lpilindy@lindy.stanford.edu (Captain Beyond) (11/21/90)
Common TeX 3.0 is available for beta testing. There are currently two problems with the trip test, one in the initial phase and one in the second phase. It will take some time to fully appreciate and absorb the new code, but the program works very well and is ready for beta use. The problem in the initial phase may be caused by a bug in Knuth's program. I have traced the program and see a problem in Section 1036. I can't be certain until i am more familiar with the new program, but i dont think a reference to char_info with a character code of 256 can be correct. reconstitute() checks for this. So if the first problem is questionable, the second might be as well. The second problem involves inserting a kern in the lig/kern loop of make_ord(). I dont have time to trace this right now. My current plans are to improve the engineering of the program. The beta phase will emphasize technical support. I plan to add the check_mem() procedure to better handle memory management. I also hope to improve the programming environment with better Makefiles and better change tracking. I intend to make a complete pass over the entire program checking for fluff (linting). By the time this effort is complete, i should have solved any remaining problems. Common TeX offers significant enhancements to the other UNIX versions. It is the first implementation of TeX to use standard C constructs. The main work on the new Common TeX was done in the summer of 1989 using MPW 3.0 C on a MACII. I finished the work on a SparcStation but i should be able to make it work on the MAC in about 1/2 hour. I ported the program to DOS with little effort. The problem of pre-loaded formats remains in both environments; recommendations would be valuable. the program can be FTP'd from isis.cshl.org:/tex/commontex300.a[.Z] i can be reached at monardo@cshl.org. /pat
bob@MorningStar.Com (Bob Sutterfield) (11/28/90)
isis.cshl.org:tex/commontex300.a.Z's Makefile targets for tex and latex want "plain" and "lplain", respectively, and they both want undump. Must I first acquire the mainstream UNIX TeX3.0 and undump from labrea.stanford.edu:pub/tex/unix3.0 to get these, or is there an easier way?