[help-3dldf] Re: [metafont] Re: all intersections between two paths

[Laurence Finston]

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005, Hans Hagen wrote:

> also, my guess is that knuth made
> them different (in some language aspects) simply in order to demonstrate
> different mechanisms; keep in mind that both programs served as examples of
> documented code for his students

I've found that reading the documentation for GNU m4 and
GNU Bison, and using the latter to write the parser for GNU 3DLDF
has improved my insight into TeX and MF.  I now have a better idea
of why they are the way they are.  It was helpful to read about
standard tools for macro processing and compiler generation.
Meaning no disrespect to Knuth, I find that his very low-level style
of programming (at that time) is an obstacle to learning the
internals of TeX and Metafont.  I've started both _TeX:  The Program_
and _METAFONT:  The Program_ several times, but I've never finished them,
because it was clear to me that I wasn't going to program that way.
If I want to learn about low-level programming, I'd rather read about
MIX and MMIX.

Laurence