\input /afs/athena/user/a/amgreene/MITeX/mi.tex
title=A New Form of \TeX Input
author=Andrew Marc Greene
LaTeX=La\TeX
quote=\begingroup\tt\char34\endgroup
begin

Well, I finally did it.  I got sufficiently fed up with \TeX and
\LaTeX and I wrote my own input scheme.  This is the first document
that uses it.

> What is \MITeX?

\MITeX is an alternate input scheme.  It's goal is twofold: to make
\TeX easier to type and to make it easier to read.  It was developed
by Andrew Greene of the Student Information Processing Board at MIT
(the //Massachusetts Institute of \TeX{}nology//); hence the name.

\MITeX should be pronouced ``M.I.\TeX,'' where \TeX is pronounced as
described by Donald Knuth in the \TeX{}book.  The only exception to
this rule is the author, who is entitled to call it ``My \TeX.''

> So what's different?

First of all, section headers are done by starting a paragraph with a
greater-than sign --- that's right, like this:

\medskip
\noindent
"> So what's different?"

\medskip

Verbatim mode, which I just used, is obtained with undirected double quotes:

\medskip
\noindent
\quote"> So what's different?"\quote

\medskip

Font changes are also designed to be easy and (dare I say) intuitive.
//Italics// are enclosed in pairs of double-slashes; **boldface**
between double-asterisks.

The prologue is so different that it gets a section all its own.

> The prologue

Here's the prologue to this file:

{\obeylines
"title=A New Form of \TeX Input
author=Andrew Marc Greene
LaTeX=La\TeX
begin"
}

You will notice that (except for the "\TeX" macro) there are no
backslashes or braces in these declarations.  But I have told \MITeX
the title and author; I have also defined a new macro, "\LaTeX".

> Error handling

\MITeX's error handling does not use \TeX's error handler at all.  I
plan a set of friendly, helpful, non-intimidating set of error
messages.

I plan to change things so that the backslash character is itself
active, and \MITeX does all the inital macro parsing.  This will give
me a number of advantages, including (hopefully) complete error
trapping, better ``end-of-macro'' rules (meaning an end to "\TeX"
and other nastiness), and increased readablity.

> How you can help

Any suggestions, bug reports, code fragments, etc.~should be sent
to the author at "amgreene@athena.mit.edu"

Enjoy!

\bye


