[tex-live] Re: Omega 1.15

Sebastian Rahtz sebastian.rahtz@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk
Wed, 29 May 2002 22:44:51 +0100


On Thu, May 30, 2002 at 01:23:00AM +0430, Roozbeh Pournader wrote:
> 
> > moving some things from the top level into TeX, from memory.
> > This was Vladimir's doing, he rightly got annoyed with
> > some inconsistencies
> 
> I hope we can catch that in time. Will things like this be announced on
> the mailing list when they get to the 'source'?

well, they were discussed already, weren't they? I didnt think
it was much of a big deal, to be honest. Does it affect you?

> > maintain Omega in TeX Live :-}
> 
> That really depends on John, you know. I don't want to lose any 
> opportunity to help TeX and Unicode come together, and I want to take 
> things one by one.

its OK, in the short term, to run multiple repositories, with a
few people doing hand work in the middle.  but in our TeX world we tend to let
short-term things last for 10 years or more. 

we _already_ have 3 repositories doing slightly different, but 
essentially the same, things (teTeX, web2c, and TeX Live), 
as well as the Omega one. it's not healthy,
at all. we really should combine all our efforts into a single place.
but we have so much inertia and history....

> BTW, I think for a thing as broken and unstable as Omega, and as far from
> its ultimate goal, we need a more rapid development model, many branches,
> everything like the common Open Source model. Also, the way John hacks
> code, things are usually broken. I want him not to worry about his code
> breaking stablity or anything, but just checkin the code so others will be
> able to fix it. This will be possible in a Omega-only repository, but not
> in a repository under sharp eyes, like TeXLive.
you are joking, I hope....

I quite see where you are coming from, and I wish you every success.
I am very glad that you have the time to do this pushing.

Speaking for myself, I have a limited amount of time to spend
on TeX, and I find it hard to know what to devote it too. In many ways,
I have compounded the problems by establishing the TeX Live effort,
but I know it was and is needed as a focal point. If I could hand
it over as a smoothly running operation to the Omega effort, I would.
But would anyone honestly advise me to do this? I don't think John
or Yannis are at all interested in making user-level distributions.....

As I say, I really do appreciate the work you have started here,
Roozbeh, and I wish I had a Plan that we would all work towards.
But it just isn't clear which way to go.

-- 
Sebastian Rahtz      OUCS Information Manager
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431