[XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

Ulrike Fischer wrote:

> LaTeX monolithic? In general people complain that they have to load
> packages for everything ;-). Context is monolithic, but in LaTeX you
> only have to use a rather small kernel.

It may be "a small kernel" in relation to the size of the
total available packages, but it is neither small in
absolute terms not could it reasonably be termed anything
but "monolithic" for any normal definition of that word.

> And actually quite a lot of
> latex packages works also with plain or with mini-latex.

Perhaps so, and that is all to the good, but my criticism
was aimed at LaTeX /qua/ LaTeX, not at its many adjunct
packages.

Philip Taylor