Re: Writing technical text
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...?
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.
Best regards, Jan
--
+- Jan T. Kim -------------------------------------------------------+
| email: jtk@cmp.uea.ac.uk |
| WWW: http://www.cmp.uea.ac.uk/people/jtk |
*-----=< hierarchical systems are for files, not for humans >=-----*
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