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diff --git a/Master/texmf-dist/doc/fonts/malayalam/article/mmfuture.tex b/Master/texmf-dist/doc/fonts/malayalam/article/mmfuture.tex new file mode 100644 index 00000000000..c253325e3d4 --- /dev/null +++ b/Master/texmf-dist/doc/fonts/malayalam/article/mmfuture.tex @@ -0,0 +1,51 @@ +% mmfuture.tex +% (c) 1992 Jeroen Hellingman +% Last edit: 09-DEC-1992 + + +\beginsection On the future of \TeX + +Working on Malayalam-\TeX, I met with more and more limitations of +\TeX, which needed ad-hoc solutions, that will not win an elegance +price. It made me dream of a future \TeX-like system, that would +incorporate all scripts in a more elegant way. Several people have +made suggestions on the future of \TeX, but most of them, again, +focussed on the Western languages. I think a transistion to the +emerging 16-bit Unicode (ISO 10646) standard will be the most natural +next step. + +\TeX\ was orignally designed for two `scripts', English and +Mathematics, and it does a very good job of typesetting both of them, +but one gets in problems when one tries to typeset another script with +it, for example Malayalam, or one of the various other scripts in use +for writing the spoken languages of the world, or to name the most +difficult of all, typesetting music. A future-\TeX\ should be build up +in some modular manner, so that other scripts can be added more +easily. + +Apart from being a typesetting system, \TeX\ is a fullfledged +programming language, but a horrible ackward one. As Frank Mittelbach, +suggested, it would be nice to replace it with a more conventional +one, although his suggestion to use lisp fills me with new horrors. I +think a more modern functional language like miranda would be a much +candidate. A functional language with some very basic functions needed +for typesetting would be a good kernel in my eyes. All logic needed +for typesetting a script could then be coded in the language itself, +instead of being hardwired into the system. + +Adding a new script would then be as easy as designing a font for the +script (A difficult enough task in itself) and writing the logic for +composing the script from a character-stream, which then could be +loaded into the system. + +An anochronism that has annoyed me more and more when I started making +several variants and sizes of my font is the use of bitmaps, with took +up more and more space on my harddisk. + +I would propose to join the powers of \TeX\ and \MF into one program, +that use the speak the same language, so that one can have direct +access to character-programs, to create the letter in the size and +style wanted at the a certain moment. + + +\bye |