[9fans] tex

[9fans] tex

[Steve Simon]

somone was working on a modern port of TeX to plan9.
did this work out? I would like to update my installation
as I think I may be using LaTeX before long.

-Steve

Re: [9fans] tex

[Jason Catena]

> I would like to update my installation
> as I think I may be using LaTeX before long.

This doesn't address your issue /per se/, but if you'll indulge me,
I'll ramble a bit about LaTeX and text files.

For the past three years I used LaTeX for everything, including papers
suitable for publishing.  Since I mostly needed LaTeX for special
symbols and peculiar formatting, I decided to now use the full range
of Unicode in text files instead.  I find it's much faster to write,
since I worry less about finely adjusted fonts and layout, I don't
have an edit-compile cycle, and I can grëp all my notes and output.
This way probably wouldn't get a paper accepted at an international
conference for a research operating system, but it seems alright for
my own purposes, and to present information to my colleagues at
work.[1]  The only thing I miss about LaTeX is italics and sidenotes,
but I can /forward slant/ and use footnotes after paragraphs, which is
close enough to serve the same purposes (special, literal, or
foreign-language text, and notes near referring text) without
seriously interrupting the flow of text.

[1] A short text file dumped to a line printer beats, in expository
power, a huge animated powerpoint deck any day.  I don't buy "boring"
or "too complicated" as a good reason to mutilate a technical
discussion.  The point is to /understand/, not buy into a pitch: if
you understand, you'll agree or not on the merits.  If you only think
you understand, and are actually persuaded by me, then we both may
make a bad decision, and my pitch derailed both of us.

> -Steve

Jason Catena

Re: [9fans] tex

[ron minnich]

On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 12:55 PM, Steve Simon <steve@quintile.net> wrote:
> somone was working on a modern port of TeX to plan9.
> did this work out? I would like to update my installation
> as I think I may be using LaTeX before long.

I gave it a go but it wore me out. The pdflatex guys just destroyed
latex portability, and tex overall is far less portable than it was
years ago. It's a sad story.

ron

Re: [9fans] tex

[tlaronde]

On Tue, Dec 08, 2009 at 02:30:49PM -0800, ron minnich wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 12:55 PM, Steve Simon <steve@quintile.net> wrote:
> > somone was working on a modern port of TeX to plan9.
> > did this work out? I would like to update my installation
> > as I think I may be using LaTeX before long.
>
> I gave it a go but it wore me out. The pdflatex guys just destroyed
> latex portability, and tex overall is far less portable than it was
> years ago. It's a sad story.

I gave it a try too, but it's stalled---no abandon, but I have already
too much to do with the GIS.

For whose who would give it a try (my plan was/is to get rid of all the
GPL mess added, since TeX, METAFONT and the like are the stable parts;
that's all the mess added around that is a hell):

1) I first thought about trying to get an open source Pascal compiler
(there is at least one in the old BSD sources). There is/was a GNU
project, or at least a GPL project too. But Pascal is not my cup
of tea and I found messages from Donald Knuth, who was trying to
compile the software with this (so that TeX depends on nothing
else) and he finally gave up... Conclusion: if even he gave up,
I should perhaps take another way...

2) Second way: translate WEB to CWEB. For the format, this is easy. But
for the code, this is more or less what web2c does. So...

3) Retrieve the public version (Thomas Rockiki) of the original
translation stuff, and restart from this.

Personnally, my goal was only the core TeX and METAFONT, dvips and
MetaPOST without kpathsea---I use TeX and not LaTeX, and no pdfTeX
or the oriental extensions. A C89 translation will give the software
to Unices and Plan9 and save the system from the "bazaar" touch
that is the reciprocal of Midas': give it gold, it will give you
crap.

Let's hope someone takes this---I mean not compile the present mess, but
trim down to a pure Donald Knuth's base.
--
Thierry Laronde (Alceste) <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                 http://www.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] tex

[Frederik Caulier]

Hello 9fans@

Although it is no TeX I would like to suggest ``lout'', a lightweight
(2 MB) document formatting system written in ANSI C by Jeffrey H.
Kingston. [0]

Quotation from Wikipedia:
``It reads a high-level description of a document similar in style to
LaTeX and produces a PostScript file which can be printed on most
printers. Plain text and PDF output are also available.'' [1]

It is free software and well documented, you might also want to have a
look at the FAQ. [2]

[0] http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/lout/
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lout
[2] http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/lout/index.php?title=FAQ

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 12:10 AM,  <tlaronde@polynum.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 08, 2009 at 02:30:49PM -0800, ron minnich wrote:
>> On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 12:55 PM, Steve Simon <steve@quintile.net> wrote:
>> > somone was working on a modern port of TeX to plan9.
>> > did this work out? I would like to update my installation
>> > as I think I may be using LaTeX before long.
>>
>> I gave it a go but it wore me out. The pdflatex guys just destroyed
>> latex portability, and tex overall is far less portable than it was
>> years ago. It's a sad story.
>
> I gave it a try too, but it's stalled---no abandon, but I have already
> too much to do with the GIS.
>
> For whose who would give it a try (my plan was/is to get rid of all the
> GPL mess added, since TeX, METAFONT and the like are the stable parts;
> that's all the mess added around that is a hell):
>
> 1) I first thought about trying to get an open source Pascal compiler
> (there is at least one in the old BSD sources). There is/was a GNU
> project, or at least a GPL project too. But Pascal is not my cup
> of tea and I found messages from Donald Knuth, who was trying to
> compile the software with this (so that TeX depends on nothing
> else) and he finally gave up... Conclusion: if even he gave up,
> I should perhaps take another way...
>
> 2) Second way: translate WEB to CWEB. For the format, this is easy. But
> for the code, this is more or less what web2c does. So...
>
> 3) Retrieve the public version (Thomas Rockiki) of the original
> translation stuff, and restart from this.
>
> Personnally, my goal was only the core TeX and METAFONT, dvips and
> MetaPOST without kpathsea---I use TeX and not LaTeX, and no pdfTeX
> or the oriental extensions. A C89 translation will give the software
> to Unices and Plan9 and save the system from the "bazaar" touch
> that is the reciprocal of Midas': give it gold, it will give you
> crap.
>
> Let's hope someone takes this---I mean not compile the present mess, but
> trim down to a pure Donald Knuth's base.
> --
> Thierry Laronde (Alceste) <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
>                 http://www.kergis.com/
> Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C
>
>

Re: [9fans] tex

[ron minnich]

But the documentation makes no sense!

"Its main disadvantages are that it can only produce PostScript and
there is no easy way to get XML or any other
output format (apart from plain text)."


"...disadvantage ... no ... XML ..."


I mean, what's the disadvantage here :-)

ron

Re: [9fans] tex

[Frederik Caulier]

None. :-)

Just to clarify, me saying ´´well documented'' does not refer to the
Wikipedia entry but to the actual user guide which can be fetched at
[0].

[0] ftp://ftp.cs.usyd.edu.au/jeff/lout/

Best regards,
F. Caulier

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 12:51 AM, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
> But the documentation makes no sense!
>
> "Its main disadvantages are that it can only produce PostScript and
> there is no easy way to get XML or any other
> output format (apart from plain text)."
>
>
> "...disadvantage ... no ... XML ..."
>
>
> I mean, what's the disadvantage here :-)
>
> ron
>
>

Re: [9fans] tex

[David Leimbach]

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Its lack of support of XML is an optimization :-)

On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 3:51 PM, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:

> But the documentation makes no sense!
>
> "Its main disadvantages are that it can only produce PostScript and
> there is no easy way to get XML or any other
> output format (apart from plain text)."
>
>
> "...disadvantage ... no ... XML ..."
>
>
> I mean, what's the disadvantage here :-)
>
> ron
>
>

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Re: [9fans] tex

[Rudolf Sykora]

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Although it is no TeX I would like to suggest ``lout'', a lightweight
> (2 MB) document formatting system written in ANSI C by Jeffrey H.
> Kingston. [0]
>

Hello.
I have had a look at lout and have printed its user guide.
I think it doesn't understand utf.
Otherwise it seems to be highly inspired by pic/grap/tbl/eqn. It's these
packed together and perhaps polished for the user, so that some operations
are easier.
But this packing up is probably something I don't like that much.
All pic/grap/tbl/eqn have a simple to read and short documentation.
Documentation for lout is just long... :)

Ruda

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Re: [9fans] TeX

[Russ Cox]

> Permission denied. Perhaps more than one week has passed since you
> started the installation process. If so, please start again.

I just tried and it works fine for me.
Did you bookmark the updates page after
you logged in?  Try starting over at
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/ureg.html

Russ

[9fans] TeX

[Don]

While downloading the distribution I am consistently getting the
following
error when attempting to retrieve TeX:
Sorry

Permission denied. Perhaps more than one week has passed since you
started the installation process. If so, please start again.

Don
http://www.7f.no-ip.info/