Hello,

Frank Mittelbach wrote:

> i think that is saddling the horse from the tail. if you look at the
> way Lamport originally wrote LaTeX you will find that he used a pascal
> like peudo code

Oh, it's interesting! Was that implementation able to deal with
mathematics?

> and later on translated it into TeX (and sometimes got
> the TeX interpeter changed or enhanced because he asked Don something
> that wasn't possible.
>
> so execpt for the moment that there is an abstract LaTeX language and
> it is defined by the LaTeX manual. and even if one of its interpreter
> (TeX) allows to use constructs outside of it this doesn't mean that
> they are part of the language, it only means that such documents are
> not latex documents (only that we don't mind much as long as we all
> use the same interpreter.

Ok. Probably, my point of view on LaTeX is limited.
Of course, the authors of LaTeX can specify, what is the `real'
LaTeX syntax, and may want the others to look at LaTeX
as to an abstract language (even not TeX-related).

> but your point that there is only one such interpreter is simply
> wrong. there is, for example, a voice rendering system that turns
> latex including math and all into speech --- very impressive in fact,
> and it deals with the full latex language as defined above.

I did not see this system :-) Is it available at CTAN?

With best regards,
                   Vladimir.