TeX, LaTeX, tool and compatibility
==================================

Some  20 years  ago  it was  advertised  to  me that  one  of the  main
advantages of the LaTeX is its  backward compatibility. It was in times
when MS office package documents broke after transfer between different
computers  and  new  file  format  versions  introduced  new  problems.
Actually, I was the Linux/UNIX user  from about 1998 so the DOC/XLS/PPT
documents were almost useless for me anyway.

So I have been writing all my textbooks, slides and most of articles in
the  LaTeX.  The  TeX/LaTeX  distributions and  tool  are  continuously
developing, however. Some years ago I noticed that just re-compiling of
my LaTeX slides with newer TeXLive tools brokes the formatting.

Some time  age my  long-term friend, the  CsTeX, was  declared obsolete
and  removed  from the  distribution.  This  change introduced  further
formatting and code problems (the \uv{}  command is no longer here, for
example).

Recently I found that  my proven way to generate slides (DVI  - > PS ->
PDF) no  longer work on modern  Linux (with newer TeXLive  versions). I
have had  to use the dvipdf  tools with different parameters  so I have
had to change my Makefiles. Now they don't work with my IRIX TeX (it is
not sane to update  the TeXlive here so I am "stuck"  with some 10 year
old TeX tools here).

It  looks  like  that  I  will  have  to  do  some  exercise  with  the
GNU  Makefile  to make  some  conditional  compiulations (one  for  the
Linux/Windows and another for the IRIX).


Well, backward compatibility is a great thing. In case it exists...