On 5/29/13 12:32am, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
I fear that you have to read the TeXbook first. [...] You can
investigate LaTeX later. [...] In short: The TeXbook is unavoidable.
As I said multiple times: I've downloaded the TeX book, and I am reading it.
Arthur already explained that you can't compare TeX with C. C is a
low-level language and if you disassemble a program, you can certainly
see how it works. However, TeX is extremely complex and you don't
achieve anything without having read the TeXbook before.
Ok, I get it. I said i *THOUGHT* I could relate it to C, and I also said
that I was obviously wrong.
> (it's part of my job), especially when you assume that you don't
> have the source code.
I hope that what you do is legal and you don't end up in prison one
day. :)
It is legal. You just don't see many do reverse engineering. I'm not 15
anymore to waste time on "cracks".
However, the TeX source code is available and there shouldn't be a
need to reverse engineer things. It's shipped with TeX Live.
I just created a PDF file for you and put it on my server:
http://ms25.ath.cx/tex/tex.pdf
It describes Knuth's TeX, thus no PDF or Lua related code inside.
Thanks, I have another source to read!
BTW, I understand that you want to find out how TeX works. This is
understandable. However, I'm convinced that the hash table is by far
the worst starting point. I can't imagine a worse one. The hash
table is meaningless unless you know where the entries come from and
what they are good for.
Disclaimer: I am trying to say why I was proceeding that way.
It is quite common to make a dummy program to see how a compiler encodes
things, how symbols are translated (their names), how the code is
produced (symbol's contents). I made the same: a dummy latex, and dumped
the symbols.
IMO the best approach to make TeX's internals visible is provided by
Patrick Gundlach. His tool examines TeX's internals and uses Graphviz
in order to display them graphically.
I'm absolutely convinced that everything you're doing at this low
level is absolutely useless and you waste your time unless you've read
the TeXbook before.
You've made your point clear.
