[tug-summer-of-code] Project idea: LaTeX3 "microkernel"

[Jonathan Fine]

Will Robertson wrote:

>> It would help if the LaTeX3 project adopted a programming environment 
>> that could produce macros for both the secure and traditional 
>> environments.
>  
> The current expl3 is set up to provide this already. There is an option 
> when l3names is processed to remove all of the old TeX primitives from 
> the user namespace; this automatically makes any documents processed 
> "secure", since users can't change catcodes and the only commands 
> provided to them are "document-level" macros.

Yes, I already knew about this option.  But neither the traditional nor 
the secure environments use \cs_set_eq:NN as the name for \let, which is 
what follows from your suggestion.

<snip>

> Back to my question: what are the obstacles in providing a "secure 
> LaTeX2e" for MathTran? I'm guessing you'd need to create your own fork 
> of the LaTeX kernel plus the packages you want to support [1], and then 
> re-implement them with primitives that aren't in the user namespace. 
> Would this be enough work for a GSoC project?

I am reluctant to 'fork' LaTeX.  I'd much rather work with the LaTeX3 
project to produce a secure variant of the relevant style and core 
files.  Are you up for that?

-- 
Jonathan