> It is /very/ rare that I agree with Karl, but on this occasion I agree > 100%. TeX is about /stability/, not about 'change'/'improvement'.
I don't usually answer to this kind of statements (and I probably should continue not to), but I admit I'm a bit stunned by this sentence. Some people might see their .tex file as a kind of documented standard format, and thus expect the command "tex" to transform this standardized document into a PDF. That's one use of TeX. My opinion about it (which nobody cares about) is that if you want a standard to represent your data, XML is better, and if you want a standard for printing your data, PDF/A-1 is better. Other people (including me), think that TeX is not standardized and is just some fun language with (too) many extensions that can be used to compile PDF. Extensions come and go, and an extension might not work in a few years, that's ok... So I don't think such inherent caracteristics about TeX exist, and that's for the best... Thank you, -- Elie
