On 08/01/14 10:48, Mirko Boehm wrote:
On 07.01.2014 19:54, Heiki "Repentinus" Ojasild wrote:
On 07/01/14 18:48, Timo Juhani Lindfors wrote:
"Filip M. Nowak"fsfe@oneiroi.net writes:
Well, looks like it is (but it's not compatible with GPL):
It is free software but is it a free format?
Is C++ source code a free format?
And we need to fix natural language to be free of inconsistencies and misunderstandings :-)
Oh no! That's why the C++ standards committee invented undefined behaviour.
In any case, the point of my rhetoric question was that there is no point in squabbling over LaTeX like that. If you use TeX to produce nicely typeset PDF-s, nobody cares whether you use LaTeX, XeTeX, MiTeX or whatever. The resulting PDF most likely conforms to Open Standards and the PDF is something you are going to distribute widely.
Choosing the TeX flavour is like choosing a programming language: if you want to write your own language, go for it; if you want to use C++, do it; if you want to use Fortran, do it. But when you compile your program, please provide the binaries for the platform the software is intended for (and obviously make sure that a free compiler implementation is available).
There are a few cases where you need to agree on a TeX version with your published or co-authors, but those cases are akin to picking a programming language for a project with friends – C++, C, Scheme, and a good few other languages are standardised, but I have yet to see someone pick one of them for the quality of being standardised.