Wonderful!  Those were good recommendations; I shall work through them.
Maybe I will buy the TeXbook eventually; however, I've just splashed out on
the METAFONTbook, so I'll give it a while.

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 9:39 PM, Thomas A. Schmitz <
thomas.schmitz@uni-bonn.de> wrote:

>
> On Feb 25, 2010, at 9:39 PM, James Fisher wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> >
> > After a few days working in "do what the tutorials say" mode, I now want
> to understand TeX from a programmer's mindset.  I have not been able just by
> practise to work out what the syntactic rules of TeX are, and I am hoping
> that there is a sensible guide to this somewhere.  However, searches for
> things like "tex syntax" draw a blank.  Some of the things I want to
> understand, for example, are: (1) what is the distinction between square
> brackets and curly brackets after a command?  (2) Why are there sometimes
> lists of square-bracketed lists after a command, each with lists of seeming
> arguments inside them?  (2) What exactly are the "variables" in a TeX file?
> (I've seen variable-like things sometimes referred to just plainly,
> sometimes with preceding backslashes as if they were commands/macros).  (4)
> Why can't I end a square-bracketed section with a final square-bracket on a
> line of its own, as I may do in other programming languages?  (5) How are
> things like \subsection, \sub
>  subsection, \subsubsubsection, ... implemented?  I am used to languages in
> which there is only a finite set of commands; why is the logic here not more
> like \section[level=1], \section[level=2], ... ?  (6) Perhaps I'm
> misunderstanding things and all this isn't actually the fundamental syntax
> of TeX but just adhoc syntax defined by various macros doing different
> things -- is this the case; to what degree can macros define syntax?
> >
> > Obviously I don't expect answers to all these here, but can someone point
> me to somewhere on the 'net that could answer them? The only other
> possibilities I can see are buying an expensive copy of the TeXbook, etc.
> >
> First, you're confusing two things: TeX syntax and ConTeXt syntax. Most of
> what you're asking here has to do with the way ConTeXt implements things.
> For starters, I would recommend
> http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Inside_ConTeXt, especially the overview
> about System Macros.
>
> But if you want to actually write your own macros (or simply understand the
> way ConTeXt works) you will indeed need some understanding of TeX.
> Complaining about the price of the TeXbook doesn't sit very well with most
> TeXies (most of us think the price is reasonable, we're using this
> incredibly software for free, and if you're really poor, you can always go
> to a library), but there's an absolutely wonderful book which you can
> download for free, TeX by topic,
> http://eijkhout.net/texbytopic/texbytopic.html Personally, I find it more
> accessible than the TeXbook.
>
> HTH
>
> Thomas
>
>
>
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