new years resolutions
David Eppstein
eppstein at ics.uci.edu
Fri Jan 3 22:57:56 EST 2003
In article <3E164F92.58798556 at engcorp.com>,
Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
> > Doesn't HTML stand for HyperText *Markup* Language?
> > *Markup* as in what TeX and its cronies do?
> > Language as in a formal /syntax/ - rules for writing in a
> > manner a computer
> > can 'understand'?
> >
> > HTML is obviously a formal language, but would you classify, Tex, for
> > instance, as on a par with it? Tex is not (I believe) HyperText
> > based/aware,
> > but it does a similar job when it comes to text presentation...
>
> Hmm.... as far as I recall, TeX is a pretty general purpose language in
> many ways. I'm pretty sure it's a "real" programming language as you
> would define it: allowing the implementation of logic of various kinds.
> Whether that's the case or not, I don't see the two as differing
> fundamentally,
> other than in scope.
>
> > I think that it may be worth evaluating whether or not one could implement
> > an
> > /algorithm/ in pure HTML:
> >
> > * An algorithm is a method for solving a particular problem
>
> You'd better come up with a much narrower definition if you want to
> exclude things like HTML. Check dict.org for example.
TeX is Turing-complete (you can use it to write a universal Turing
machine simulator). HTML is not, unless you view it as including other
languages such as ECMAScript.
--
David Eppstein UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/
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