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Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support

tectonic-typesetting.github.io

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Re: Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support

#21

Post by alerighi »

weinzierl wrote: post #5

I used it a bit recently and it is brilliant. Instead of lugging a huge TeX installation around you have a single reasonably sized binary. When you run ’tectonic file.tex’ it will download everything it needs on the fly. If you want to run it without internet access you can sort of freeze the downloaded files and run tectonic with your *.tex plus the frozen bundle. It also claims reasonable error messages but I only…

Why rewrite TeX? To me TeX is one of the example of what a software project should aim to be, arrive to a stable version where it does what it should do and it work reasonably well. That was the initial idea of Knuth (in fact the version is a number that approaches PI one decimal at a time).

This is the contrary of the "modern" philosophy that says that we need to constantly modify, update or rewrite a software in "modern" languages even if it's a huge effort and risks introducing bugs that were not present in the original version.

Well, at least if we want to rewrite it let's just have to wait 10 years, then we can fed all the codebase to ChatGPT and ask for a new fancy Rust version!

Regarding of integration, TeX follows the (to me still relevant) UNIX philosophy that a software can be called by another software and the input/output communicates in a pipe. Nowadays we have even containers that let us distribute the software as a single unit so we don't have to worry about installing multiple files on a system. Not a big deal, in the end.

Re: Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support

#22

Post by nsajko »

jcparkyn wrote: post #18
nsajko wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly it still doesn't support vector graphics. A TeX-killer must also include a replacement for something like PGF, Tikz, Metapost, etc.

It supports SVGs. Not a replacement for all the options in latex, but that certainly qualifies as "vector graphics".

I'm talking about vector graphics as an integral part of the document, not mere inclusion of external graphics.

Re: Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support

#23

Post by jhanschoo »

alerighi wrote: post #21
weinzierl wrote: post #5

I used it a bit recently and it is brilliant. Instead of lugging a huge TeX installation around you have a single reasonably sized binary. When you run ’tectonic file.tex’ it will download everything it needs on the fly. If you want to run it without internet access you can sort of freeze the downloaded files and run tectonic with your *.tex plus the frozen bundle. It also claims reasonable error messages but I only…

Why rewrite TeX? To me TeX is one of the example of what a software project should aim to be, arrive to a stable version where it does what it should do and it work reasonably well. That was the initial idea of Knuth (in fact the version is a number that approaches PI one decimal at a time). This is the contrary of the "modern" philosophy that says that we need to constantly modify, update or rewrite a software in "m…

I don't think you realize that

1. Most people aren't compiling with tex->dvips->ps2pdf anymore, most people with basic requirements compile with pdftex for more robust hyperlink and navigation pane, etc. features

2. People who want Unicode support and support for modern font files are using xetex or luatex

3. What has been proposed isn't a new tex compiler but more like a package manager for 3rd-party tex packages, using the already established xetex compiler to compile. Whereas historically you would download the whole distribution (or a predefined subset thereof) onto your system versioned by year (e.g. TexLive 2020) eating up GiBs of space, this allows you to download just what you need for your document.

Re: Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support

#24

Post by yza »

jjgreen wrote: post #20
cstrahan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s say, for example, that I invite a friend over and offer them a glass of water. Would you be similarly upset to find that I don’t recommend that they first send a sample of the water to be tested for purity before consuming said glass of water? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I would be fine with my friend being cautious and wanting to get the water tested (though I doubt that would ever happen in practice)… but if…

Anyone that wants to inspect the shell script can amend that line to first save and view the script. They can, but they may well not get the same output since, as is well-known, curl | sh can be detected on the server.

also it is well-known that scripts you downloaded can be run locally

Re: Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support

#25

Post by iudqnolq »

jjgreen wrote: post #2

Written in Rust! Can you tell? curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -fsSL https://drop-sh.fullyjustified.net | sh

Isn't it nice to get your software directly from the people who wrote it? At least I'm confident any malicious edits were made intentionally. If I add a distro middleman who knows what they messed up mucking around for no good reason.

Re: Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support

#26

Post by davidatbu »

jjgreen wrote: post #20
cstrahan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s say, for example, that I invite a friend over and offer them a glass of water. Would you be similarly upset to find that I don’t recommend that they first send a sample of the water to be tested for purity before consuming said glass of water? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I would be fine with my friend being cautious and wanting to get the water tested (though I doubt that would ever happen in practice)… but if…

Anyone that wants to inspect the shell script can amend that line to first save and view the script. They can, but they may well not get the same output since, as is well-known, curl | sh can be detected on the server.

Can't one do `curl $url | sh -c 'cat > /tmp/file'`?

Re: Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support

#27

Post by remram »

davidatbu wrote: post #26
jjgreen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone that wants to inspect the shell script can amend that line to first save and view the script. They can, but they may well not get the same output since, as is well-known, curl | sh can be detected on the server.

Can't one do `curl $url | sh -c 'cat > /tmp/file'`?

No

Re: Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support

#28

Post by qwertfisch »

nsajko wrote: post #8

It's a TeX distro that only supports the XeTeX engine. A far cry from "modern", as XeTeX is an abandoned engine that always had quirky compatibility problems. And it's not "self-contained" either if it downloads packages from the Internet.

XeTeX allows me to use the system’s Truetype/Opentype fonts and Unicode without any of pdfTeX/Metafont voodoo necessary in previous times, and it did this flawlessly for more than ten years for me. LuaTeX took ages to finally get a 1.0 version, so there was at least a period of 8 to 10 years where XeTeX was simply the best and only solution.

Re: Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support

#30

Post by remram »

davidatbu wrote: post #29
remram wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No

Mind explaining why? I just tried it, and it works fine.

When we say "|sh can be detected on the server", this is not it. What you wrote is no different from `curl -o /tmp/file`.
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