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The article is for the bigger part about operating systems, only a minor part is about programming languages (which is important for the matter at hand). It's

The article is for the bigger part about operating systems, only a minor part is about programming languages (which is important for the matter at hand). It's not pro-Lisp in particular, it's pro-"general-purpose, well tested and well designed programming languages". I don't exlude other programming languages from the picture. The alternative I gave as examples are the ones that I know of, but sure thing there are others out there in Python, Lua, Ruby, you name it. I personally like S-expressions because they are very general and have deep semantic implications (eval-apply, a.k.a. code is data) that go beyond mere syntactic considerations. Regarding your examples, if I understand correctly they are not equivalent, so they don't exactly compare. Here LaTeX would require the \begin{document}...\end{document} bits. But regardless, TeX is very painful to program with (lack of proper data structures and control structures). It's very important in my opinion.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
TeX itself is Turing-complete, if not exactly an ideal language for computing things not directly related to typography. But Lua(La)TeX exists, which allows for more user-friendly scripting in Lua (not my favourite language, but...), and I think that is the only real 'competitor' of (La)TeX. I love Lisp, but the majority of what I write is in (La)TeX, and I don't know of anything comparable for dealing with creating and typesetting academic-type work. Most of its 'competitors' use TeX on the back-ends, and though I've tried writing more in Org mode and exporting to LaTeX, in the end for anything beyond trivial text, it's easier just to write directly in LaTeX.
- Ambrevar 8y ago
  All this is definitely true, but in my opinion not ideal. LuaTeX adds a significant layer of complexity to an already way-too-complex system. At this point we might want to step back and wonder why this has become so hard. TeX is a poor foundation to build upon, so I don't think LuaTeX, despite being the best solution currently, is the right direction to explore.
  - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    > TeX is a poor foundation to build upon I still disagree with this characterisation. TeX is a really beautiful solution to a non-trivial problem, and its implementation in WEB is really quite interesting. LaTeX adds quite a lot of complexity and messiness, but does also add very useful functionality and abstraction away from low-level typesetting. Org-mode and similar 'mark-up' languages are very nice in more rigidly-defined domains, but they don't have the power of (La)TeX for academic writing. I don't see any real 'competitors' to (La)TeX that aren't themselves just adding layers on top of TeX (for better or worse). TeX is nearly as old as (original) Emacs and has similarly become complex in perhaps not-entirely-ideal ways, but - like Emacs - there's no substitute.
    - Ambrevar 8y ago
      I'm not criticizing the power of TeX in terms of typesetting, I'm only referring to the _language_ here. (And you are aboslutely right, Org and other markup languages are not competing with TeX.) Imaging the capabilities of TeX with a good programming language. I don't find WEB beautiful. In my opinion, literate programming (at least in this case) is a pretext to hide a terrible, unexpressive programming language. As you're saying, Emacs had the good taste to use a Lisp back in those days, so it really is a pity that TeX didn't.
      - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
        Well, I agree a Lisp or at least more Lispy interface with TeX would be much preferable. But I am dubious how anything comparable to TeX and the TeX-ecosystem would be developed at this point.
        _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
        Additional: I did come across https://github.com/mbattyani/cl-typesetting https://github.com/mbattyani/cl-typesetting , though its homepage seems to have disappeared.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago

TeX itself is Turing-complete, if not exactly an ideal language for computing things not directly related to typography. But Lua(La)TeX exists, which allows for more user-friendly scripting in Lua (not my favourite language, but...), and I think that is the only real 'competitor' of (La)TeX. I love Lisp, but the majority of what I write is in (La)TeX, and I don't know of anything comparable for dealing with creating and typesetting academic-type work. Most of its 'competitors' use TeX on the back-ends, and though I've tried writing more in Org mode and exporting to LaTeX, in the end for anything beyond trivial text, it's easier just to write directly in LaTeX.

Ambrevar 8y ago
All this is definitely true, but in my opinion not ideal. LuaTeX adds a significant layer of complexity to an already way-too-complex system. At this point we might want to step back and wonder why this has become so hard. TeX is a poor foundation to build upon, so I don't think LuaTeX, despite being the best solution currently, is the right direction to explore.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  > TeX is a poor foundation to build upon I still disagree with this characterisation. TeX is a really beautiful solution to a non-trivial problem, and its implementation in WEB is really quite interesting. LaTeX adds quite a lot of complexity and messiness, but does also add very useful functionality and abstraction away from low-level typesetting. Org-mode and similar 'mark-up' languages are very nice in more rigidly-defined domains, but they don't have the power of (La)TeX for academic writing. I don't see any real 'competitors' to (La)TeX that aren't themselves just adding layers on top of TeX (for better or worse). TeX is nearly as old as (original) Emacs and has similarly become complex in perhaps not-entirely-ideal ways, but - like Emacs - there's no substitute.
  - Ambrevar 8y ago
    I'm not criticizing the power of TeX in terms of typesetting, I'm only referring to the _language_ here. (And you are aboslutely right, Org and other markup languages are not competing with TeX.) Imaging the capabilities of TeX with a good programming language. I don't find WEB beautiful. In my opinion, literate programming (at least in this case) is a pretext to hide a terrible, unexpressive programming language. As you're saying, Emacs had the good taste to use a Lisp back in those days, so it really is a pity that TeX didn't.
    - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
      Well, I agree a Lisp or at least more Lispy interface with TeX would be much preferable. But I am dubious how anything comparable to TeX and the TeX-ecosystem would be developed at this point.
      - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
        Additional: I did come across https://github.com/mbattyani/cl-typesetting https://github.com/mbattyani/cl-typesetting , though its homepage seems to have disappeared.