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Emacs 22 on April 23

Posted Apr 11, 2007 2:28 UTC (Wed) by bfields (subscriber, #19510)
In reply to: Emacs 22 on April 23 by job
Parent article: Emacs 22 on April 23

TeX is from the early eighties (or even seventies, depending on how you count), and it's still what most scientific articles are written in.

TeX is certainly still in use, but it would be a stretch to call it still "in development". (That may be because it's pretty much perfect, not because it's abandoned, but the point still stands.)

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Posted Apr 11, 2007 15:49 UTC (Wed) by eklitzke (subscriber, #36426) [Link]

As you pointed out, TeX isn't really in development any longer. After TeX 3.0 came out (in 1989) Knuth announced that there would be no major changes to the language, and since that time the only changes have been bug fixes. Additionally, Knuth has stated that after his death there would be no more bug fixes -- any remaining bugs would be language "features."

In theory, LaTeX (which is just a really extensive set of TeX macros) is still under development, and at some point LaTeX 3 will be released. However, the latest version (LaTeX 2e) was released something like ten years ago, and the initial development of LaTeX 3 actually predates that release. AFAICT there isn't a clear set of release goals for the project, and I think there just isn't enough interest in such a radical change. Most people have a hard enough time with the current version without having to deal with a major language change, and since the release of LaTeX the number of people who understand TeX internals well enough to contribute to such a project is in decline. In practice, the only development that goes on for LaTeX is new macro packages (or more often, maintenance to existing packages).

Emacs 22 on April 23

Posted Apr 11, 2007 21:48 UTC (Wed) by wjhenney (guest, #11768) [Link]

As you pointed out, TeX isn't really in development any longer.

Well, yes and no... Knuth's original license required any derivative work to be called something other than TeX, but when you run, say, "latex" in any modern TeX distribution you will probably be invoking pdfeTeX under the hood, which is still under active development. As far as I know, it still incorporates much of Knuth's code.

TeX is still actively developed

Posted May 3, 2007 8:59 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

TeX *is* still in development. Owing to DEK's license, it is called pdfeTeX now, with regular new releases (including new features). There is also a separate development tier, Omega and Aleph, for better typesetting of international material; and also XeTeX that includes completely different font handling. And since Emacs 22 does not have much code in common with the original Emacs, we can also add research projects like exTeX to the mix.

In addition, there is work ongoing to merge many of these development tiers.

And almost all this work builds upon DEK's code base, so it is a continuation of the original program.

For reference: I'm one of the TeX guys; a CTAN maintainer, and a member of the LaTeX core team. I don't do core development, though; but I meet the guys regularly who do so.

Joachim

PS: What I don't know: How old is the FSF Emacs codebase, actually? TeX has seen two major implementations: The first in 1978 (in SAIL Pascal), and a complete rewrite in 1982 (in Web). Since then, the same codebase is used. How does this compare to Emacs?