12 Jan
2022
12 Jan
'22
8 a.m.
On Tue, Jan 11, 2022 at 6:45 PM Jon Forrest <nobozo(a)gmail.com> wrote:
No. It isn't. It is an Adobe product.
I know of
a full C reimplementation that passes the test but the author doesn't
want to make it free software.
Although it is possible, I find this hard to believe. I can't imagine
spending as much time as would be required to duplicate something that
already exists.
There are other rewrites out there that could be candidates but someone
will enough power will have to proclaim one as the official TeX
alternative.
Again, hard to believe.
2. Drop DVI? Are you kidding me? Although PDF
may be popular now,
that may not be the case 20 years from now. A device-independent
format is what is needed, and that's what DVI is. TeX is guaranteed
to produce the exact same output 100 years from now.
And .PDF isn't?
.DVI was great until .PDF matured. .DVI has almost no penetration
these days, whereas .PDF is everywhere.
DVI was never meant to have any penetration. It was always intended to be
an intermediary format.
I'm not saying that .PDF
will always be the proper alternative but a properly rewritten TeX
should make it much easier to replace .PDF will whatever comes
next.
Again, given the complexity of a proper TeX, and its declining popularity,
I find it ver hard to believe that someone would spend the time to
duplicate, with enhancements, it.
Blake McBride