Re: texexec

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

John R. Culleton wrote:
> On Thursday 04 May 2006 18:03, Hans Hagen wrote:
>   
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'd like to make the ruby version of texexec the default. Are there any
>> strong objections to this?
>>
>> Also, i'd like the stubs to run texmfstart as launcher. For that purpose
>> i'll add a /scripts/context/stubs/[mswin|unix] path with the default stubs
>> that one can copy to some bin path
>>
>> Hans
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>>                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
>>               Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
>>      tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
>>
>>                                              | www.pragma-pod.nl
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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>
> I am of the school of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Ruby
> seems to be one of those small-market languages like Lisp etc.
> and I worry when important software becomes dependent on such 
> things. For example Xindy is dependent on I think Lisp and that
> has handicapped its development and acceptance majorly. If
> Slackware decides not to include Ruby any more then I will have a
> problem. 
>   
actually, i think that in the end slackware will have a problem; i 
remember that when we found out that the mac didn't carry ruby, someone 
contacted the right people and it was in the next upgrade.

also, one sees major apps showing up done in ruby, so it's a matter of 
time;   if one sees what gets installed  by default (when installing 
linux),  i wonder why ruby isn't; on windows i think one always has to 
install languages

(what worries me more is that one cannot depend on e.g. unzip being 
present)

> Of course as the developer you need to use the tool that fits your
> hand best. And I did test out newtexexec (through a clumsy call)
> and it seemed to work ok. I think the messages are different
> however. I will have to do a differential to make sure. 
>   
i used the ruby variant for quite some time now and its ok (and even 
better that the original)
> Are there things that can be done in Ruby that can't be done
> conveniently in Perl? Conversely, are there things that can be
> done in Perl that are more elegant than what can be done in Ruby?
> I am thinking of perl/Tk for a nice gui interface for example. 
>   
they are all lanuages, and they all come with libraries (nowadays most 
programming languages come with similar libraries) so that is no problem

tk is supported in perl, python and ruby

personally i consider programming in ruby to be more elegant so in the 
end all perl stuff will be converted (just take a look in context/ruby, 
there are already quite some scripts there)
> Just worrying out loud. 
>   
no problem,

Hans

-- 

-----------------------------------------------------------------
                                          Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
              Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
     tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
                                             | www.pragma-pod.nl
-----------------------------------------------------------------