[tex-live] teTeX: no next release

[David Kastrup]

Luis Seidel <seidel at faii.upm.es> writes:

> Thomas Esser escribió:
>
>> I am sorry to announce some bad news about teTeX: there won't be a
>> next release. To be more precise: there won't be a next release
>> done by me.
>>
> Just to say a big thank you Thomas for your work and time all these
> years. I hope that teTeX will find mantainers, that will keep your
> name and recognition alive.

Actually, I'd prefer it if teTeX was succeeded by TeXlive in mind
share.  There is not much to be gained by maintaining separate full
distributions, and I'd guess that this is part of the motivation of
Thomas to not continue.

How and to what degree MikTeX's package system will have an influence
remains to be seen.  I certainly would want to see other TeX engines
on Windows gaining relevance.  Customers of mine use MikTeX
executables, and they just don't cut it, even after regenerating
formats.  Program abortions, random behavior (stuff like
\ifnum\lastnodetype<13 evaluating to true under certain circumstances
when \lastnotetype is 13, I am not kidding you), partly depending on
whether the files are DOS or Unix-ended...  And these problems are
reproducible (given identical input) on several computers and there is
basically no developer feedback.  I want to have executables with the
same quality as teTeX on all platforms, and it looks like TeXlive
would be the most feasible way for that.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum