[Textures] reviving Textures

[Paul J. Campbell]

Dear fellow aficionados of Textures,

Many thanks to Paolo Matteucci for notifying about the news about 
BlueSky at http://www.blueskytex.com/; I had been planning to check 
on the appointed date of Apr. 1.

The news is early and very good!

Making the previous Textures freely available may help return many to 
the fold, as well as save Textures for devotees who could not 
transfer it to new computers,  and even show others the advantages of 
Textures.

I hope that all previous customers can be notified individually of 
the new availability, including those who may have "left the fold" 
and are no longer on this listserve. I also hope that some publicity 
can be made in various forums of the merits of Textures, its new 
availability, and its revival effort.

The only questions I have are:

---Who is the "we" behind the revival effort?  And who are the "group 
of dedicated academics" who are supporting it? It might be useful in 
the next progress bulletin to post names of sponsors/contributors, 
much as colleges and other charities do, to encourage further 
donations and build morale.

---What is the goal of this crowd-sourcing: (re)development/renewal 
of the commercial product? eventual open-sourcing (in any part)? 
nostalgia and extended use for a small core of dedicated users such 
as myself?

---Is there any hope/ambition beyond adapting Textures to function in 
the Cocoa environment as it already does in the Carbon one? And what 
is the advantage of moving to Cocoa? (and what may be Apple's next 
move for OS XI?) Can a revived Textures compete well with the now 
better-established TeXShop?

---Will the effort be closely enough supervised and documented, so 
that the result is not again so closely dependent on a single 
individual's expertise and knowledge?

I am elated at this news and look forward to further developments!

With best wishes,

-- 

--------------------------------------------------------
Paul J. Campbell
Mathematics and Computer Science
Beloit College
700 College St.
Beloit, WI  53511-5595
USA

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really old archived Web page at
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