Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!sdd.hp.com!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!abcfd20.larc.nasa.gov!ames!uhccux!munnari.oz.au!goanna!ok From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: comparison: was He's not the only one at it again! Message-ID: <3513@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> Date: 4 Aug 90 09:02:01 GMT References: <25630@cs.yale.edu> <58091@lanl.gov> <3478@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia Lines: 26 In article , schwartz@groucho.cs.psu.edu (Scott Schwartz) writes: > In article <3503@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> I wrote > Was Algol 68 the last > standardised language to try to maintain the distinction between how a > programming language was to be printed for human consumption and how it > may be prepared for a computer in a machine-dependent way? > Knuth's WEB does this to some extent. Hmmm. Does that make your > point or refute it? :-) It makes my point. I've had students complain bitterly that they "can't read this stuff, it isn't Pascal" when the change is something as mild as (a) putting keywords in \bf and (b) using crossed-equal, underlined-less, underlined-greater instead of <>, <=, >=. I shudder to think what they'd do to me if I dared to use the \in character instead of "in". Web actually does something rather different. The Web programs take a program written in the "Web" language and translate it into another (either TeX or Pascal). Macros, for example, are part of Web, not part of Pascal; Web does more than provide a publication style for them. -- Distinguishing between a work written in Hebrew and one written in Aramaic when we have only a Latin version made from a Greek translation is not easy. (D.J.Harrington, discussing pseudo-Philo)