>|I have on two occasions asked on this list whether anybody wants to >|help me convert M-Tx to Python. Christian Mondrup convinced me that >|we shouldn't, as outside the Unix world people don't already have Python >|anyway.
That may have been the case when you asked but it isn't now: Python is everywhere. >|The objection does not apply to LuaTeX. All recent TeX distributions >|have it, maybe at this stage only as an optional extra, but it is being >|billed as the "next generation TeX engine". >| >|If we had LuaTex in 1992, musixflx could have been implemented in Lua >| and there would be only one TeX pass. >|If we had LuaTeX in 1996, PMX could have been implemented in Lua and >| there would not have been pmxa and pmxb passes. >|If we had LuaTeX in 1999, M-Tx could have been implemented in Lua and >| there would not have been a prepmx pass. >| >|Now it is 2010 and we do have LuaTeX. >| >|We can go on as we used to: regard musixflx as cast in concrete, rely >|on Don to keep maintaining PMX (nobody else except me, as far as I know, >|has contributed even one line of Fortran code to it) and hope that someone >|occasionally tweaks M-Tx to take account of some recent PMX feature (that >|person is no longer me). >| >|Or we can gradually convert more and more of the functionality of these >|packages into LuaTeX, thus taking advantage of the fact that the next >|generation of TeX package writers will be fluent in it and will be able >|to maintain the software. A single package luamusix.sty will do >|everything. >| >|I think the choice is obvious. Don't you? No. Is Don willing to re-write PMX in Lua or anything else? I doubt it and as PMX is still being developed, his cooperation is essential. As for choosing Lua, I have my doubts. It sounds like a simple scripting language with bindings to TeX. Could not such bindings be written for Python? The TeX community seems again to be doing something completely idiosyncratic. Bob T. ------------------------------- TeX-music@tug.org mailing list If you want to unsubscribe or look at the archives, go to http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/tex-music
