Hans Hagen wrote:
that's another matter; the fact that it does produce identical results is related to the tex kernel, not to the actual binary that goed beyond tex by being integrated in a cross platform tex environment (say web2c);
https://xemtex.groups.foundry.supelec.fr/xemtex-web-gb-2-5.html
summarizes this nicely.
Yes, I read Fabrice's remarks some time ago, and they saddened me enormously (just as I am saddened every time licensing issues, or open-source considerations, or whatever, get in the way of making useful software generally available). But the fact remains that TeX itself is probably the most reliable large piece of software in the world when it comes to reproducibility between platforms : the can of worms that was introduced when Pascal ceased to be regarded as a viable source language for direct code generation is surely another issue completely. I confess to remaining baffled as to why no-one has ever attempted a Delphi port for Windows, given that Delphi is actually a rather radically re-engineered Pascal derivative ... ** Phil.