Re: [NTG-context] Latin setupmathematics

On 16 May 2016, at 10:48, Hans Hagen wrote:

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interesting tex was flexible enough to survive many decades

Other survivors are C, C++, Scheme. With TeX, change may start as with Lua, only some better syntax for text input.

that always depend on the content; for complex docs tex or xml is ok (and best)

The TeX syntax is too loose to do input that is close to the input. For example, in math, if properly parsed, the "{…}” can often be replaced by the normal “(…)”, and the the engine can decide to remove them when unnecessary, as in say e^(x+y).

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So such issues lead towards to the design of a new language, rather than relying on an already existing.

and then the not foreseen limitations in that language and ugly extensions spoil it ... (btw, the nice thing about lua is that it's so stable)

One might focus on different parts communicating via the semantics of the underlying engine. Then with extensions, it is not necessary to know the syntax of other additions when writing the code. This is roughly how pure math works, and also the point extensible computer languages to get stuck on. And this is alos how Lua was added ro TeX.