From: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 08:11:48 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Document git-runstatus
Message-ID: <ejrntd$kj$1@sea.gmane.org>
In-Reply-To: <20061120071529.GF3315@always.joy.eth.net>

Joshua N Pritikin wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 19, 2006 at 07:13:08PM +0100, Petr Baudis wrote:
>> BTW, I've finally found a fine example of situation parallel to Git:
>> TeX!  There are the core TeX commands (plumbing) and plain TeX (basic
>> porcelain) on top of that as well as a bunch of other macro sets (other
>> porcelains). Now I need to dig out The TeXbook from wherever I've put it
>> to see how did Knuth deal with it, documentation-wise.
> 
> Gahh! Please don't use TeX as an example. As far as I know, TeX doesn't 
> offer lexical scope. 

It offers grouping.

> Hence, action-at-a-distance is commonplace which  
> makes program execution extremely difficult for mere mortals to 
> predict. I am constantly amazed at popularity of TeX, in spite of its 
> grave deficiencies. Perhaps there isn't a good alternative yet.

TeX (even plain TeX) is like assembler of programming languages. One does
usually use one of the TeX macros sets, like LaTeX, ConTeXt or texinfo.
-- 
Jakub Narebski
Warsaw, Poland
ShadeHawk on #git