such change means that
some document only works if everybody uses version xyz dated... so
portability goes down the drain. the need to be up-to-date if
extensions are part of the game is far more accepted (ie getting a new
package) but to be forced to change "the latex installation" is
unfortunately something most people think is an unnecessary luxury
since after all it does work.

so ...

i followed the discussion with interest and some amusement (sometimes)

in my opinion the "core" whatever this is at a certain point in time
can only be maintained by a cathedral solution, and staying with the
picture, without much better arguments as those brought forward so
far, i wouldn't give my blessing to anything else. but as Michael
said, we do have the bazaar situation already in anything that appears
in contrib (supported or other(wise)) and that is essentially what
people feel which is the problem. the crux therefore seems to me how
to make the "core" bigger ie move some of the bazaar stuff into the
cathedral in an acceptable way

second, the linux example is a red herring. its development and
implementation model works because it doesn't effect peoples use of
the system as it is the single system that is effected if you upgrade
your linux (but your ip protocol stays the same it is still tcpic if
not the linux model would die too); with latex the situation is that
the "system" is not the single latex installation but the combination
of all those latex systems out there that you like to communicate
with.

===================================================================

so ...

i do see some good reasons for extending the "core" distribution but
it would require new maintenance and support models and it would need
somewhat conservative people that understand why it can be dangerous
to fix the spacing in article.cls (even though we all know that
design-wise it is mostly rubbish)

all such extensions and new ideas are great and producing code that
works better is fine and those people who know me know that my name is
attached to a few extentions that have finally ended up being in
standard use --- but with my background in TeX programming i can only
say that it is very hard and difficult to try keeping the bigger
picture in mind when taking out the knife to make things better. this
is all fine if you write your own package class or whatever to serve
your private writing style but it is a very different situation if you
try to maintain a world wide distributed system which is supposed to
be portable world wide.

====================================================================

so ...

what i would ask for an extended "core" distribution is (as a minimum)

- stability within the distribution, ie all packages would need to
  work with each other in any legal combination

- source stability between distributions, eg at least 98% of the
  documents should work without problems and without changes to the
  result in a suitable large number of different maintenance releases

- clearly defined and supported maintenance cycles such as the core
  LaTeX nowadays has (they may be longer, eg a year, but one should
  not go back to the old days of 2.09 maintenance which was applied
  whenever it was raining in California)

- a maintenance method that supports this core distribution, the
  current method using latexbug and ending up on the screen of ltx3
  project people can't be the way from that point on

====================================================================

so ...

in my mind this would mean a lot of volunteer work and a lot of good
ideas how to actually set something like this up. perhaps both is
possible but it is not enough to draw a recommended list (even though
this would need to be at the start of it) it needs more

taken the above it would need

- standard installation concepts (and thus reimplementation at least
  of the setup)

- standard integration into a regression test concept (see recent tub
  article by me and David on this for the current core)

- a support structure and people how fill it with life

- interface documentation (and probably development) for those parts
  which are not yet clearly defined

- ...

good night

frank

ps i should have said something of the about aspects as promised in
  the beginning but i'm too tired --- perhaps tomorrow

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