Re: I'm being ignored (fixing minor bugs)
On Sat, Nov 20, 1999 at 10:53:12AM +0000, Jules Bean wrote:
> Furthermore, while I'm in a counterexample mood (I'm a mathematician, you
> see) there is a standard example of a program that has stopped changing
> but is far from dead - TeX.
Actually, TeX is a bad counterexample, for several reasons. First, as
long as Knuth lives, it is changing: every few years he fixes the bug
reports he has got. Second, all *practical* TeX systems are modified
Knuth systems; for example, Debian's TeX is Web2C, which is actively being
developed. These changes are limited because TeX is standardized in a
way (TRIP test), but it does not matter, because these changes usually
affect TeX's system interface, such as memory management and file I/O;
TRIP test involves only the quality of the typeset output, IIRC. Third,
there are at least two TeX evolutionary projects that move away from the
TRIP-set standard: Omega and eTeX. They make TeX do things Knuth TeX will
never do, such as using multibyte characters or typesetting right-to-left.
--
%%% Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho % gaia@iki.fi % http://www.iki.fi/gaia/ %%%
""
(John Cage)
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