Bug#225833: Letter vs A4 again

[Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu>]

Florent Rougon <f.rougon@free.fr> writes:

> No, because in this case:
>   - you cannot study how the document was done;
>   - you cannot (conveniently) modify the document.
> 
> Writing LaTeX code is comparable to programming, and what is good for
> usual software is also good for LaTeX code, most of the times.

Note that when I compile your program I'll get a different binary. My binary
will be linked with different libraries and use the configuration on my
machine. Your source code is not "portable" in the sense you're using to
describe your typeset documents.

In fact "portable" means pretty much the opposite of how you're using it when
used to describe source code for programs. It refers to source code that will
work in different environments because it doesn't hard code assumptions about
the environment. Source code that *doesn't* need to be hand modified when
taken to a new platform.

What good would it be to ship your source code to me with my x86 processor if
it's still going to compile to PPC code when I compile it? I may as well have
received the binary.

Likewise I have no A4 paper here -- I've never even *seen* an A4 sheet of
paper. What good would it be to have my compiler generate an A4 document I
can't run on my processor?

-- 
greg