X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["2975" "Mon" "3" "July" "1995" "13:56:37" "-0400" "Michael Downes" "MJD@MATH.AMS.ORG" nil "59" "Re: SGML & LaTeX3" "^Date:" nil nil "7" nil nil nil nil] nil) Received: from MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.DE (vzdmzg.zdv.Uni-Mainz.DE [134.93.178.7]) by trudi.zdv.Uni-Mainz.DE (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id TAA16815 for ; Mon, 3 Jul 1995 19:59:06 +0200 Received: from DIRECTORY-DAEMON by MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.DE (PMDF V4.3-12 #4432) id <01HSG1YA5VEO93568A@MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.DE>; Mon, 03 Jul 1995 19:59:06 +0100 Received: from listserv.gmd.de by MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.DE (PMDF V4.3-12 #4432) id <01HSG1Y5O7AO9AMPMN@MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.DE>; Mon, 03 Jul 1995 19:59:00 +0100 Received: from vm.gmd.de by listserv.gmd.de (LSMTP for OpenVMS v0.1a) with SMTP id E02A9BB2 ; Mon, 3 Jul 1995 19:58:48 +0200 Received: from VM.GMD.DE by vm.gmd.de (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 5330; Mon, 03 Jul 95 19:58:16 +0200 Received: from VM.GMD.DE (NJE origin LISTSERV@DEARN) by VM.GMD.DE (LMail V1.2b/1.8b) with BSMTP id 7730; Mon, 3 Jul 1995 19:58:16 +0200 Received: from VM.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE by VM.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (LISTSERV release 1.8b) with NJE id 6221 for LATEX-L@VM.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE; Mon, 3 Jul 1995 19:56:09 +0000 Received: from DHDURZ1 (NJE origin SMTP@DHDURZ1) by VM.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 1610; Mon, 3 Jul 1995 19:54:29 +0000 Received: from axp14.ams.org by vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with TCP; Mon, 03 Jul 95 19:54:27 CET Received: from AXP14.AMS.ORG by AXP14.AMS.ORG (PMDF V4.3-10 #7286) id <01HSFJKFJV2O0005G6@AXP14.AMS.ORG>; Mon, 03 Jul 1995 13:56:37 -0500 (EST) In-reply-to: <199507030951.TAA13366@cs.anu.edu.au> Reply-to: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project Message-id: <804794197.910321.MJD@MATH.AMS.ORG> X-Envelope-to: schoepf@goofy.zdv.uni-mainz.de MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Mail-System-Version: Date: Mon, 03 Jul 1995 13:56:37 -0400 From: Michael Downes Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L Subject: Re: SGML & LaTeX3 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 1682 Richard Walker (richard@cs.anu.edu.au) wrote: > Frank writes: > > > Interactive help system? This sounds almost as if a graphical user > > > interface is planned - or at least that you will have to run it under > > > Emacs :-P > > > > no actually not. we did some tests with using a "ascii terminal" based one. > > Ooh - let's hear all the gory details. There is already an interactive help system in TeX :-) Type h or ? in response to a TeX error message to see it in action ... I don't think a graphical user interface will ever enter into the LaTeX distribution since that would be better handled through changes to TeX itself. `LaTeX' per se is primarily a macro package written in TeX's macro language and LaTeX3, as far as I know, has always been planned to likewise run on top of TeX 3.14159... (unless perhaps e-TeX or Omega or some other system becomes a viable alternative, as Frank suggested). If you really want some gory details, you could look at the menu system of listout.tex (CTAN, quote site index 'listout.tex'). Part of my motivation in writing listout.tex was to explore what might be possible for a LaTeX help system that could be autoloaded in the event of an error message. There are several hundred kb of .dtx files and other documentation in the same directory for anyone who cares to read them. But I suspect an original note of irony was lost from your remark (e-mail not conveying tone of voice). Bear in mind that working within the limits of TeX 3.14159... is the only way for LaTeX3 to preserve maximum system independence. One possibility worth investigating, however, would be to provide help files in a master source format from which various other system-dependent help formats could be generated, as well as a `last-resort' system-independent format. > The resulting new \LaTeX{} will, like the present version, > be usable with any standard > \TeX{} system and so will be freely available on a wide range > of platforms. > > I don't believe it. Either it won't use TeX or it won't live up to > all these promises. (Or the team will prove me wrong and it will run > like a dog.) Depends on what you mean by `run like a dog'. LaTeX2e already works like a dog under the hood, compared to LaTeX 2.09 (take a look sometime with tracingall). However, system upgrades where I work mean that from the end-user's perspective LaTeX2e runs two or three times faster than LaTeX 2.09 did five years ago on the then-current system. And anyway I don't think LaTeX3 will be orders of magnitude slower than LaTeX2e; perhaps 1.5--3 times slower would be my guess. There are tradeoffs involved, e.g. if more space for csnames and string pool is available, certain kinds of operations can be tailored for better speed at a cost of more csnames. So the speed of LaTeX3 might be able to keep up quite well if the TeX memory capacities in various categories continue to be increased by the various vendors of TeX systems. Michael Downes