Re: A Modern Typesetting Language.

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi John,

> > Or at best, gives it through some clunky ‘treat it as a string’
> > mechanism.
>
> How is that clunky?  Text is text.  It's opaque, honest, and
> universal.  The foundation of the Unix Philosophy… you know this as
> well as I do.  ;-)

It's an escape hatch to handle things not yet thought of.  And it's
handy as that.

Strings can be clunky.  Say troff didn't have number registers.  Well,
strings could hold digits and macros could do arithmetic with those
strings.  In some ways, they're better than integers as they can hold
bigger numbers.  :-)  But it would still be clunky.

A transformation matrix of (a b c d e f), a CMYK colour, etc., could all
be shoehorned into troff through registers, macros, and the
post-processor's escape-hatch but it ignores the benefits of starting
afresh and playing with new ideas unencumbered by legacy commitments
like existing behaviour.

Bits of Plan 9 have made their way to Linux, e.g. 9P.  But the original
is often better because of the seamless manner it integrates into the
rest of the system.  Only after quite a bit of playing, experimentation,
jigging out, and backtracking, I expect.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.