[tex-live] Fwd: messages from dek re tex 2002

Gerben Wierda Sherlock@rna.nl
Thu, 9 Jan 2003 23:09:09 +0100


I g ot a copy of this. It might be intersting for several people on 
this list.

Begin forwarded message:

>> Date: Thu, 9 Jan 2003 12:22:15 -0500 (EST)
>> From: Barbara Beeton <bnb@ams.org>
>> To: tex-implementors@ams.org
>> Subject: messages from dek re tex 2002
>> X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 1.0 
>> (http://www.roaringpenguin.com/mimedefang/)
>>
>> many apologies for the delay in forwarding these notices, but i've
>> been ill since early december, and have only just returned to my
>> office and e-mail (4000 messages waiting ...).
>>
>> i've included the messages out of order, to put the shorter one
>> first.
>>
>> from other messages in my in-bin, it appears that at least two
>> submitters of bug reports have found dek's reactions posted on his
>> web site; having not yet had a chance to research what's there,
>> or to check the url's mentioned in don's messages, i can't comment
>> further, but it's obvious that
>>
>>   *** it's time for implementors and beta testers to do their thing 
>> ***
>>
>> again, apologies for the delay in getting this message through to
>> you.  i've notified don of the delay, but it's still a good idea for
>> you to send in any reports of adverse effects as soon as possible.
>>
>> i haven't yet received the backround material for this -- don always
>> writes out his comments on printouts, and sends the collection back
>> by regular post -- so i'm not in a position to answer questions.
>> i'm hoping that will arrive soon, and will try to transcribe the
>> comments into a file as soon as possible so that it can get sent
>> out, but i can't make any promises (the month out of the office has
>> only worsened the existing logjam).
>>
>> in the meantime, best wishes for the new year, and i hope you find
>> the updates in good order.
>> cheers.                                                 -- bb
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2002 00:17:05 -0800
>> To: bnb@ams.org
>> Subject: note from Don Knuth
>>
>> Dear Barbara,
>>
>> I've drafted a "public" description of the recent changes to
>> TeX-and-friends; it appears on
>>   http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/news03.html
>> which is a page that nothing links to (as yet), but it will be my
>> "recent news" page when the new year rolls around.
>>
>> Can you pass this info to the TeX implementors, to see if they can
>> suggest any improvements to the wording?
>>
>> Basically I'm advising ordinary users not to be afraid to hold on
>> to their current systems unless they find it convenient to upgrade.
>> [Like, I myself will probably wait for several years before I switch!]
>>
>> $MC+HNY$! -- Don
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 15:00:14 -0800
>> To: bnb@ams.org
>> Subject: from Don Knuth [TeX 2002 is ready for beta-test!]
>>
>> Dear Barbara,
>>
>> Once again a super-huge THANK YOU for collecting and editing that
>> big package of TeX/MF feedback. I've gone through it all, and
>> I've written both comments and reward-checks; these you will receive
>> early in January (but not before then, because Stanford is
>> closed for the holidays).
>>
>> Meanwhile, if you yourself are not "closed" during this festive
>> time, you can spread the word to everybody who needs to know that
>> NEW VERSIONS OF TeX AND FRIENDS ARE NOW AVAILABLE FOR BETA-TESTING!
>>
>> All my tests have been passed, but of course I don't want to inflict
>> new sources on the world until the real TeX gurus have had a chance
>> to give their seal of approval.
>>
>> The new sources are available on
>>   http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/tex02-beta.tgz
>> but I haven't told anybody else about this. [In other words, if
>> you don't tell anybody, it will remain a secret.]
>>
>> Once they are vetted, I'll put them on labrea.stanford.edu in
>> place of the sources presently there. My understanding is that
>> labrea is always monitored by CTAN, hence I won't have to do
>> anything else when I do finally "release" them ... but I will also
>> put a short notice about their existence on my "news" page when
>> that time comes.
>>
>> The new versions are
>>      TeX 3.141592
>>        (four bugs fixed: two re leaders, two re alignments)
>>      METAFONT 2.71828
>>        (one bug fixed, re autorounding of huge paths)
>>      TANGLE 4.5
>>        (a trivial change re numeric comments, possibly unnecessary)
>>      VFtoVP 1.3
>>        (small correction to the out-of-range error correction)
>>      PLAIN.TEX, HYPHEN.TEX, PLAIN.MF
>>        (only the uncopyright notice has changed)
>>      CMBASE.MF, ACCENT.MF CSC.MF
>>        (improvements in robustness, but nothing major;
>>           only the numeral 7 is affected slightly, in cmbx5 thru 
>> cmbx8)
>>      ERRATA.TEX, TEX82.BUG, MF84.BUG, CM85.BUG, ERRORLOG.TEX, 
>> ERRATA.TEN
>>        (details of the recent changes)
>>
>> Actually tex02-beta.tgz includes a file DIFFS02 that lists all the
>> differences between what I've got now and what I had in 1998.
>> People who look closely at that file will notice a dozen or so
>> changes to my "local" files, reflecting my aborted attempt to convert
>> to GNU Pascal; those should be ignored. I tried to install GPC in 
>> 2000,
>> but the attempt was such a miserable failure that I don't have courage
>> to try again. David Fuchs has a good Pascal compiler and he helped me
>> with the critical ports. Otherwise I am muddling through with web2c
>> approximations to the definitive Pascal sources.
>>
>> Of course this means that etex, pdftex, pdfetex, etc, all need to
>> be upgraded; then the packages that contain them can follow.
>> The job won't be hard if the authors still remember how to do it ---
>> however, I realize that TeX hasn't changed since 1995, so people
>> might well have forgotten! Anyway the changes are fairly
>> basic and not difficult to fathom.
>>
>> I recommend that you print the nine-page output of "errata.tex"
>> in TUGboat when these new versions are announced publically. Those
>> pages list all changes to Volume A--E since the first printings of
>> the millenium edition (now in its second printing).
>>
>> Can you communicate the following comments please to the web2c folks?
>> [All remarks relate to teTeX-1.07 which I am currently using]
>>   1) When I say "dvitype --help", the message incorrectly has ` for '
>>      in the examples for page-start.
>>   2) In triptrap/trip.diffs, one of the "admissible differences"
>>      is the statment about "1 hyphenation exception" in trip.log,
>>      when my Pascal programs always say "2 hyphenation exceptions".
>>      Why does this discrepancy occur, and why is it acceptable?
>>   3) I also find the 8-bit character E-acute instead of ^^c8,
>>      and y-umlaut instead of ^^ff, in trip.log/mftrap.log when I say
>>      "make trip" and "make trap". This is probably OK, although it
>>      means that a very small part of tex and mf is not being
>>      exercised; but then such differences should probably appear
>>      in the files trip.diffs and mftrap.diffs.
>>
>> Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year! I'll be back in action again in 
>> 2007.
>>
>> Yours truly, Don