On Tuesday 08 July 2003 18:33, Joachim Schrod wrote: > In particular, the macro language is not only dreadful, but may be > called "the most horrible macro language after the C preprocessor" > with full rights. I don't agree about TeX. It seems to me that when someone invents a language like TeX they can't really know how it is going to develop -- it is more like a shot in the dark. (This seems to me even more true of Metafont, where the language is more radical still.) I suspect you want a language like Pascal -- it's obvious that the LaTeX team want this, since their starting point (I don't know if this goes back to Lamport) seems to be the translation of TeX into a Pascal-like language, with the definition of loop macros, etc. The examples in the TeXbook seem to me to show an entirely different approach -- seeing where the language leads, rather than trying to force it into a kind of Pascalian corset. C is rather different -- I imagine Ritchie must be amazed to see that the language he cobbled together in a few weeks from BCPL has taken over the world, while Pascal, PL and Ada, with deep philisophical foundations, seem to be as dead as the dodo. And the C-preprocessor is large part of the reason for the success. of C. I imagine people writing in Pascal/Modula or Java must often long for a pre-processor (or even close their eyes, and use cpp). -- Timothy Murphy e-mail: [log in to unmask] tel: +353-86-233 6090 s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland