Re: TeX was designed to be archival

Jonathan Fine wrote:
> David Allsopp wrote:
> > Jonathan Fine wrote:
> > > >But I got this
> > > >
> > > >You are attempting to make a LaTex format from a source file That is
> > > >more than five yers old.
> > >
> > > I've come across this.  TeX was designed to be archival.
> > 
> > Out of curiosity, what gave you this idea? TeX may be feature-frozen, but
> > the brittle font subsystem makes it a generally inappropriate choice for
> > archiving - it's quite difficult to archive the environment in which a TeX
> > file is run.
> 
> I got this idea from Don Knuth's remarks at the 'coming out' party for TeX
> in May 1986.

Ah, it's interesting that it's not mentioned *at all* in the TeXbook (even though that was revised 10 years later) - and, to me at least, interesting that without having seen it written I'd say that TeX doesn't in any way demonstrate it (platform independence, yes - at least for the most part, but not archival repeatability - it's very hard to archive a TeX run of anything but the most trivial plain TeX file accurately: speaking as a Plain TeX, not LaTeX user).

> There he wrote that 'The first goal was quality', and that

Indisputably achieved!

> 'The second major design goal was to be archival'.

Cataclysmically missed, in my not-at-all humble opinion!

> You can read this article in Don's Digital Typography.  The quotes come
> from page 559.   I use these and similar quotes in
> www.ntg.nl/EuroTeX2009/slides/jfine-slides-mainstream.pdf

Thanks for the pointer - a book to add to my reading list :o)


David 

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