Re: use of Jade TeX backend?

[Taco Hoekwater <bittext@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Sebastian,

 
> Questions:
>  - does anyone rely on the current TeX output? are there other macro
>     packages implementing the macros?
>  - if you use JadeTeX, what are your priorities for fixes? (apart from
>     getting tables right...)

I don't use jadetex at all, but most of my requests would be 
towards the main jade engine, not the backend. 

> the kind of changes I have in mind are (started with minor and going up):
>  1. shorter macro names to make smaller output files
>  2. adding in some extra brace pairs to solve ad hoc problems (like the
>     fences)
>  3. supporting  the extra characteristics of the RTF backend
>  4. adding a non-standard `float' flow-object to plug the gap until
>      complex page models are supported
>  5. moving the font change code largely to the backend
>  6. working out vertical spacing in the backend
>  7. doing more table work in the backend
>  8. rewriting the dependency on LaTeX, to make a smaller package

 
> I have already done the work for 1-3; I have mostly done 4. but it doesnt
> work (am consulting James and David :-})
> 
> 5. and 6. are for speed. TeX spends a lot of time fiddling with

I have an idea on 5. If you are willing to forget 8.3 filename
limitations.
You could use the X11 style font naming in an othogonal way just like
the nfss does, and it could be very fast if the `standard' metrics were
in
the TeX format file already. This would use filenames like

	Adobe-Times Roman-regular-bold-italic-0-T1.tfm 

> them. 7 may not be needed if I can steal some code from Elsevier's
> private table package :-}

What do you need? I have some macros floating around as well.

> Apart from all that, I would guess the priority in the backend is to
> clean up and extend the cross-referencing.
 
I am not sure about this one, but is the 'preserve-sdata' available to 
the TeX backend? that would be very handy for me (at least it seems
a better idea than changing all my entities to Text instead of SDATA).

Taco


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