> it is much easier to write a transpiler for Pascal->C than to rewrite TeX. Asking an LLM to rewrite it in the language-du-jour ...
I thought that the combination of the Pascal and Java versions[1] of TeX would be sufficient guidance to produce another language/implementation.
> is a huge cost for very little benefit
A greenfield Java implementation with an MIT license would have been useful[2] for rendering TeX inside of my desktop Markdown editor[3]. Instead, I had to rename all the Java source files to abide by the NTSPL license terms (or GPLv2, which is viral).
> A greenfield Java implementation with an MIT license would have been useful[2] for rendering TeX inside of my desktop Markdown editor[3]. Instead, I had to rename all the Java source files to abide by the NTSPL license terms (or GPLv2, which is viral).
The source files make it look like DANTE owns the copyright, so you could try asking them to relicence it. Both Philip Taylor and Hans Hagen were involved in the leadership of NTS, and both are still active, so if they are okay with it, then DANTE would hopefully agree to relicence it.
> then DANTE would hopefully agree to relicence it.
In Feb 2023, when I emailed Hans about changing licenses, he wrote back:
> We decided to stick with the GNU (GLP) license. It's not like anyone is going to check in detail what happens with NTS after all these years. We just wanted to add the option for GPLv2. We're not going into endless debates about licences, which are always a sensitive topic in the tex community.
The source files make it look like DANTE owns the copyright, so you could try asking them to relicence it. Both Philip Taylor and Hans Hagen were involved in the leadership of NTS, and both are still active, so if they are okay with it, then DANTE would hopefully agree to relicence it.