Re: What about these?

Tim X ha escrito:

PDF has other advantages over HTML - try searching a book made up of
individual HTML pages, jumping to the relevant location - if the site
hasn't provided search facilities, your stuffed. With a PDF document,
I can search the whole document and jump straight to the point I want
without any need to rely on the site providing a search engine or
getting irrelevant responses back from similar phrases in unrelated
documents also on that site and then when I find the right HTML page,
I don't have to search for the phrase again within the page through my
browser's find facility.

Partially agree and disagree. I have dowloaded books on HTML format
(e.g. book on Docbook format) and i can search book perfectly using my
OS search capacities. Never tried Google search for local files but
sure may be better PDF own.

In the site Web accessibility in mind [2] it is remarked that the
question of accessibility of last PDF formats when compared to HTML is
hot debate topic (doing me to doubt your emphasized *are* and *NOT*
words). They discuss different limitations of the PDF 'accessible'
format and conclude "Although Adobe is doing a better job of removing
accessibility barriers from their product, HTML is still the preferred
web format by the majority of users with disabilities."

I find it amusing how many people cite web references as if they are
some sort of unquestionable truth, yet they are rarely peer reviewed,
seldom provide any credentials and are really often based on nothing
more than opinion. While I'm not saying this is the case with all the
references you have posted, I do find some are really just one groups
opinion and as such, are no more compelling than any other opinion
(including my own).

Yes, when you are new to some field it is difficult value corectly
references (this _is_ also true for peer-review sources). But i find
next dilema. I am generating a new website and try to offer maximum
accessibility possible (for a given money). Then i can a) To follow
guidelines of websites and other references on accessibility. b) To
follow you, citing a so Tim X on a newsgroup who said me the contrary.
I am not sure but think this newsgroup is not peer-reviewed :] Is it?

I am not saying your information was not useful accurate or so. Simply
stating my position as outsider. I wait to improve my knowledge on
those topics and taking a decision by myself in a future.

Fortunately, MS Word 2007 format follows some of guidelines some of us
are claiming during time for online publishing. In OMML, the
TeX/LaTeX/MathML structural model is _not_ used and both the numerator
and denominator are tagged explicitly [3]. Therefore at least one
mainstream model will be minimally acceptable.

Maybe acceptable to some, but not acceptable to me. I'm not at all
interested in what MS Word can do until they make the whole authoring
process far less painful. Actually, even then I'm not interested
because I use mainly MAC and Linux anyway and I have a philosophical
and ethical issue with their business practices and have not yet seen
enough proof of their claims to be moving towards open standards
and/or making their proprietary standards open and usable by others
without the threat of patent violation suits etc.

I said MS Word format not MS Word. The format is open and is being
standarized by ECMA (and probably we will see a ISO standard). Nobody
impedes the design of tools from third parties.

We are back to square one again! I disagree that TeX is too complex
for what it does.

And again i state i disagree with you.

What it does, I don't think any other system does
better. You have yet to show another working system what produces as
good printed results as TeX which is less complex.

Ok, no problem with that but no today :]

I do agree that TeX may not be any good for on-line rendering - but
that is not what it was designed for. However, I doubt any really good
on-line rendering system will be less complex that TeX - I suspect it
will be more complex.

In some parts as automatic line breaking, structure, color management,
liquid layout or dinamic features? Sure! In other parts as ugly metric
structure of fonts and layout rules? No!

I state you reduce new functionality -avoding specific needs for online
publishing- to that subset already available in TeX/LaTeX today, then
the system will be simpler, because we are eliminating redundancies and
uneeded difficulties on original TeX design.

Next MS Word format (being currently standarized at ECMA) has
interesting features do not supported on TeX systems, such as a true
prescript model, real Unicode support, interesting automatic breaks or
being based on fonts optimized for online.

How is this going to be any different from the on-line PDF documents
which you have already stated are not true on-line publishing? Are we
all going to have to have MS Word renderers built into our web
browsers?

It is XML, therefore one would wait XML browsers with built-in
capabilities as in other XML/HTML technologies and not different from
the need to dowload and install last version of Adobe PDF.

I Do not know details for MS Word and the ECMA format is still being
debated on ECMA body.

Even today, thanks to a better design that for other XML formats from
W3C we could render a lot of Word math reusing any today CSS 2.1
capable browser.

Since it is a XML format you can easily convert it to other formats.
You could convert it to SVG for instance or some aural XML format. Of
course, you can also convert to TeX/LaTeX.

Please read the FAQ i already cited [6]. They say why rejected
TeX/LaTeX; it was not because complexity but because limitation of
TeX/LaTeX.

You have misread my argument completely. I am not suggesting TeX is
suitable for on-line publishing - in fact, quite the opposite. TeX is
*not* suitable for on-line publishing because it was not designed for
that purpose and does not meet the unique requirements of such a
dynamic environment. What I disagree with is your suggestion that this
is because TeX is too complex.

Well i tried to be polite but i may add that you are sistematically
putting in my writtings stuff i NEVER said. I carefully corrected this
two or three times and suggested you to re-read me and the FAQ.

I never said that TeX was not suitable for on-line publising because
being too complex. Both the FAQ and me are very clear at this point. We
are claiming that TeX is too limited in funcionality. TeX was not
rejected for online maths or electronic publishing because too complex
but because limited funcionality. My words were clear.

it was ***not*** because complexity but because ***limitation*** of
TeX/LaTeX.

You aparently are unable to read and understand i am saying:

1) TeX is too complex for it does.

2) TeX is not suitable for web because too limited. In some sense
because is too simple.

Are two different points you still insist on mixing.

I find the suggestion that anyone will be able to develop a
rendering system which is less complex than TeX for on-line rendering
which produces as good (or better) results than TeX's printed
rendering is rediculous.

Sorry to say this but your personal findings are of none importance at
this point. What matter are results not comments from anyone never see
the project is being developed :]

I am really impressed by these thoughts, until now i had not think on
this enough. Thanks! Have you some link or formal citation i could use?


I have no references - it is just my experience after 20 years of
working with a number of different languages.

Then it is of no real help and maybe even your subjective opinion. I
cannot cite a so Tim X said me in a newsgroup... in the paper on
CanonML syntax.

I do think being overly
concerned about parenthesis is misguided - I also don't understand why
people criticise lisp's parenthesis, yet will right XML documents full
of < and >

Agree. Usually a pair of LISP () are two pairs <> more the /

( I also beleive that ISO 12083 has been referred to as a
"tag soup" and quite a nightmare to work with.

Was archiving processing system, not authoring one. However it
benefited from SGML capabilities as shorthands and DTD-based
autoclosing tag features are not available on XML world. Also math
markup was less verbose than MathML and its mo-mi-mn tag soup.

Lisp parenthesis are
easily ignored and not a problem.

I recommend LISPers abandon of list syntax by something with more
parentheses but more close to underlying data structure:

(A B C) ==> (A.(B.(C.NIL)))

I also don't understand people's
issue with prefix and obsession with infix - one of the things I love
about Lisp is not having to constantly think about operator precedence

Infix syntax is not equal to arithmetic syntax. Operator precedence is
for the latter no for infix. Infix has several advantages over prefix
apart from readability. I already discussed about this in c.l.l.

I find rules and equations extremely easy to read/write with prefix
notation - its just different and takes some adjustment. Once you have
adjusted to it, the greater simplicity of parsing prefix would seem to
justify the transition effort.

Maybe works for you (i do not know your level of maths) but experience
proves the contrary. Mathematicians reject a full prefix notation. And
LISPers as Norvig or Paul Graham recognize that the prefix notation is
not optimal for math.

.

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