Re: [9fans] tex

[Frederik Caulier <aediks@gmail.com>]

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
>
>