Re: [Axiom-developer] Axiom, Ubuntu and texlive

[Ralf Hemmecke]

On 06/05/2014 11:59 AM, Michel Lavaud wrote:
>> I don't like .dvi and .pdf. These are binary formats. Source counts.
> In theory, in a world with perfect humans

Arrrrh... again this reality... as a mathematician that's usually to be
neglected. ;-)

> approach also used for ArXiV (if it didn't change recently).

Yes. I didn't say that one shouldn't publish dvi or pdf or even html.
But I would rather aim at producing a proper source so that it will also
work in 10 or even 50 years from now without change and produce the same
dvi or pdf. LaTeX is rather stable, so there is some chance to achieve that.

But, in fact, if text breaks because of I change a formatting parameter
from 14 cm to 15 cm width, then that author must be punished. LaTeX
allows to write content and leave the formatting to the .sty file. If
people still haven't learned that lesson, then it's a really imperfect
world. ;-)

How can one be sure that the text (when formatted for html) is still
showing the same content?

And yes, .sty files can be a pain. TeX and LaTeX are not the fanciest
languages to program in. It's too easy to write a working package and
unknowingly break something in some other package.

Ralf