On 11/08/2009, at 10:27 PM, Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard wrote:

> 1. Concerning the terminology of "functions". Maybe it's worth  
> mentioning at
> some point that the word function is used in opposition to variable,  
> not to
> macro: theses two objects (functions and variables) remain actually  
> macros, and
> TeX a macro language (like make or C preprocessor as opposed to C).

Except that variables really are sometimes variables, in the case of  
toks, counts, dims and so on.  However, you're right that our  
terminology is somewhat at odds with reality in places; this is  
something we should be addressing.

Many thanks for the comments,
Will