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Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 13:29:26 +0100
From: Sebastian Rahtz <s.rahtz@ELSEVIER.CO.UK>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
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To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L <LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Subject: Re: ideal future document processing environment
Status: R

 >   Classic TeX must remain unchanged and be used for ever.
 >
 > Classic here means: pk cm (note not ec) fonts; hand entry with dumb
 > editors; nothing hyper; ...
 >
 > Somewhat worrying?
 >
It strikes me that these groups who back themselves into corners (like
those who use VMS, FORTRAN, Basic, black and white TV, etc) change
very quickly when they change, because they are at the mercy of other
people. Sure, they _can_ keep their frozen TeX setups, but do they
have total control over their environment? Are they keeping it up to
snuff when their machines/OSes change? Remember, to take a small
example, that while TeX is frozen, dvi drivers are not,so you cannot
rely on PK fonts for ever.

So in my future vision, when the redneckTeXxies go, they'll go fast.

Legacy data, you'll say. To which I say `pshaw!'. People overestimate
the worth of that collection of stuff, IMHO. We are constantly losing
cooked information and raw data, do not pretend otherwise.  Legacy
data is worth what people will pay for it, it has no absolute value.

Sebastian