Re: [9fans] pascal, TeX

[George Michaelson <ggm@apnic.net>]

> not to start a flameware (troff esentially has the same
> problem), but TeX is a great education in Why To Hate
> Macro Processors. sendmail does better, but at least with
> TeX you can get something useful done at the same time.
>
> erik

I think a macro processor remains a fundamentally good thing. Else
how could Bourne have programmed his shell in Pascal?

The problem is divergeant Macro processors. better to have one and
make it work well. Isn't that what hit troff/eqn/tbl in the end?

I think the real problem for that family was the non-obvious cross
relationships of the *orderings* of calling the submembers. if you
want to nest equations in a table thats different to nesting tables
in a document with equations sometimes. Certainly trying to use eqn
to get giant curley brace marks into tabled telephone lists beat me.

(I was emulating a manually typeset phone list. you cannot recreate a
 craft like that with machines, Knuth not withstanding. I tried both
 TeX and Troff and troff won the day, but it was never quite as nice as the
 original.)

cheers
-George