2 Apr
2012
2 Apr
'12
9 p.m.
TeX is one of those systems (like Perl, etc) which has
one
implementation. Can you _imagine_ the task of building a
TeX-compatible compiler whose compliance test were typesetting the
TeXbook... :-X
I once looked - briefly - at building an independent TeX
implementation.
It wasn't really possible. There are pieces of TeX for which existing
documentation, at least at the time (meaning, the TeXBook) was
insufficient. Consider, for example, the "Interwoven alignment
preambles are not allowed." message on page 299, with no description of
what it actually means; I'm fairly sure there is a statement somewhere
that TeX's approach to something is interesting "but will not be
discussed here", but I wasn't able to find it in a quick skim - I
thought it was a footnote, but it doesn't seem to be.
Someday, perhaps, when I have a spare year or so, I may sit down with
the Web source and try to glark enough documentation to at least permit
creating a compatible independent implementation.
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