Re: Writing technical text

From: Hendrik Boom (hendrik_at_pooq.com)
Date: 10/19/05

  • Next message: Steve Lamb: "Re: Newsreader: Best of the bunch?" 
    Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 12:00:40 -0400
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org

    On Wed, Oct 19, 2005 at 04:16:45PM +0100, Jan T. Kim wrote:
    > On Wed, Oct 19, 2005 at 11:08:35AM -0400, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
    > > On Wed, Oct 19, 2005 at 08:57:43AM -0500, John Hasler wrote:
    > > > Roberto writes:
    > > > > However, IMHO, anything dealing with mathematics (in which I include
    > > > > CompSci) really should be using LaTeX. Nothing can compare to The
    > > > > support for mathematical notation and equations in LaTeX.
    > > >
    > > > I agree, and I don't really care for XML at all. Nonetheless, we are
    > > > all eventually going to be forced to use XML for everything.
    > >
    > > I really think that is a bit sad. It reminds me of the old saying "if
    > > your only tool is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail." XML
    > > is great if you are trying to get to programs or machines to talk. It
    > > is terrible for something that must be composed by humans. If you don't
    > > believe me, then go spend a few months writing Ant scripts or something
    > > like that.
    >
    > Sorry for taking this thread further off the topic of this list, but
    > can someone tell me what kind of XML we're talking about here? Any pointer
    > to a dtd or something?
    >
    > I know that the file format used by OpenOffice.org is something like a
    > zipped bunch of XML files, but surely, you're not suggesting we'll all
    > end up writing that format in place of LaTeX...?

    Abiword uses uncompressed XML that can actually be read by humans
    (desperate humand, mind you, but it's possible.) It's great if you
    expect your word-processor to be sabotaged by cyberterrorrists or changed circumstance and you still want to be able to read your files.

    For some writing I'm doing next month, I'm planning to use emacs, with
    improvised markup, and then writing an improvised tool later to convert
    that to abiword format.

    >
    > Indeed, XML can be useful for electronic data exchange, but it's cumbersome
    > to write. If really necessary, I'd rather write LaTeX and then process
    > that to get the required XML -- should be possible, something along the
    > lines of latex2html.

    Need xml2latex, too. And the round-trip should be the identity function.
    Or, failing that, be stable after twice back-and-forth.

    We really need conversion tools that distinguish betwen the crap that
    word-processors insert for WYSIWYG purposes from the gold that you put
    in explicitly for the rare case that you actually need format-control.

    -- hendrik 

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