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From: forrest@blia.BLI.COM (Jon Forrest)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Comments on TeX - The Program
Message-ID: <3360@blia.BLI.COM>
Date: Mon, 28-Sep-87 13:01:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: blia.3360
Posted: Mon Sep 28 13:01:36 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 29-Sep-87 07:30:54 EDT
Organization: Britton Lee, Berkeley, CA
Lines: 22

I recently bought "TeX - The Program" and have spent a fair amount
of time reading it. What strikes me is the extent to which Knuth
had to lower himself in order to accomodate Pascal and the state
of the art in Pascal compilers back in the early 80's.

It appears to me after a much too brief period of study that
TeX could be a lot smaller and probably simplier if Knuth had been
able to use a environment containing the function of something
like the Unix Standard I/O Library. (This is only a hypothetical
example; I'm not actually proposing this.)

It is said that a convey can travel no faster than its slowest ship.
With TeX as it is, we'll eventually reach our destination but
what a long, strange trip it will be.

I'm hope that this posting will stimulate discussion of this topic.
It is in no way intended to belittle Knuth or TeX.

Jon Forrest

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