Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!mcvax!ukc!stl!dww From: dww@stl.UUCP (David Wright) Newsgroups: net.text Subject: Next generation TeX Message-ID: <275@stl.UUCP> Date: Thu, 27-Feb-86 16:28:14 EST Article-I.D.: stl.275 Posted: Thu Feb 27 16:28:14 1986 Date-Received: Sun, 2-Mar-86 19:37:29 EST Reply-To: dww@stl.UUCP (David Wright) Organization: STL,Harlow,UK. Lines: 25 Don Knuth was recently quoted (in Byte) as saying very definately that "TeX is finished", so if he does read the net I doubt he'll appreciate this mail ... but here goes anyway - Since I started using TeX I've been looking much more critically at all sorts of typeset material - "Is that a good style?", "How would I do that in TeX?", and apart from several things which are possible but not too easy (there'll always be some!), and a feeling that one day there WILL be a WYSIWYG system which (through use of some form of annotation etc.) is as good as TeX, I would like a new feature - the ability to set a box white-on-black. I don't mean 'reverse-video', that could (with some effort) be done with special fonts, but a general version of that where one can define a (rectangular) box within which everything including blank space is 'reversed'. I suspect that such a feature would require more changes to dvi2 than to TeX, so it would take a while before it could be available on all printers/ systems. If there can be any changes to TeX, I'd also like some way to include more general graphics - if only through some way to indicate to the dvi2 that it should include a binary file from another tool at this point, with TeX being told how much space to leave. This should be possible through \special, without change to TeX - how about it, you dvi2... designers? And a final request: could TeX one day set type at any angle?