[texhax] inconsistency between pdftex and tex

[Philip TAYLOR [PC87S-O/XP]]

Robin Fairbairns :

> oh, do get down off this silly high horse.
> 
> you know as well as anyone else that the parsing of these comments is
> under user control

No, I don't know that, nor is it what was originally asserted.

> and to claim, as you did in a previous mail, that
> 
> > >PdfTeX is behaving correctly; a TeX implementation has
> > >no business interpreting a comment as a pragmat.
> 
> is quite ridiculous.  pdftex is perfectly openly _not_ tex, so why
> assert that it's "right" not to do something you disapprove of in a
> tex implementation?

/I/ don't disapprove : my point was that Don disapproves,
since a program which is claiming to be "TeX" is behaving
in a way which TeX (no quotes needed) would not.

> and, btw, what is a pragmat?  (something half way between pragma
> (singular) and pragamata (plural)?)

van Wijngaarden et al, /Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language
Algol 68/, Spring-Verlag, 1978, page 114, section 9.2 "Comments and pragmats"

** Phil.