[tug-summer-of-code] A couple of project proposals

[Jonathan Fine]

Hello Scott

Scott Pakin wrote:
> Here are a couple of ideas that popped into mind when I read Karl's
> announcement:
> 
>    1) Grand Unified TeX
>       pdfTeX has cool features (micro-justification); eTeX has cool
>       features (extra developer primitives); LuaTeX has cool features
>       (cleaner scripting interface); XeTeX has cool features (ease of
>       using operating system fonts).  While the first three of those
>       are already integrated in modern TeX distributions, it'd be
>       really nice to further include XeTeX's font support into the
>       mix.

Thanks for this suggestion, Scott.  Three comments.  First, as you 
probably know, you should not be calling the proposed unified program 
TeX.  May I suggest that the proposed project be called something like 
"Unification of TeX extensions".

Second, I've asked on the LuaTeX devel list if LuaTeX can generate the 
extended xdv, the extended dvi used by XeTeX, and they're not interested 
(and to my sensitive skin somewhat unfriendly to the idea).

Third, this is much too much for a summer student project.

>    2) LaTeX handwriting-based symbol search
>       There are occasional posts to comp.text.tex asking by
>       description for a particular LaTeX symbol ("a capital U with a
>       dot...no, not with the dot above the U but centered within
>       it...no, not such a small dot, a bigger dot...").  It'd be a
>       great help to produce a Web site in which a user can draw a
>       symbol with the mouse and have the site return a list of LaTeX
>       symbols (glyph + package + control sequence) that best match the
>       user's drawing.

How about an online version of you valuable LaTeX symbol chart?  A sort 
of little web-page gadget.  I think that would be useful, and we would 
not have to obtain handwriting recognition code.

-- 
Jonathan