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Why? It's correct. You run a tool to convert the Web source to Pascal. If you want to compile TeX on modern computers, you run another conversion step to convert the Pascal to C, but Knuth used a real Pascal compiler when he made TeX.

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Sure. All this is absolutely cool. What isn't is using questionable words like transpiler. Citations needed on whether that is an actual meaningful word (Wikipedia isn't it).

Can you give more details on why the term is ambiguous or ill-defined? I thought I knew what it meant, and a brief web search seems to reinforce my existing understanding (a source-to-source compiler), but I'm probably missing the subtleties. If you have a couple of minutes to clarify what your objection is, I'd love to learn more.

I'd go further and say that it is redundant to even say 'source-to-source'. Just 'compiler' is enough, IMHO. See the first few pages of any compiler book.

https://books.google.com/books?id=_tgh4bgQ6PAC&printsec=fron...

Compilers are computer programs that translate a program written in one language into a program written in another language.

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