frank, long ago...
indeed! Barbara Beeton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sat, 18 Aug 2007, Karl Berry wrote: > > [...] > > I asked Barbara Beeton at the AMS about taking care of the pcatcode > madness, in hopes we can get a free version shortly. I'm sure they > did not intend the current situation. [...] > the rest of amsrefs will be modified similarly, > as will all ams-latex files, effective with > the next regular update, expected (probably) > sometime in 2008. we are actively working on an update. it has gotten as far as a complete list of the open bug reports, and a good start on verifying that appropriate test files exist for all of them. but that's far from the end result, which i'm sure won't be finished before this year's tex live is frozen. There is also the other issue of the unclear license state of amslatex[1]. Can you already tell us whether this will be sorted out in time for the 2008 update? unfortunately, not. however, changing the license to be explicitly lppl is on the list of things that must be done. (since this isn't "technical", it can be done relatively simply, since it won't require testing. whew!) Im asking in particular because the policy of our Debian release team makes me a bit nervous: They happily accept packages with yet-to-clarify licenses if the upstream maintainer has agreed to clear things up, and they already did this when we released "Debian etch 4.0" in 2006. However, they except that things should be sorted out in the time it takes Debian to prepare a new release. These two years are now nearly over, and well, I fear they might not allow us to include amslatex in our TeXLive Debian packages - which would be extremely regretful. that would make us rather unhappy as well, but if it happens, it can't be helped. our staff is just too small and too overwhelmed with production deadlines to be able to devote the time solely to getting the new release of ams-latex ready. I would be glad if you could give us some information what your plans are, our hope is that, barring disasters, the update of ams-latex -- all of it -- will be ready by the end of the calendar year. (but unfortunately, we must allow for disasters; this past year has been spent migrating book and journal production from vms to unix, involving retraining of the entire editorial and production staff. we still have the most troublesome publications -- those still in plain tex, with such delights as data files shared between multiple publications with different formatting requirements -- under vms, and setting up the very different infrastructure for unix processing hasn't yet begun.) [1] as we discussed earlier, the main license text has ambiguous wording regarding modifications, and there are a couple of files under unclear licenses. yes. we intend that all of this will be cleared up in the next release. the original intent of the current wording was to emulate knuth's intentions regarding tex itself; the request for files to be renamed if changes are made is to ensure that our own production is not skewered by well-intentioned but unannounced modifications that prevent an allegedly "compliant" file from processing properly when it is received here for production and publication. (we have enough problems with authors using antiquated versions that were once valid, but have long since been superseded by improved code.) i will try to keep the tex live group informed of our progress; i'm in pretty regular communication with karl about this and other matters. please wish us smooth sailing. Barbara Beeton Technical Support American Mathematical Society Phone: 800-321-4AMS (321-4267) or 401-455-4080 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]