[pracjourn-forum] For our error collection

[Karl Berry]

    that is what defines a program which is allowed to call itself "TeX".

This hardly matters any more.  Web2c-TeX has not been "TeX" for anything
except (plain) "tex" for many years.  The fact that Knuth wrote certain
messages back in 1978/1982 should hardly stop us from making them better
now; I'm sure he himself would not want that.

However, I fear that Peter (Flynn) is right.  No matter how much better
error messages would be desirable and useful, the barrier to changing
anything in core TeX is astronomically high.  It is a real problem.

Peter (Flynn), I don't buy the "front end" argument, any more than I buy
the "front end" argument for why certain things should not be in CSS or
HTML (according to Phil Taylor, anyway).  The reality is that (a) most,
or at least many, people just run (La)TeX, not anything else, and (b) no
front ends that I know of actually do anything useful to change error
messages.

We are stuck.

k