X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["1259" "Tue" "17" "June" "1997" "12:07:01" "+0200" "Hans Aberg" "haberg@MATEMATIK.SU.SE" nil "26" "Re: Multilingual TeX" "^Date:" nil nil "6" nil nil nil nil nil] nil) Received: from listserv.gmd.de (listserv.gmd.de [192.88.97.1]) by mail.Uni-Mainz.DE (8.8.5/8.8.4) with ESMTP id MAA21755; Tue, 17 Jun 1997 12:06:22 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from lsv1.listserv.gmd.de by listserv.gmd.de (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <4.554DB92D@listserv.gmd.de>; Tue, 17 Jun 1997 12:06:21 +0200 Received: from RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE by RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 1.8b) with spool id 154941 for LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE; Tue, 17 Jun 1997 12:06:14 +0200 Received: from mail.nada.kth.se (root@mail.nada.kth.se [130.237.222.92]) by relay.urz.uni-heidelberg.de (8.7.6/8.7.4) with ESMTP id MAA06448 for ; Tue, 17 Jun 1997 12:06:06 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from [130.237.37.58] (sl104.modempool.kth.se [130.237.37.130]) by mail.nada.kth.se (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id MAA18225 for ; Tue, 17 Jun 1997 12:05:46 +0200 (MET DST) X-Sender: su95-hab@mail.nada.kth.se Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Message-ID: Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 12:07:01 +0200 From: Hans Aberg Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L Subject: Re: Multilingual TeX Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 2073 At 11:12 97/06/17, Chris Rowley wrote: >Joerg wrote -- > >> >> most e-TeX primitives are primitive and should be hidden away from the end >> user. However, some of them were introduced with LaTeX in mind. A very >> serious project consists in rewriting and testing parts of the _LaTeX kernel_ >> in e-TeX. This task probably needs another volunteer team, I am afraid. > >As Frank has explained this is certainly true of future e-TeX versions; >it is not clear to me that e-TeX at present provides a lot of such >capabilities. > >I also think that a better way to start such a process would be to >produce experimental packages rather than start chnaging the kernel. >This will demonstrate how the kernel should be changed and provide a >more accessible way for a wide range of people to expermient with the >e-TeX features and their effects at the user-level, should they wish to. Would it not be possible to write LaTeX with conditional compilation, like when you write C++ programs, so that the same source code can compile on several different kernels (e-TeX, TeX, etc)? One way to do this, could be writing a platform dependent LaTeX microkernel (with a special source codes for e-TeX, TeX), on top which the LaTeX kernel is being built. Hans Aberg