[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Math font announcement in TTN 4,2


Yesterday, I received Vol. 4, No. 2 of TTN (TeX and TUG News), which
on pp. 17--18 included an announcement of the availability of Justin
Ziegler's final report on math font encodings.

While I personally happended to have come across this report a couple
of months ago on Denis Roegel's WWW server, I must say that I find it
very irritating that the availability of this report has never been
announced on this mailing list which IMHO should have been the very
first group to be informed about it.

After reading this announcement, I would also like to ask for
clarification about the statement in the last paragraph which states:

    Based on Justin's analysis the LaTeX3 Project is now undertaking 
    to provide a prototype implement for math fonts ...  We expect 
    this implementation to be available for public usage during 1995--96.

Is this to be seen merely as a statement of intent or does this
indicate that there is actually some work going on right now, of 
which we as members of this working group are unaware and haven't 
been notified so far?

Please do not take this as criticizing the work of the LaTeX3 team 
or anyone else.  To the contrary, I will be glad about any progress 
made in the area of math fonts, provided it meets the requirements.
Nevertheless, I want to express my concern about the way things have
been handled here.  In particular, let me emphassize that I consider
it very important that any ongoing or future work in this area will 
be open and transparent to members of this working group, especially
since there are still a number of important design decisions awaiting
to be tackled when preparing a prototype implementation.

Is there anyone of the LaTeX3 team who wants to comment on this 
or offer an explanation?

With kind regards,
Ulrik Vieth.

P.S. I'd be happy if this message could help to revive the discussions
on math-fonts-discuss, which has been mostly idle for two years now.