> If I install TeX on my Linux machine now, is that still compiled from the original Pascal source?
If you install TeX via the usual ways–TeX Live and MikTeX are the most common—then the build step runs a program (like web2c) to convert the Pascal source (with changes) to C, then uses a C compiler. (So the Pascal source is still used, but the Pascal "compiler" is a specialized Pascal-to-C translator.) But there is also TeX-FPC (https://ctan.org/pkg/tex-fpc), a small set of change (patch) files to make TeX compilable with the Free Pascal compiler (https://gitlab.com/freepascal.org/fpc/).
For more details see https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/111332/how-to-compil...
> Is there even a maintained Pascal compiler anymore?
Of course
Nice. Although "latest news" are from 2021.
Re:Niklaus Wirth has died
by renewedrebecca on Wednesday January 03, 2024 @11:00PM
(#38862836)
It's not like Pascal changes a whole lot.
Re:Niklaus Wirth has died
by badsectoracula on Thursday January 04, 2024 @05:22AM
(#38865343)
Free Pascal does very infrequent releases though the compiler is under active development and even has a bunch of new features both for the compiler (e.g. a wasm backend) and the language itself. There are always multiple daily commits in the git log by several developers.
The discussions in Gitlab are still active:
https://gitlab.com/freepascal.org/fpc/source/-/issues
Of course, you can always build the latest version from Git.
Just thought about that when Donald Knuth's Christmas lecture https://www.youtube.com/live/622iPkJfYrI lead me to one of his first TeX lectures https://youtu.be/jbrMBOF61e0 : If I install TeX on my Linux machine now, is that still compiled from the original Pascal source? Is there even a maintained Pascal compiler anymore? Well, GCC (as in GNU compiler collection) probably has a frontend, but that still does not answer the question about maintenance.
These were just thoughts. Of course researching the answers would not be overly complicated.