new years resolutions

[David Eppstein]

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/