Re: Latex version 2.09 from 7 Dec 89 ??
Jonathan D Proulx <jon@ai.mit.edu> writes:
JDP> Don't ask me why 'cus I don't know, but my fearless leader has decided
JDP> he needs an ancient version of LaTex on his spiffy new Debian laptop.
JDP>
JDP> Since this is from Dec 1989, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess I
JDP> can't get a .deb for it :)
(This kind of predating that whole Linux thing, yeah. :-)
JDP> Anyone have a clue where I could find source, and what issues I might
JDP> run into.
Right Answer: LaTeX2e is intended to be a mostly-compatible successor
to LaTeX 2.09. LaTeX is one of those bits of software that's actually
held up to a promise of version compatibility; provided you don't do
anything too arcane, you can try just running your normal latex over
the input file. It'll spew warnings about "compatibility mode", but
that's what you expect.
(I know that LaTeX2e isn't 100% compatible with LaTeX 2.09, but I
don't entirely know what the differences are. LaTeX2e added some
commands not present in 2.09, so there's a possibility of a namespace
conflict. I think the other issues can only come up if the author of
the document was a 4th-level TeXpert or higher.)
MIT Answer: Up until a couple of years ago, Athena's default latex
installation was based on LaTeX 2.09. So if you can find a Linux box
around with the SIPB installation of Red Hat 4.2/Athena 8.0 on it, it
should have a "normal" LaTeX 2.09. (Then upgrade it to something more
modern!)
--
David Maze dmaze@debian.org http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting. Politicking should be illegal."
-- Abra Mitchell
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