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From: kelly@turing.arc.nasa.gov (Jim Kelly)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Command environment for TeX?
Summary: Is there an alternative to endless backslashes?
Message-ID: <854@hydra.riacs.edu>
Date: 28 Jul 88 18:16:16 GMT
Sender: uucp@riacs.edu
Reply-To: kelly@turing.arc.nasa.gov.UUCP (Jim Kelly)
Followup-To: comp.text
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center
Lines: 20

Any typesetting program must accept two kinds of input: text to be
output literally, and directives to be interpreted by the program.
One of TeX's major flaws is how the two are distinguished.  TeX takes
the whole document verbatim, except for a few special characters and
words beginning with backslashes.  For most English text, this works
fine, and nobody minds a few backslashes mixed in with the text, but
for defining macros it's a disaster--spaces put in the macro for
legibility appear in the output, and your file is 20% backslashes.

I'd like an environment where the default is reversed--one in which
everything is assumed to be a control sequence unless escaped (maybe
put in an hbox).  Macros could be defined from within the environment
and could contain all the white space legibility demands, without a
single backslash.

Has anyone written or contemplated such an environment?

Jim Kelly (kelly@pluto.arc.nasa.gov)
Jim Kelly
kelly@pluto.arc.nasa.gov
The Government  "We understand you tore that little tag off your mattress..."