Comment by lmm

4 years ago

> The last update to TeX (widely used in math and computer science for typesetting) was 12 January 2014.

But if you want to actually use it you'll install a much more recent distribution - probably texlive from 2020.

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lmm

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btilly  4 years ago

Yes. You'll install a bunch of recent stuff around it.

But the heart of it, TeX, is still the same old version.

  • lmm  4 years ago

    I think that's playing with semantics. Most codebases have old parts, the old part of texlive just has a name. It's still being actively maintained and would be a lot less usable if it wasn't, there's just an imaginary line between the texlive part and the tex part.

  • atomicson  4 years ago

    Old version? You have to understand that some applications need innovation based on new ideas. TeX is only popular in the academic and publishing world, not like a web browser. Can we write a complex equation in TeX as easy as we write in popular word applications like MS Word?

    • btilly  4 years ago

      Can we write a complex equation in TeX as easy as we write in popular word applications like MS Word?

      Thank you for the most ludicrous comment that I've seen today. The popularity of TeX in academia is exactly because writing complex equations in popular word applications is painfully hard, and the typesetting is poor. By contrast writing them in TeX is easy and the typesetting defaults to excellent.

      Talk to anyone who has to actually write many such equations. They will verify that it is not a question of "as easy". It is massively easier and better in TeX. Which is why academics working in math, physics and computer science overwhelmingly choose TeX.

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