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From: garry@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU (Garry Wiegand)
Newsgroups: net.text
Subject: Replacements for TeX
Message-ID: <242@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU>
Date: Wed, 12-Feb-86 00:13:36 EST
Article-I.D.: batcompu.242
Posted: Wed Feb 12 00:13:36 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Feb-86 19:56:08 EST
Organization: Cornell Engineering && Flying Moose Graphics
Lines: 27

Having spent a week (last month) learning Knuth's "TeX" (I swore 
I never would!), 

Given the restriction that it is intended to be a slow batch-mode
type-setter (not, in addition, a graphics language, figure editor, 
page editor, indexer, spelling-checker, WYSIWYG screen editor, etc etc),

Then I have two basic observations: 

    1) It will indeed (eventually) generate good-looking output for almost
       any situation, and

    2) It has the ugliest and sloppiest syntax of any language I've ever 
       encountered. 

And my question is: 

    Is anyone out there working on a tool which will combine the 
    functionality of TeX with a decent human interface?

Send replies to me or the net ...

garry wiegand
garry%cadif-oak@cu-arpa.cs.cornell.edu

PS - The "any language encountered" above would include Snobol, Teco, NRoff, 
     BAL, Turing machines, and a certain professor I once had... :-)