Re: Bug#338608: Documenting change to tetex 3.0; deprecating initex and virtex.
Junichi Uekawa <dancer@netfort.gr.jp> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>> > Well, it was a news, which could have been included in
>> > 3.0-2 NEWS.Debian.
>>
>> To be more precise, removeal of initex could be a news but
>> its background, i.e. initex is replaced with "tex -ini"
>> is not a news. Anyway I'd like to know what statement
>> in NEWS.Debian do you think is appropriate?
>
> I object to that assertion; it wasn't really announced anywhere.
That depends on what you count as "anywhere". In my opinion, simple
users of plain TeX, LaTeX, ConTeXt or whatever format hardly ever had to
use it, at least in the last 10 years, and the people who still had a
use for it - software authors, or Debian maintainers - can be expected
to follow TeX development a little more closely, at least close enough
to get to know such changes.
> I would consider a statement like the following in
> NEWS.Debian/README.Debian appropriate:
>
> Debian tetex package deprecates initex and virtex commands since
> version 3.0.
Wrong - the Debian package doesn't deprecate anything, and not even
teTeX does. Ten months too late, Debian has a package for teTeX 3.0
which drops a symlink and thus support for a prognam name which has been
deprecated for years.
> initex has been superceded by -ini option of tex
> command; invoke 'tex -ini ' instead. For virtex, there is no
> replacement, since Debian tetex maintainers know of no users of the
> command.
To me, this sounds offensive against us Debian maintainers. The fact is
that invoking virtex has done the same as invoking tex ever since tex
existed as an executable or symlink, and IIRC even in the texbook Knuth
just calls "tex", never "virtex", except maybe in the installation
chapter. I might be wrong here, but in any case we never said anythink
like "we don't care for users who still need virtex", which I read from
your sentence, but instead we said that nobody needs to invoke it (which
is simply a true fact).
> The references you find in tex books and documentation
> published in the past century are wrong; please do live in the 21st
> century.
As a user, would you find such a statement polite? I would probably be
offended, or maybe amused about how childish the Debian teTeX
maintainers are.
> Two questions remain:
>
> 1. Is there a documentation stating the differences of the tetex
> implementation from the TeX as documented in TeXBook ?
> That could be useful
I don't know; I have just started a thread on the texlive mailinglist,
asking for the rationale for dropping the initex symlink. I'll ask that
question there, too.
> 2. Is 'virtex' equal to 'tex &plain ' ?
Since you are so fond of old documentation, you should look that up
yourself in the manpage of tex.
Regards, Frank
--
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer
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