Subject: Re: support for 'macro' formatting languages From: Norman Gray <norman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 13:14:56 +0000 (GMT) |
Greetings, I think it's at this point that I rein in the hyperbolic horses, and rescue at least some of the hostages to fortune, before any more get shot. David: > > (though this is the American _Mathematical_ > > Society, who might be expected to be fussier about layout than their > > more applied cousins, and thus even less enthusiastic about MathML). > > Aha. Thus proving there is a fallacy in your argument somewhere;-) Aha, indeed. Hrumph. > XML validators don't try to check the maths for correctness > they just try to check you haven't done something equivalent to > $ a + \section{b} $ to get a bold `b'. You might say that no one > would ever do that. You'd be wrong. If (like Sebastian) you work for a > while for a publisher accepting author written TeX you find that > authors will put _anything_ in their TeX files, and scroll past any > number of errors, if the output looks OK. Don't I just know it. I spent a large chunk of this year saying very rude things about barbarities like that, and developing an SGML replacement for a LaTeX system, largely to avoid such things. I _am_ on the side of the angels, here. It occurs to me that things like $a+\section{b}$ could be at least frustrated by suitable \ifmmode tests, and linebreaking hints added fairly cheaply with things like `\let\topleveloperator\relax $$a \topleveloperator{+} b$$', but neither is something I'd like to be asked to implement. Also, it might be rather off the point. Sebastian mentioned VHS versus Betamax. Possibly contrarily, I wonder if LaTeX might not be the VHS analogue here. I can imagine it surviving beyond its natural life as a notation, not because it's technically better (from a relevant point of view) but because the folk providing the publishers with their copy simply refuse to use anything else. Since David invoked the longer term future of markup, I might as well say how _I'd_ like to tell the gadget about maths. Forget angle-brackets, forget equation editors, forget casual use of computer algebra; I want a graphics tablet, where I can write and jostle the maths (my maths handwriting is a whole lot more consistent and legible than my text handwriting) and the machine turns it into MathML. Since there are real mathematicians directing MathML, it seems likely that the markup buried invisibly beneath that will indeed be able to cope. For that, I would drop \fraction{}{} like a hot coal. Many thanks for a fine dispute. Have a good new year, Norman -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Norman Gray http://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/users/norman/ Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK norman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DSSSList info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/dsssl/dssslist
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