Of course. But, as I said, you don't have to restrict your macros, you only have to add a bit of a protocol on top of them in order to make them play nicely wit

Of course. But, as I said, you don't have to restrict your macros, you only have to add a bit of a protocol on top of them in order to make them play nicely with all the tools. And then you'll get the most powerful programming environment possible - building arbitrarily complex hierarchies of languages, with a cost of adding a new language being close to zero, and with a free support from all your tools, for no extra cost. Actually, while building such a hierarchy I naturally came to a number of "restrictions", although they're not enforced. I prefer to build compilers using chains of very trivial transforms, each implemented with at most a total language (or a simple term rewriting for most of the cases). It also helps to maintain a nice interaction with the tools.