> On 16 May 2016, at 01:00, Hans Hagen <pra...@wxs.nl> wrote: > > On 5/15/2016 11:55 PM, Hans Åberg wrote: >> >>> On 15 May 2016, at 23:18, Hans Hagen <pra...@wxs.nl> wrote: >>> >>>>> but eventually typesetting will become a niche and end up in the arts but >>>>> i will probably not live long enough to see that happen >>>> >>>> From the point of computer language design, TeX is not very good. One of >>>> the pitfalls of macro programming is that it gives the impression of >>>> lambda calculus efficiency without having it so one ends up spending a lot >>>> of time figuring out trivialities, which is why eventually was added, I >>>> gather. >>> >>> it's not that bad .. the tex language has a certain charm that one needs to >>> get accustomed to (as does metapost) ... and, combined with lua it's even >>> more fun >> >> Ideally, there should have been only one language with lambda capacity, and >> better syntax, though it is a problem figuring out what it might be. > > just look at how many programming languages are there and will be there (no > surprise with billions of people and taste) > > you see the same with markup languages: people want simple, then need more > and so simple becomes more and when not well thought about beforehand simple > then becomes ugly and it all starts anew
Indeed computer tend to have natural life cycles, after they have matured, further development becomes difficult. > interesting tex was flexible enough to survive many decades Other survivors are C, C++, Scheme. With TeX, change may start as with Lua, only some better syntax for text input. I experimented a bit with giving Guile a C++ API, and then then there is a problem with that that C++ is statically typed whereas Guile is dynamic. For example, Guile does not distinguish statically between different types of numbers: integers, rationals, etc, so the proper way from the point of C++ is to only have open number type. But static typing is important in optimization. And giving implement traditional function syntax on top of Guile does not work well, because (f, x_1, …, x_k) does not correspond semantically exactly to f(x_1, …, x_n). And there is a problem with the Scheme strict evaluation. So such issues lead towards to the design of a new language, rather than relying on an already existing. ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________
