[patrickg]

I have a related feeling about TeX. It has superb output quality but the programming is awful. When LuaTeX finally arrived a few years ago, it was possible to do almost everything you have done before in the TeX language (starting with \backslashes) in Lua.

See http://wiki.luatex.org/index.php/TeX_without_TeX for an introduction.

I have (shameless plug) created a database publishing software using this technique (https://github.com/speedata/publisher/). Once in a while I have to use LaTeX and it feels a bit old school to do the macro programming.

My next project is to rewrite the TeX algorithms in Go - see https://github.com/speedata/boxesandglue. Already usable but not TeX like in any way (this is just a library, not a frontend software like TeX)

[guidoism]

I feel the same way! I also feel like the LaTeX crap on top of Plain TeX is crap and it fills me with rage when I try to find info about TeX and always get back something assuming LaTeX.

Your stuff looks cool, I will take a look!

[GiovanniP]

> It has superb output quality but the programming is awful

TeXmacs (http://www.texmacs.org/) has better output quality and nicer programming (it is Scheme :-) ) and it is easier to use.

[patrickg]

In which sense “better output quality”?

[GiovanniP]

Various senses that concur. It has, in addition to the line-breaking algorithm, a global page-breaking algorithm ... and for the rest may I suggest reading (it's brief) section 4.2 of GNU TeXmacs, A free, structured, wysiwyg and technical text editor, J. Van der Hoeven, Cahiers GUTenberg, no. 39-40 (2001), pp. 39-50, that you can find at the official website of the journal at http://www.numdam.org/article/CG_2001___39-40_39_0.pdf

And also looking at https://www.jonmsterling.com/papers/sterling:2022:wg6.pdf, I find it beautiful ... but perhaps there are better judges.