RE: Formatting mathematics (in The DSSSList Digest V1 #263)

[MARK.WROTH@xxxxxxxxxxx (WROTH, MARK B)]

> "D. Michael McFarland" <mcfarlan@xxxxxxxx>
> 
asked 

> A colleague and I are writing an engineering text, heavy on figures
> and mathematics.  We have a few sample chapters done in LaTeX, and
> need to decide whether to continue with that or switch to SGML.  My
> co-author is willing to learn to mark up text in either, but not both.
> I'd like to use DocBook so we can generate both HTML and print
> versions.
> 
> My biggest concern is support for mathematics, especially via jadetex.
> Searching the archive turned up a few threads, about a year old, from
> which I gather this is a developing area.  Could someone please bring
> me up to date on the state of the art?
> 
A question which I cannot answer (although I look forward to the group's
response).  However, just to confuse the issue, may I point out that
there exists LaTeX2HTML?  While I have not used it enough to comment, if
your concern is getting both printed and HTML output, it appears to make
LaTeX a viable solution, even for texts including significant
mathematics (which is going to be a problem no matter what the markup
language due to the limitations of HTML).

LaTeX2HTML appears to be mirrored at the CTAN sites; there is an online
discussion of the sites providing it at
http://www-dsed.llnl.gov/files/programs/unix/latex2html/manual/Snode1.ht
ml#sec:sup.  The manual is at 
http://www-dsed.llnl.gov/files/programs/unix/latex2html/manual/, which
may be useful in deciding whether to go further or not.

(How do I happen to know?  I'm looking at a parallel problem,
complicated by the fact that my project is basically a large literate
program. :-)


 DSSSList info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/dsssl/dssslist