General ⇒ LaTeX script variations and evolution

[karlisrepsons]

Hi,
before digging into anything specific, I would like to have somebody's "big picture" of changes and variations of LaTeX. Even if I don't care about how the final pdf-s or other such files are created, obviously I have to care about any relevant script changes, which are my concern right now. TeX is an old entity, but how much of changes it has right now in all the ways, which perceive any? Some ways can be:
1) distributions: what are the script differences for various up-to-date LaTeX distributions?
2) general script evolution: how many changes of script have happened per some time of your choice?
3) packages: are they distribution-specific and how fast the most common ones "mutate"? Are they the main ones, that create problems after something becomes obsolete?

I will appreciate your clarifying answers!

[daleif]

what exactly do you mean by 'script'? If you only use packages available on CTAN then everything is pretty stable. The Two major dists MikTeX and TeX Live provide more or less the same packages.

Yes TeX is old, some 30 years, but actually TeX it self is only used for plain TeX these days, LaTeX and pdfLaTeX use pdf(e)TeX

[karlisrepsons]

By writing "script", I meant the actual contents of LaTeX file(s), the source of, say, pdf.
Later on I was reading in Wikipedia about the differences between terms TeX and LaTeX, I should have wrote "LaTeX" instead, because TeX is said to be frozen now (unique, versions approach to pi!).

So its LaTeX. What causes the most of trouble with rewriting older scripts (well, how should I call them)?

[daleif]

I usually just call them files or manuscripts

I mostly rewrite other peoples files because of their poor LaTeX skills, many interesting new things have happened this decade, but a lot of (long time) users have not kept up with developments and are still using bad constructions.

There are a few situations have may cause problems

(1) docs using LaTeX209, these have been out of date since 1994

(2) docs using packages that are not distributed anymore, in later years some obscure packages have been removed from the distributions because of bad licenses

(3) older documents which use a bad check for PDF-mode

Using standard packages, I'ven't had much problems with my older documents. But given a document, the only way you can be sure that you can compile it into the same result is to store the entire LaTeX dist. together with the document. But on the other hand, the advantage of using LaTeX is that the source is text, so no matter what you can always read the source. That is not quite possible if you look at say Word.

[karlisrepsons]

"Manuscripts" sounds better.
Maybe you can advice something to read, so I don't make poor manuscripts or such ones, that are more probable to need rewriting afterwards? This far I have been grabbing everything I could get, so have not much of idea about the quality...

[localghost]

[...] Maybe you can advice something to read, so I don't make poor manuscripts or such ones, that are more probable to need rewriting afterwards? This far I have been grabbing everything I could get, so have not much of idea about the quality [...]

Refer to a special topic that lists some useful resources [1]. A short document with other useful links is available via command prompt on your local machine.

Code: Select all

texdoc latex

[1] View topic: LaTeX Resources for Beginners


Best regards
Thorsten