[tex-live] Re: aleph uses an outdated etex.ch?

Giuseppe Bilotta bilotta78 at hotpop.com
Wed Oct 13 01:37:52 CEST 2004


Vladimir Volovich wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> we have 2 different copies of etex.ch in source.development:
> 
> TeX/texk/web2c/alephdir/etex.ch
> TeX/texk/web2c/etexdir/etex.ch
> 
> (the file in aleph is older).  First, it's unclear why aleph has it's
> own etex.ch when all others (e.g. etex, pdfetex, eomega) are using the
> same etex.ch. This creates confusion. Second, it means that aleph is
> not up2date WRT the etex's bugfixes and improvements.

The etex.ch in the alephdir is only used for reference, it is 
not used in the actual sources, because the changes in Omega 
are so extensive that it is not possible to simple patch it 
with e-TeX to obtain Aleph. 

This also means that the fixes in etex 2.2 are not included in 
Aleph. But it is important to notice that of these fixes, the 
only one which would affect Aleph is the one concerning 
\lastnode stuff. To my knowledge, the other fixes concern 
sparse array management (which is not in Aleph) and RTL 
typesetting, which again is not included in Aleph (of course).

Yes, I need to fix the lastnodestuff. I'm rather busy for the 
time being, so it'll have to wait, for the moment.

Of course, one thing that would be very nice is if the e-TeX 
change file was split in multiple changefiles, each one 
implementing a feature. This would easy my job, for the future 
too :) Peter, do you think this can be done?

-- 
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta

Can't you see
It all makes perfect sense
Expressed in dollar and cents
Pounds shillings and pence
                  (Roger Waters)



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