Chemical structures with plain TeX

[Taylor, P]

Reinhard Kotucha wrote:

> Presumably Phil is pissed off because Peter's solution requires Unix,
> the system he hates so much.

Phil is NOT "pissed off".  He is sad (very sad, so sad that he weeps) 
that even today, in the 21st century, we still communicate algorithms in 
such impenetrable prose.  R Shreevatsa demonstrated in a follow-up 
message that the same algorithm can be expressed in language that is 
accessible to mere mortals, even those with no familiarity whatsoever 
with his preferred language of expression . Peter's formulation, while 
arguably elegant, is cryptic beyond belief.  And if Peter's were to 
fail,for some unknown reason, how would one go about debugging it ?  By 
deliberately piping the output of one program into the input of another, 
eschewing temporary files, no trace is left of the intermediate results, 
so one cannot go back to inspect these in an attempt to identify the 
source of the error.

Yes, I do not deny for one second that I loathe and detest Unix, but 
that was not the motivation for posting my message — I was genuinely 
saddened (OK, I didn't actually weep, that was a slight exaggeration) 
that such a potentially useful solution to such an important (within the 
universe of discourse) problem should be transmitted as such (sorry, I 
cannot find a better phrase) complete and utter gibberish.

> This is not a good precondition for a fruitful discussion.

As the British Parliamentary system so clearly demonstrates.

** Phil (more in sorrow than in anger).