Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!udel!haven!mimsy!chris
From: chris@mimsy.umd.edu (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: TeX index program available
Message-ID: <21186@mimsy.umd.edu>
Date: 8 Dec 89 20:54:42 GMT
References: <THEWALT.89Dec8110634@RITZ.ce.cmu.edu> <3478@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> <1989Dec8.184444.11467@cs.rochester.edu>
Distribution: comp
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 49

In article <1989Dec8.184444.11467@cs.rochester.edu>
ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) writes:
>Why should TeX have everything but the kitchen sink? ...

[ to be like Emacs, of course :-) ]

>I would not like to see what is an already moderately large program
>(200k or so) bloat with features that could easily be implemented
>externally.

(such as tbl, eqn, ...? oh never mind, I am just in a baiting mood at
the moment)

There is something, though, that would be very useful to have in TeX
that would take little space, add a great deal of power, and could be
done on most systems (albeit in a system-dependent fashion):  TeX
should be able to run a subprocess.  (Heck, even MS-DOS can do it,
although there is the minor fact that IBM PC TeXes tend to use all the
memory in the machine, so that you would not be able to do anything
in the spawned process.

If one could write, e.g.,

	\system{make-index <foo.idx > foo.ind}
	\input{foo.ind}

(note that I am using LaTeX syntax here, something TeX could stand a
bit more of itself) the `index problem' would be taken care of, without
building the sorting directly into TeX.  Other things could be done
as well:

	\system{ls | text2tex > ls.tex}
	\input{ls}

and so forth.

Of course, all is not roses.  For one, the syntax of what goes inside
a \system invocation would be (alas!) system-dependent.  (You might also
need to get funny characters in, such as \ { } ` etc., which is tricky.)
No longer would people be able to mail TeX sources with confidence
that the recipient could use it---this is not a total loss, since this
already happens with fonts, to some extent.  Also, people would have to
exercise more care as to what they TeX.  At the moment, the worst TeX
will do is overwrite files.  With a \system capability, a malicious user
could send `documents' that do more.  (I find this argument not terribly
effective.)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@cs.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris