Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!eru!luth!sunic!mcsun!hp4nl!ruuinf!piet
From: piet@cs.ruu.nl (Piet van Oostrum)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: TeX/LaTeX are not stagnant! (was Re: Help me defend LaTeX)
Keywords: TeX
Message-ID: <1737@ruuinf.cs.ruu.nl>
Date: 25 Oct 89 10:08:21 GMT
References: <1762@naucse.UUCP> <71781@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <2601@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> <5105@cps3xx.UUCP> <2619@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>
Sender: news@ruuinf.cs.ruu.nl
Reply-To: piet@cs.ruu.nl (Piet van Oostrum)
Organization: Dept of Computer Science, University of Utrecht, Holland
Lines: 34
In-reply-to: dhosek@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (D.A. Hosek)

In article <2619@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>, dhosek@jarthur (D.A. Hosek) writes:
 `The following is a preprint from TeXMaG/reprint from TUGboat on the
 `topic. I've talked to Knuth and been informed that the changes are in
 `alpha test on his machine and the TeXbook has already been changed to
 `reflect the modifications to the program (I think the 17th printing is
 `to be the first with the "new" TeX described in it).
 `
 `**********************************************************************
 `*            The new versions of TeX and Metafont:                   *
 `*                      Draft description                             *
 `**********************************************************************
 `by Donald E. Knuth
 `
It is good to see that DEK is enhancing TeX. Actually, I am missing a few
important things. I suppose Barbara Beeton is reading this list, so maybe
she could communicate these things to DEK.

With all the new fonts available now, you easily run out of math families,
e.g if you use Latex, families are used for the special LaTeX fonts. Then I
want to have space for the AMS symbols (Mssymb), a few home-made symbols,
maybe Postscript fonts. 16 families appears to be too small. I would like
to ask DEK to enlarge this number. It might be difficult to do this in an
upwardly compatible manner. Maybe a special notation for families larger
than 15 would be necessary?

Secondly, the hyphenation exception specifications are not general enough.
It would be nice if complete \discretionary's would be possible in
\hyphenation. E.g to specify the hyphenation of the (in)famous Bettuch in
german (we have similar situations in Dutch).
-- 
Piet van Oostrum, Dept of Computer Science, University of Utrecht
Padualaan 14, P.O. Box 80.089, 3508 TB Utrecht,  The Netherlands.
Telephone: +31-30-531806      Internet: piet@cs.ruu.nl
Telefax:   +31-30-513791      Uucp: uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!ruuinf!piet