Re: Maintenance or successors? (was Re: Buffer overflow in the StringQuotedWord() function)

[Yannig Robert]

Thank you, I had a look in the make file and I think that I can 
understand it. By the way discovered Lout thank to your book on Pyqt 
many years ago.

Kind regards

Yannig

On 18/12/2020 16:41, Mark Summerfield wrote:
> Building Lout means you have to edit the Makefile.
> This isn't difficult as such but you have to be _very_ careful since
> some of the directories you must specify must exist -- and some must not
> exist.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> On Fri, 18 Dec 2020 16:17:34 +0100
> Yannig Robert via "Users of the Lout document typesetting system."
> <lout-users@nongnu.org> wrote:
> > Hello all,
> >
> >
> > Even if I just started using it a year ago (a bit late to the party!), I
> > am really glad that Lout is living on as unlike Latex I seem to be able
> > to use it without loosing my sanity!
> >
> > There were talks earlier that Debian was dropping Lout. Does this means
> > that those of us who use a Debian based OS soon will need to compile it
> > ? Are there instructions somewhere for those like me who aren't experts?
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > Yannig
> >
> >
> > On 18/12/2020 06:01, William Bader wrote:
> > > I have a version of lout with the CVEs fixed at
> > > https://github.com/william8000/lout
> > > <https://github.com/william8000/lout> The repository has commits for
> > > all of the lout 3.xx releases that I could find and then a final
> > > commit that fixes the CVEs and updates the release to 3.41.
> > > I can try to fix future bugs and CVEs as they are reported.
> > > Regards, William
> > >
> > >
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > *From:* Lout-users
> > > <lout-users-bounces+williambader=hotmail.com@nongnu.org> on behalf of
> > > Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org>
> > > *Sent:* Wednesday, December 16, 2020 5:59 AM
> > > *To:* Mark Carroll <mtbc@ixod.org>
> > > *Cc:* lout-users@nongnu.org <lout-users@nongnu.org>
> > > *Subject:* Re: Maintenance or successors? (was Re: Buffer overflow in
> > > the StringQuotedWord() function)
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > Mark Carroll <mtbc@ixod.org> skribis:
> > >   
> > > > Thank you very much indeed for all the work already done on Lout,
> > > > it's a real gem, both in software and documentation. Unfortunately,
> > > > I have not used C (or C++) much since the nineties so I rather doubt
> > > > that I am suited to attempt to safely address outstanding CVEs; my
> > > > recent history is in fixing Java ones instead! Might somebody else
> > > > be up for the catchup and ongoing maintenance work? Otherwise, I
> > > > hope that this is not badly off-topic: If Basser Lout is no longer
> > > > maintained then I suppose it raises the question of if anyone here
> > > > has migrated to anything that does not pale in comparison, is there
> > > > any agreeable successor? Maybe there is some other mailing list
> > > > worth following about the wider state of document formatters?
> > > >
> > > > I've used Lout for my own documents but, in using things like XeTeX
> > > > with TikZ in the day job and such, I've yet to find a match for
> > > > Lout's sheer cleanliness, it is positively a pleasure to use; I
> > > > guess the functional approach really works, a worthwhile research
> > > > experiment indeed. At least after I have employed tips from others
> > > > about getting it to recognize various kinds of fonts, Basser Lout is
> > > > one of the few pieces of software I use where the surprises tend to
> > > > be more pleasant than not. "I wonder if this would work? Yes, it
> > > > does!"
> > > I’m late to the discussion but I agree with everything you wrote:
> > > having used LaTeX (+ Beamer, etc.) for some time now, it always feels
> > > clunky and brittle compared to Lout.  The functional approach of Lout
> > > makes it much more pleasant to work with, and more predictable too.
> > >
> > > I’m not aware of any other functional document formatting tool.
> > >   
> > > > I wonder if I'll end up seeing how far I can get with Haskell's
> > > > bindings to Cairo and if useful guidance would come from the text
> > > > about Nonpareil which, admittedly, it's a long time since I looked
> > > > at. Some combination of Lout's Expert's Guide and other "lessons
> > > > learned" could be valuable inspiration; as you've previously
> > > > observed, "Text handling is a maze where many have lost their way,"
> > > > so it would be great to at least continue to benefit from how Lout
> > > > advances the field.
> > > That’s probably the way to go even though, like you write, this may be
> > > an endless quest.  :-)
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Ludo’.
> > >