From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <3C18EF44.38244A15@strakt.com>
From: Boyd Roberts <boyd@strakt.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] pascal, TeX
References: <28022.1008266218@apnic.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 19:11:16 +0100
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 355426b4-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

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

Bourne programmed his shell in SHELLGOL; one of the true ghastly
abuses of the preprocessor:

    IF foo == bar
    THEN
	baz();
    ELSE
	boom();
    FI

And the only way to modify the Bourne shell was to stick with the
SHELLGOL, because at least it would maintain a consistant style.

I think laTeX is the definitive answer to why TeX is a poor
piece of software.

Write TeX or laTeX is like writing PostSript and I don't want
to write any of them.  troff, for all it's faults, I prefer.