Message-Id: <9210020258.AA24671@sc.zib-berlin.dbp.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Date:         Fri, 2 Oct 92 03:58:27 CET
From: Don Hosek <DHOSEK@HMCVAX.CLAREMONT.EDU>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
To: Multiple recipients of <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Subject:      Re: additional fonts in distribution
Status: R


Worth discussing a little, if only because LaTeX already depends
on two external programs.

->>> This program should be written in
->>> eithher Pascal WEB or C WEB for maximum ease of porting.

-I can see that using Pascal WEB gives ease of porting, since it is
-processable both by native mode Tangle/Pascal and via Web-to-C,
-but I cannot see how the use of `C' WEB gives such portability;
-surely there does not exist a `CWEB-to-Pascal' utility?  (Also,
-I assume it would require implementation-specific change files
-to be written in C-WEB rather than standard WEB).

Pascal WEB+WEBtoC is terribly unpleasant (I'm told) to work with.

The need to go from C to Pascal is far less pronounced than the
other direction. It is currently the case that C is more widely
available than Pascal and where both are available, I know of
few cases where the Pascal compiler is superior to the C
compiler. This is one reason why all my development is now in
CWEB. We already have a requirement for C because of Makeindex. I
think that with the dvi libraries I've been developing, the
dvi-manipulation I've suggested for could be easily implemented.
In Pascal, library use is far less likely.

-dh