"I don't think this is a problem with LaTeX & "messy codebase", I think this is a problem with restrictions on iOS from Apple."
No. It's a problem with LaTeX & messy codebase.
Take Apple out of the picture, for a minute: the messy codebase remains a problem with TeX/LaTeX.
It doesn't lead itself to easy extension, it doesn't lead itself to easy incorporation of features such as full Unicode support, Open Type font special capabilities, and much much more. There have been several attempts to fix this, namely LaTeX3e, Omega et al, but none has been that successful. We're stuck with a codebase that works, but is messy, too complicated (ever tried to set up a LaTex/Tex distro from scratch), and obsolete in many parts.
How can you say this when every item in your list is currently supported? Unicode, open type, pdf, etc. are all currently supported by new distributions.
Maybe you misunderstood me? I wrote "it doesn't lead itself to easy incorporation of features" (such as the above). I also acknowledge several attempts to fix this. What I lament is that "We're stuck with a codebase that works, but is messy, too complicated and obsolete in many parts".
I know a lot of the above are supported (I use LaTeX myself, and follow the developments quite closely) in newer TeX implementations, but not in clean way and not with first class support, to the legacy limitation.
I was asking for a clean implementation, no something like XeTex --that while supports several modern features it inherits tons of design problems from the original TeX.
So the next hot article will be "OMG a GNU/Linux distribution has a messy code base"?
Once you are talking about a multiple GB system, of course it's messy. Except it is actually a very poor choosing to describe the situation. E.g. mixing multiples programming langages in a big system has nothing messy, it would even be a HUGE warning not to encounter multiple programming langages in such a huge system.
No. It's a problem with LaTeX & messy codebase.
Take Apple out of the picture, for a minute: the messy codebase remains a problem with TeX/LaTeX.
It doesn't lead itself to easy extension, it doesn't lead itself to easy incorporation of features such as full Unicode support, Open Type font special capabilities, and much much more. There have been several attempts to fix this, namely LaTeX3e, Omega et al, but none has been that successful. We're stuck with a codebase that works, but is messy, too complicated (ever tried to set up a LaTex/Tex distro from scratch), and obsolete in many parts.