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Date:         Wed, 2 Dec 1998 12:16:01 +0100
From: Hans Aberg <haberg@MATEMATIK.SU.SE>
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To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L
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Subject:      Re: What is "base" LaTeX
Status: R

At 09:57 +0000 1998/12/02, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
>Mark Steinberger writes:
> > The AMS has done one important thing that seems counter to the
> > interests of its publishing arm: bringing the postscript type 1 CM and
> > AMS fonts into the public domain.
>I don't think they are in the public domain, if I may quibble :-}

I recall they are: BlueSky (who sells the MacOS TeX program Textures)
originally developed these commercially, as AMS felt they did could not
afford that. Later these were released for free use by a joint agreement
between BlueSky and AMS.

>I agree, all the way, in so far as *mathematics* is concerned. I don't
>know what you are going to do, as at present you seem to be stuck in
>the corner with wet paint all around you. MathML offers you a
>*possible* way out, albeit pretty unattractive from where you are
>sitting, but can you really afford to sit tight? Yes, possibly you can
>for a while. But if the usage of TeX shrinks to the maths community,
>you'll lose some of the commercial systems (Y&Y cant make a living from just
>mathematicians, can it?), a lot of the developer community and you'll
>lose things like CTAN; do you have the resources to maintain this just
>from within maths?

I think the use of TeX is expanding: It is not only the standard in math,
but also pretty much at the XXX archive, and in many quarters of computer
science.

The *ML movements are currently pretty orthogonal to what TeX can offer:
The *ML offer fast, simple typesetting, suitable for WWW and simpler types
of printing.

Eventually one would expect a movement combining that with the TeX ability
to do complex math typesetting.

  Hans Aberg
                  * Email: Hans Aberg <mailto:haberg@member.ams.org>
                  * Home Page: <http://www.matematik.su.se/~haberg/>
                  * AMS member listing: <http://www.ams.org/cml/>