On 17/10/26 12:24, Ihor Radchenko wrote:
"Pedro A. Aranda" <[email protected]> writes:
Maybe you are right when talking about _one_ user doing his/her editing.
But just think about a group of users collaborating on a document. You
shouldn't impose a certain setup there. Just from my experience, in a
research environment, you may end up with 3 to 4 operating systems (even
more if you count OS versions) and each will have their own TeX.
Don't different tex versions have subtle differences in typesetting?
I feel that mixing different tex versions, just like mixing
pdflatex/lualatex/xelatex, in anything beyond simple documents is not
the best idea. Collaborators should stick to approximately the same version.
Just an example from real life: Fix to lualatex on TexLive2026.
1.- Some users will not be able to install because of
(company/distribution) policy
2.- MacTeX2026 users will be screwed
IMHO, if you have to keep track of the LaTeX versions, redundant
language is much easier than trying to juggle Elisp functions.
As I mentioned above, I view your case as rather edge cases you
encounter as package maintainer who *needs* to investigate multiple
LaTeX versions.
Could you see it, maybe, as a user who needs to juggle to and fro
between MacTeX versions because he has to maintain "legacy" documents in
parallel with new materials and is trying to cope with the challenge of
porting.
I'd rather write DOC_LANGS and profit from new features when on a newer
MacTeX and add a directory local variable to make sure that everyone
uses the same (it would be the 'older' of course) when collaborating.
The other alternative, i.e. imposing everyone to install a specific
TeXlive version for a project, is just impossible.
If you absolutely need to support multiple tex versions, I recommend
introducing customization that defines tex version rather than making
individual adjustments that users need to figure individually.
In real life, if I were to coordinate the doc part of a research
project, I would setup a project-wide .dir-locals.el at the root of the
doc tree and then help users with a .dir-locals.el in each of the
directories they are contributing to.
... And what do we do when the interaction between babel
and DocumentMetadata is refined once again?
Could you elaborate?
If you look at how the LaTeX package "babel" is evolving to better
interwork with the document metadata, you'll understand.
Could you please be even more specific? I do not follow LaTeX
development closely, so I do not really know what you are talking about,
and I will need to spend a lot of time to figure out myself.
OK, It would be just reading the announcements in the babel web page,
but here you are:
Initially, babel and DocumentMetadata didn't know about each other. Then
they started agreeing on what lang=xyz meant and now they are beginning
to agree on what language=abc, other-languages={def, ghi} means. This
evolution depends on the babel version that is shipped with your texlive.
So that is a moving target, and at this point in time I cover both
supported scenarios with the patch and have the possibility of evolution
covered by the possibility of having a simple user-defined function.
--
Pedro A. Aranda
ox-latex & ox-beamer maintainer
Sagen's Paradeiser! (ORF: Als Radiohören gefährlich war) => write BE!
IA: onomatopeya del rebuzno
2nd year of the New Koprocracy
