At 22:45 +0100 2001/02/11, Frank Mittelbach wrote: > > Meta reasoning from the impression of TeX I get, developed as a series > > smart, but quick features lacking true generality and depth, I surmise that > >that's a bold statement from you, given that TeX though being more than 20 >years old has still to find a opponent program that can produce even equal >quality in its domain. I don't see that it is any bold in it; if one ever has tried to do something of generality with TeX (have you? :-)), it is sort of obvious. >you might argue that Don as a language designer isn't really strong but >that is >only a part of the story (though with most of your comments my feeling is that >you think it is all that is about anything) I don't think he ever tried to design a language with great generality; he had his scope, and as far as he could tell resulted TeX would suffice for that scope. The scope has since changed, though. > > any attempt in developing a TeX successor by enhancing it will fail. > >possibly but not for the reasons you claim The very heart of TeX is too limited. -- Otherwise, part of the reason that it is so difficult providing a successor to TeX is poor documentation of its internals, and the sources seems to not be very accessible. So I figure that those start with enhancing TeX, just inherits its problems. Possibly, if one could first make a clone (entirely new sources but with the same specs written with more modern tools such as Bison & C++), one could get an idea of how to write a new version. Hans Aberg