[pdftex] emlines and pdfLatex

[Reinhard Kotucha]

Martin Schröder writes:
 > 2008/1/2, Robin Fairbairns <Robin.Fairbairns at cl.cam.ac.uk>:
 > > Martin Schröder <martin at oneiros.de> wrote:
 > > > Is anything planned for LaTeX3 beyond pict2e?
 > >
 > > nothing i'm aware of.  it would be a serious challenge to improve on
 > > what's already available in contributed packages (pstricks, pgf) so why
 > > would one bother?
 > 
 > It would still be nice if recent developements (like xcolor & pgf)
 > would get the official stamp of approval by being included in L3.

Martin, what do you mean with L3?  The LaTeX kernel or the whole
distribution?  Regarding the kernel, IMO it makes more sense to remove
things like the picture environment from it.  What I think is much
more important is to have at least minimal support for hyperref in the
kernel.  The reason is that the presence of \specials or \pdfliterals
has an influence on line breaks.

I'm not assured that pgf should be integrated into the kernel.  For a
modular system like LaTeX it's not a good idea to rely on *one* graphic
subsystem.  Though the concept of pgf is great, I think it should be a
separate package because some people prefer pstricks or metapost
instead.

I absolutely have no idea which impact luatex with a built-in metapost
has on pgf.  But I'm sure pgf is not frozen yet.

All the graphic stuff is evolving so fast that the only reasonable
thing LaTeX can do is to provide the \usepackage macro.

Or, to say it more generally:  Every interpreter or compiler provides
only the functionality which is required.  Everything else is provided
by external libraries or modules.  This is established practice for a
couple of decades now and I think it's also good for LaTeX-3.

Regarding math typesetting: I wouldn't object if most of the math
support (displayed formulas) will be moved from the LaTeX kernel to
amsmath, except \eqnarray, of course, which in LaTeX3 should better
throw an "! Undefined control sequence." message.

What I'm bit concerned about is the new syntax for macro programming.
I understand the objectives and advantages.  But on the other hand I
have no idea how this will be accepted by macro programmers.  And a
lot of stuff has to be adapted.  I also see that the LaTeX team
currently has less members than at the time LaTeX-2e had been released.
I wish I could look into the future...

But has a decision been made already on which engine LaTeX-3 will run?
pdfTeX?  LuaTeX?  Omega2?  XeTeX?  Knuth's TeX?  Or on all of them?

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-4592165
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