john@basho.uucp (John Lacey) (03/31/91)
I've been thinking about all these macro sets for TeX, and the increasing problems in sending documents around as sites lack sets that other possess. Is there any way to write a TeX file that will process another TeX file and reduce it to primitives and then write it out? I'm thinking of something extremely analogous to the C preprocessor. If that isn't possible, how hard would altering the structure of TeX to conform more closely to that of cc, with separate passed being separate executables. Or perhaps switches controlling those passes could be added. Am I babbling, or would this be useful (or at least interesting)? -- John Lacey 614 436 3773 73730,2250 john@basho.uucp or basho!john@cis.ohio-state.edu
cheung@mathcs.emory.edu (Shun Yan Cheung) (04/02/91)
In article <1991Mar30.215707.649@basho.uucp> john@basho.uucp (John Lacey) writes:
'I've been thinking about all these macro sets for TeX, and the increasing
'problems in sending documents around as sites lack sets that other possess.
'
'Is there any way to write a TeX file that will process another TeX file
'and reduce it to primitives and then write it out? I'm thinking of
'something extremely analogous to the C preprocessor.
A better solution is to have a number of sites for storing widely used macros
and send along obscure macros along with the text. We already have the
former (claremont, clarkson, etc). Now if people would do the latter,
sharing tex/latex files would not be a problem.
--
Shun Yan Cheung | cheung@mathcs.emory.edu Internet
Emory University | cheung@emory.bitnet BITNET
Dept of Math and CS | Voice: (404) 727-3823
Atlanta, GA 30322 | Engineering: make it work. Research: make it work BETTERxiaofei@acsu.buffalo.edu (Xiaofei Wang) (04/03/91)
* In article <1991Mar30.215707.649@basho.uucp> john@basho.uucp (John Lacey) writes:
* 'I've been thinking about all these macro sets for TeX, and the increasing
* 'problems in sending documents around as sites lack sets that other possess.
* '
* 'Is there any way to write a TeX file that will process another TeX file
* 'and reduce it to primitives and then write it out? I'm thinking of
* 'something extremely analogous to the C preprocessor.
*
* A better solution is to have a number of sites for storing widely used macros
* and send along obscure macros along with the text. We already have the
* former (claremont, clarkson, etc). Now if people would do the latter,
* sharing tex/latex files would not be a problem.
I think a better solution is to have a large macro package like EPLAIN.
I think that is the direction that TeX should go. I would like to see
Eplain, Fplain, Gplain, Hplain, Iplain, Jplain, Kplain, Lplain, Mplain ...
Why can not we use TeX and LaTeX together? In one paper, some parts written
by TeX [Plain] and some parts by LaTeX?
--
xiaofei@acsu.buffalo.edu / rutgers!ub!xiaofei / v118raqa@ubvms.bitnetem@dce.ie (Eamonn McManus) (04/04/91)
john@basho.uucp (John Lacey) writes: >Is there any way to write a TeX file that will process another TeX file >and reduce it to primitives and then write it out? I'm thinking of >something extremely analogous to the C preprocessor. > >If that isn't possible, how hard would altering the structure of TeX to >conform more closely to that of cc, with separate passed being separate >executables. Or perhaps switches controlling those passes could be added. Since the expansion of macros can depend intimately on the results of TeX's typesetting (for instance, they may be invoked from \output when a page is finished, or they may test to see whether the width of a box is greater than some value), it is not possible to do this without effectively doing everything that TeX would do anyway. Given the interesting possibilities introduced by conditional expansion and recursion, I think it would be very hard to do even if typesetting-dependent macros were ignored. , Eamonn