Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uunet!snorkelwacker!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!ubc-cs!manis From: manis@cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis) Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme Subject: Re: Scheme as the only extension language Message-ID: <9342@ubc-cs.UUCP> Date: 29 Aug 90 19:57:55 GMT References: Sender: news@cs.ubc.ca Distribution: comp.lang.scheme Organization: Institute for Pure and Applied Eschatology Lines: 24 Re: Scheme as an extension language for TeX. In the early 1970's, a number of us, grad students at the time, designed a document formatter whose extension language was Lisp 1.5. For reasons of performance, we gave up on the idea, and designed a second language which was based upon TRAC (TM of Calvin Mooers). The resulting formatter, Texture, had some considerable success and use, dying only when proportional fonts became available. Of course you could do TeX with Scheme (all TeX really is is a system for setting boxes with glue). You'd need to add a few trivial things to R^4S Scheme, such as read macros (to support catcodes), as well as the specific typesetting operations (such as make-box, make-glue, make-rule, make-leader, and so on). It would be really fantastic! On the other hand, I have a fair bit of affection for Knuth's perverse language. Say what you might about it, there's nothing quite like it. (``Madom, this meal is indescribable!'') -- \ Vincent Manis "There is no law that vulgarity and \ Department of Computer Science literary excellence cannot coexist." /\ University of British Columbia -- A. Trevor Hodge / \ Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1W5 (604) 228-2394