[tex-live] Having a .fmt for different engines

[Reinhard Kotucha]

>>>>> "Hans" == Hans Hagen <pragma at wxs.nl> writes:

  > Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
  >> Because we'll hopefully have less engines then.  I expect that
  >> next year aleph will be obsolete and in two years pdftex and
  >> xetex will be merged.
  >> 
  > aleph is indeed becoming obsolete (bith due to xetex and luatex)

  > about a merge ... xetex follows a library approach while luatex
  > extends the tex machinery and stays independent of libraries; once
  > we have an extendable tex (luatex), we can look into ways to
  > implement xetex features by means of callbacks (overloads and
  > such, without adding the burden of libraries by default; just like
  > we can replace kpse with alternative implementations), but two
  > years is probably a bit optimistics. I can even imagine that
  > luatex and xetex each fill their niche but share code that is not
  > a burden for either of them.

I had not been aware that design goals are so different.  I'm not a
programmer and don't know anything about the internals of pdftex.  I
always thought that using the xpdf libraries made things easier.
However, maybe you can tell me more at the next TeX conference.

  > and even then, expect multiple engines to be around; take pdftex:
  > version 1+ will be around and debugged forever, and a stable
  > luatex will become pdftex 2+, alongside luatex as development
  > branch which makes 3 engines already.

Yes, but it doesn't hurt because they have different names.  Different
names for the binaries/symlinks are needed, why not have different
names for format files too?

Regards,
  Reinhard

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