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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mtune!codas!killer!elg
From: elg@killer.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: ctex documentation
Message-ID: <1501@killer.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 8-Sep-87 00:52:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: killer.1501
Posted: Tue Sep  8 00:52:09 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 9-Sep-87 01:02:54 EDT
References: <4341@oberon.USC.EDU>
Organization: Bayou Telecommunications
Lines: 34

in article <4341@oberon.USC.EDU>, tli@sargas.usc.edu (Tony Li) says:
> In article <1109@vu-vlsi.UUCP> 164485913@excalibur.UUCP (Mark Schaffer) writes:
>     While it is true that TeX written in pascal is very difficult to work on
>     if you only have a C compiler, isn't the reason TeX was originally written
>     in pascal was because everyone and their Aunt Sophie knows enough pascal
>     and probably has access (somehow) to a pascal compiler.  
> The problem comes about when Uncle Homer buys a System V box.  pc is
> standard with BSD variants, but not with System V.

There's also the problem of different Pascal variants. What runs on Vax "pc",
won't necessarily run on another machine, like, say, an Amiga runnin AmigaDOS,
or a Pyramid running Unix, despite both of those machines having a Pascal
compiler. The "otherwise" clauses on case statements, for example, often have
to be kludged around via various preprocessors and such. But, a standard "C"
program that makes use of no routines besides the standard Unix library, will
run on just about any modern machine... the only machines that don't have "C"
compilers nowadays are generally your anachronisms, like some Multics unit
moldering somewhere in the swamps of Louisiana, which don't have enough demand
nowadays to feed a compiler writer... 

By the way, I have run many "plain" "C" programs here on my lowly Commodore
128...  just about any Unix utility like "wc", "shar"(various ones), etc.,
will compile straight away with no problems.... try that with Pascal! The
difference is that Pascal must be extended in order to be useful, for example,
to have file i/o to named files, while "C" and a suitable subset of its
standard library, are quite capable of doing some pretty decent work (e.g. I
doubt that "nroff" does anything fancy that couldn't be done in a suitable
subset....).

--
Eric Green   elg@usl.CSNET     "... is there anybody in there?
{cbosgd,ihnp4}!killer!elg        can anybody hear me?
Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191        is there anyone home?"
Lafayette, LA 70509