[tex-live] List for announcements

[Robin Fairbairns]

Victor Ivrii <vivrii at gmail.com> wrote:

> During last few years I was teaching together with some of my esteemed
> colleagues who had plenty of great ideas and had very good reasons why
> not they but somebody else (and this somebody happened to be me)
> should implement them. I wasted a lot of time (because arguing would
> lead to even bigger waste).

> Recently several people shared similar great ideas in some TeX mailing
> lists.  So, I have my own great idea: someone should create a
> "TeX-Great-Ideas" mailing list where people who have great ideas which
> they are not going to implement by themselves will post these
> ideas. Obviously it is not me who should create it.

i'm afraid that such a list would be a new quick way to get ideas
forgotten about.

to first order, i don't think there's any straightforward means of doing
the job properly.  back in 1994, the uk tex user group decided we should
write a faq; i had been saving many great ideas from tex-related lists,
and other members had other things to add to the list.

the faq has been on-line now for 18 years or so, with yet more stuff
distilled from lists i read.  and _still_ there are people asking the
same questions that the faq covers[*]

we have new things, like tex/sx (whose reputation system i don't
understand, so i don't try to "answer" things).  we have the old
original texhax mailing list.  we've lost the uk-tex list (subsumed in
texhax), info-tex (subsumed in the upstart comp.text.tex in the early
90s, i guess), and so on.

i'm open to bright ideas, but i'm not currently expecting any.  not even
yours, victor...

[*] one of my original bugbears was the \label before \caption.  it's
still popping up.