Re: offtopic: which text language to use?
Julio Merino <juli@merino.net> writes:
JM> SOORY, this is completly offtopic...
JM>
JM> Well, I've to write a large, large document. I've think to use LaTeX, but
JM> I don't think it will be a good choice, because it's html output is
JM> really poor (am I wrong?).
JM>
JM> I'm looking for some language that allows me to convert it to LaTeX and
JM> html, and to customize as much as possible the conversion (output).
JM> Is SGML a good choice?
SGML/DocBook is probably a good choice, if those are your criteria.
You can reasonably easily get from SGML to TeX DVI (and from there to
PostScript and PDF), HTML, and RTF using jade. There is some amount
of customizability possible here. You actually can do arbitrary
things, but that means that the formatting language is Turing-complete
(it's actually a dialect of Scheme), and so it's kind of tricky to do
things that the stylesheet authors didn't anticipate you trying to do.
LaTeX:
-- Possible to define arbitrarily complicated macros; this can be good
or bad
-- Converts to DVI or PDF, with DVI->PS conversion possible
-- Several okay converters to text or HTML
DocBook:
-- Locked into structure of DTD
-- Somewhat clumsier text structure
-- Converts to JadeTeX (->DVI or PDF), HTML, RTF directly, with
customizable stylesheets
LaTeX seems to be somewhat better supported in the academic community,
at least; a lot of places seem to have people who have heard of and
can use LaTeX, but are really squeamish about DocBook because it isn't
particularly established.
--
David Maze dmaze@debian.org http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting. Politicking should be illegal."
-- Abra Mitchell
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