Re: ConTeXt versioning model critique

["luigi scarso" <luigi.scarso@gmail.com>]

On 4/14/07, Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl> wrote:
> Ulf Martin wrote:
> > I wonder how people (esp. at Pragma) currently deal with this.
> for projects where we use relatively new features (which evolve) we use
> frozen trees;
Confirm
One tree of 2002 ("still-crazy-after-all-these-years").
Another of 2004.
Switch to last pdftex/context sometimes second quarter of this year;
switch to luatex at the end of next year.
Why switch ?
Last versions. are better (speed and features);
pdf spec. change .

>
> with regards to commands and such ... context is just (supposed to be)
> downward compatible; even kind of obsolete is still there; with regards
> to  different solutions to  problems, we often provide control usign low
> level mode indicators
On average, my macros are not completly portable from one tree to another,
but I'm sure that this depend from my poor coding tecnique for 95% .
5% is made by spaces and fonts .
>
> concerning xetex ... keep in mind that there xetex is the moving target
> (changes/extensions  in interface) and to some extend this was true for
> pdftex as well, but there we could silently adapt
> > Also remember that Knuth originally intended TeX to be an "eternal"
> > formatting system (thus we have at least the option to expand all macros
> > into plain TeX and keep that as the source file).
> >
> plain tex is just a format and unsuitable as expanded format
>
> well, i have some experimental code that dumps the expanded token list
> into a file; nu fun ... a 50 page moderately complex doc becomes some 25
> meg -)
pdf has some sort of  compression .
Do  \pdfcompresslevel=0 \pdfobjcompresslevel=0
make some differences in your 50page document?

> Sanjoy has set up an advanced test system ... so anything that you
> contribute can go in there
I will install on my machine.



luigi