[tex-eplain] removing diagram and bibtex code

[Luis Rivera]

On 18 December 2012 17:00, Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org> wrote:
> Dan's reply is on the mark.  Just a couple more historical notes:
>
> The BibTeX stuff also becomes a standalone file, btxmac.tex, since
> that's what Oren wanted.  That is why it includes various "generic"
> definitions that are then also used in the rest of Eplain.  Sure, it
> could be possible to split it up further, but I saw no reason to do so.
>

Perhaps what strikes me is the dependence of  the plain macro file on
code for BibTeX, which is an different program, now that some
replacements for BibTeX in pure TeX (Librarian, by Isambert, for
instance) are in development.

> The commutative diagrams are indeed rather a different animal, but They
> don't hurt anything that I can see.  They are there simply because Steve
> Smith wrote them and offered them to Eplain (decades ago), and I was
> enthusiastic about user contributions.
>

One of the reasons why I'm asking is that I found that the eplain used
to typeset TeX for the Impatient is tiny in comparison with the actual
version of eplain. I thought it would be nice to be able to use eplain
macros without the bibtex et al (miniltx, names.sty, etc.) code,
perhaps by calling \input xeplain (excised eplain). The manual says
that we can use the modules separately *except* xeplain.tex; maybe
that's actually my question: could we try to get only the eplain
macros in xeplain.tex, standalone, without the BibTeX et al support
code?

Luis Rivera
O< http://www.asciiribbon.org/ campaign