doing tex support the right way

#1

I also discovered that xdvi is OSS compliant, and have

    > started studying that source code as well. I only started
    > writing code to read the dvi information, but I post here
    > to allow people to comment if they are so inclined, and to
    > share the dvitype example with anyone who is interested. I
    > have compiled the tex file, converted it to pdf, and
    > posted the result at
    > http://staff.chess.cornell.edu/~dale/matplotlib/dvitype.pdf.

This is very good stuff Darren -- it would be really nice to have a
python interface to dvi files under a BSD compatible license.
matplotlib sitting on top of my two favorite runtimes: python and TeX.

I think it is a shame that a lot tools built on top of TeX (web2c,
pyx, ...) have a more restrictive license than TeX itself, so this
would be a very useful piece of code.

JDH

#2

[This discussion somehow wandered onto matplotlib-user. I'm bringing it back
over to the dev list.]

> I think it might use dvips or something to do that. rather than
> reading and rendering the DVI itself.

That is not my understanding,
which however is limited.

PyX does read dvi files. I'll bet they ported dvitype to do so (PyX
distributes a script called dvitype.py.)

PS I have tried to reopen the discussion with the PyX
developers. I'll post any useful outcomes.

Their webpage states that they would consider relicensing, but when I talked
to them, they were unwilling to release under a BSD-compatible license.
However, we dont need all of PyX to be relicensed, and I did not make that
clear to the PyX authors. If they would consider relicensing a subset of
their code, it would be extremely helpful.

···

On Monday 24 April 2006 16:30, Alan G Isaac wrote:

On Mon, 24 Apr 2006, Christopher Barker apparently wrote: