[tex-k] Re: extex

[Reinhard Kotucha]

>>>>> "Karl" == Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org> writes:

  > Hi Reinhard, This is already planned for ExTeX.  From

  > Well, since you mentioned extex, I have a few comments/questions:

Hi Karl,
I'm not involved in this project.  The project leader is Michael
Niedermair.  He held a talk on a TeX-conference some time ago where he
mentioned his idea to make \patterns available at run time.

As Martin already said we will meet him next week.

It would certainly be better to port ExTeX to GNU Java, but I suppose
that this requires to have more volunteers.

The initial purpose of NTS was to provide a TeX written in a language
which makes implementation of new features easier than doing this in
the WEB sources.  It was intended as an experimental platform and that
the results should go into WEB-TeX.  In this case people can live with
Sun's license because developers do not require that someone prepares
RPM packages for them.

However, GNU Java makes sense if people are interested in a TeX which
runs on a virtual machine.

But I don't see that the features pdfTeX, for instance, provides can
be implemented into exTeX in reasonable time.  Extending exTeX and
then porting the extensions to WEB-TeX would certainly provide more
benefits to the TeX community.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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