[texhax] Omega

[Robin Fairbairns]

> Sad state of affairs. I've first heard of Omega by hearsay in 1999,
> but did not follow it up then because it sounded somewhat too much in
> flux and neither sufficient documentation nor source were available
> (or so it appeared to me). Now, things aren't all that different, it
> seems...

i went to an omega meeting (at cern) in the early-mid 1990s, and the
delivery promises made there weren't met.  john plaice gave an
interesting talk (extempore -- i don't think we got a paper out of it)
at tug2000, and the delivery promises made there weren't met.

i'm told there will be announcements at tug2004, happening any minute
now in greece.  i shall be interested to see the upshot of any
delivery promises made there.

> I checked the omega-system.sourceforge.net URL, though to no avail....

:-(

> > One related project is aleph (formerly eOmega), which adds e-tex to
> > Omega, fixes some nagging minor bugs that impact practical use, etc.
> > That project is led by Giuseppe Bilotta.  Again, I don't know of any
> > public web site for it.
> 
> Never heard of e-tex. A google search pointed me to a Eclipse plug in
> for LaTeX of that name -- doesn't quite seem to fit the bill.
> 
> I need to get up to speed again with all those new acronyms ;-)

the faq has a series of things about all these projects.  look at 

http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=omega

and read on through, using the "next question" link at the bottom of
each page.

> Any idea how large the team behind Giuseppe Bilotta currently is
> (roughly)?

behind him, afaict, none.  lots of people on the sidelines, cheering
him on.