I hope John Romine -- who did MH maintenance at UC Irvine for years
-- won't mind my repeating something he mentioned to me years ago.
He was thinking about replacing mh-format -- that is, code like:
%4(msg)%<(cur)+%| %>%<{replied}-%?{x-done} %|>%>
with a scripting language like Tcl, or something else more standard.
Is formatting really a job that requires a Turing-complete language? The
possibility of a formatter that doesn't terminate on some input is
NOT appealing.
Anyway, I think we should take advantage of past experience and choose
the substitute language based on how difficult it is to implement
the mh-format language in it. mh-format has evolved based on the
requirements of message formatting, and is probably a good representative.
Attempting a "microcode-like" system for compatibility with mh-format
strikes me as a good litmus test.
Some functional language without the ability to recurse is what I'd
look for.
Cheers,
- Joel
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