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To quote Knuth [1] describing TeX “Think thrice before extending,” because that may save a lot of work, and it will also keep incompatible extensions of TeX fr
by yannis 12y ago
To quote Knuth [1] describing TeX “Think thrice before extending,” because
that may save a lot of work, and it will also keep incompatible extensions of TeX from proliferating.
Personally, I am of the opinion that the original TeX was well 'modularized' in 'Pascal Procedures' [1], being Turing complete, extensions such as the LaTeX format and the countless of packages after that helped it survive and prosper. Think of a macro that you define as an easier way than programming a module in JavaScript and it doesn't need a half a dozen tools to set it up.
\def\#1{\TeX\ is alive says #1.}
Nevertheless, provided the lessons learned are incorporated I applaud any new initiatives in more modern languages. Whatever is produced will however, need to be able to parse TeX, otherwise it will not be easily adopted by the community.
[1] http://www.tug.org/texlive//devsrc/Master/texmf-dist/doc/generic/knuth/tex/tex.pdf http://www.tug.org/texlive//devsrc/Master/texmf-dist/doc/gen...
- StephenFalken 12y agoThere is this precious little gem on page 16, paragraph 31.: last <-- first; { cf. Matthew 19:30 } https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth#Religious_beliefs_and_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth#Religious_beliefs... http://www.webofstories.com/play/donald.knuth/1 http://www.webofstories.com/play/donald.knuth/1
- JadeNB 12y ago> Whatever is produced will however, need to be able to parse TeX, otherwise it will not be easily adopted by the community. This is a huge barrier to raise, since parsing TeX is the same as typesetting TeX—the meaning of a macro later on can be affected by a macro now. You can't even just execute the macros in a vacuum, since the meaning of a macro can depend on things like the current page number.