[tex-eplain] Eplain 3.0 announcement

[Karl Berry]

    Anyway, it would be nice to have a simple tool to 
    typeset indexes that would be platform 
    independent.

It is platform independent.  That's not the problem.  It's
formatting-dependent.  There is no way around that.

This is why we provide dvi/pdf/html files (on the web) -- so people
don't have to mess with making them.  If you want to make them yourself,
then you have to have Texinfo installed.

    One thing I do not understand is this: why cannot 
    the indexes of eplain.texi be compiled using 
    eplain itself?

I chose to write the Eplain manual in Texinfo, rather than in Eplain.
The reason is that it is very easy to convert Texinfo to just about any
other format desired, notably including Info and plain text.  For many
people that's not important, but it was (and is) to me.

(Not to mention Texinfo providing all the high-level features that
Eplain does not. :)

Anyway, you'd still have to have an index sorting program (makeindex in
that case) and you'd still have the same issues of potentially different
formatting.  Your own situation would not be improved thereby.

Cheers,
Karl