achim blumensath wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 05, 2003 at 11:47:02PM +0100, Robin Fairbairns wrote:
> > the fact is, that many people complain about the restrictions that tex
> > places on our programming, but no-one is willing to throw out the
> > basis of the "programming model" of tex -- rebuilding tex from scratch
> > is just too much of a job.
>
> I do not know whether I count for "someone" but I'm currently doing
> precisely this (see ant on my home page). On the other hand, I'm not
> exactly rebuilding TeX since I do not aim for 100% compatibility.

it's never occurred to me that you're other than "someone" ;-)

if i had misunderstood, please correct me, but i thought ant was _not_
intended as a root-and-branch replacement of tex, but merely to
provide an alternative rapid-prototyping approach to nts.  (and, i
thought, hopefully without the encumbrances under which nts labours.)

of course, i expressed myself badly: the "programming model" i was
talking of was not "let's replace this web/pascal stuff", but rather
"let's find an alternative way of expressing tex operations that gains
desirable things, but doesn't lose us tex's extraordinary power".

an example of these "desirable things" could well be space
preservation.  it's not something that turns me on, particularly, but
i can see the user interface arguments for it.

robin