[XeTeX] XeTeX in lshort

[Will Robertson]

On 2010-10-05 05:21:21 +1030, Apostolos Syropoulos 
<asyropoulos at yahoo.com> said:

>> written in  WEB, which is a Pascal-based system + documentation; it is often
>> converted to  C for compilation.  And TeX itself doesn't look anything like
>> LISP to  me, but maybe I'm missing s.t.?  (Like a CAR and a CDR and...)
> 
> Several years ago I read somewhere, but I do not remember where, that TeX was
> inspired by LISP. It is obvious that TeX processes lists and list form the core
> of LISP,
> thus, I suppose this is the connection between TeX and LISP

Not really having done any programming in Lisp, as far as I'm aware the 
connection is tenuous at best. Sure, there's this loose analogy with 
lists, but Lisp is a real programming language. TeX is not; it simply 
has enough power to masquerade as one. You can express some Lisp-like 
concepts in TeX, but that's as far as it goes. E.g.,

"While learning TeX I became a bit frustrated that TeX macros were so 
cumbersome as a programming language. I had been learning Lisp, so I 
decided to use it as an extension language for TeX..."  
<http://www.tug.org/interviews/weening.html>

W