Hi,
Around the upcoming context meeting we expect to release luatex 1.09 (or
1.10 ... yet undecided) which is the prelude to the next year tex live
version. It's another step towards a stable version in terms of
functionality as we don't expect much more to be added (in fact, I'm
wondering if it makes sense to come up with a leaner and meaner version
at some point because context can probably benefit from that). Of course
under the hood there are improvements possible and we have some ideas
(that might materialize at some point) but generally spoken, this is
what one gets.
That said, a logical question is how about next versions of context. Are
there fundamental features missing? Is more needed? Keep in mind that
we're not talking of desk top publishing (click and point and place
stuff) and also not of word processing (office like stuff) but of mostly
automated structured document rendering. Also, keep in mind the
landscape that we operate in (context development is mostly user driven
as publishers imo long ago lost interest in any research and development
and the potential of tex and friends is largely unknown elsewhere).
It's not my intention to implement each possible feature as core feature
(no one would document it anyway). Also, as development is basically a
spare time effort, don't expect complex commercially interesting niches
to come for free either as in that case one can wait till I a find a
reason for implementing it for fun or development is driven by a project.
When thinking of future additions, tex, lua, metapost of a mix is
possible. They should be of interest for more than one user. Of course
it can also be that everything needed is there. Maybe existing
mechanisms can be improved in terms of functionality or performance
(although i think that performance wise we're ok). But again keep in
mind that the boundary conditions (all these interacting sub mechanisms)
also prohibit some functionality.
Hans
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Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
tel: 038 477 53 69 | www.pragma-ade.nl | www.pragma-pod.nl
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