Subject: Future of EPS (was Re: bug#45894: Bug report for preview-latex)

From: Ikumi Keita <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2021 16:00:34 +0900

Dear Tobias,

>>>>> "Bruckmann, Tobias" <[email-masked]> writes:
> 6 months ago we had the conversation below, and as Mr. Kastrup decided
> not to care for the issue without getting paid, I wanted to ask
> whether this bug is still on the list of the auctex team.

This bug is registered in Bug Tracker of AUCTeX:
https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/pkgreport.cgi?which=pkg&data=auctex

So perhaps someone might pick it up and try to resolve it in future;
However, I think that hope is very weak. In my view, the (La)TeX
ecosystem is moving rapidly towards PDF centric realm with respect to
the graphic format and EPS is already considered (implicitly) as
semi-obsolete. In a decade, EPS would be totally obsolete as (La)TeX
graphic format.

You wrote
> - Most scientific works use vector EPS graphics.
before. If your tool supports only EPS as the format for outputs, my
recommendation is to ask the developer to update it to support other
format. If I remember correctly, many scientific tools which consider
interoperability with LaTeX recently supports TikZ code as export
format. Is it difficult to do so for your tool?

> The combination of pstool and pdfLaTeX seems to be the most promising
> approach to me to join these points in one toolchain.

For the reason described above, I don't think it's promising, at least
for usage with (La)TeX.

> So there's no pathway and this toolchain is dead forever?

The answer depends whether the developer of your tool adheres to EPS or
not, I think.

Regards,
Ikumi Keita