[l2h] [texhax] Facebook sums, anyone?

[Ross Moore]

Hi Joel, Chris, Graham, Sebastian, & others

On 29/10/2007, at 4:30 AM, Joel C. Salomon wrote:

> On 10/28/07, Chris Rowley <C.A.Rowley at open.ac.uk> wrote:
>> Yes, and our (younger:-) students need to be able to chat about Maths
>> and other specialised stuff via Facebook and its ilk: so restricting
>> Web2.0 etc to information in Unicode-encoded natural language is very
>> limiting and trivialises the wholeeffort.
>
> What subjects require specialized typesetting other than linguistics &
> math? ...

There are plenty of places where today's computing power should
be able to cope, on the fly, with appropriate processing of data
that has been entered in an encoded format.

e.g.,  chemical structure diagrams, feynman graphs,
musical notation, commutative diagrams, tree diagrams, etc.
Doubtless many others too in non-academic pursuits:
e.g., film-score scripts, dance-step notation, recipes,
chess notation, crosswords, SuDoKu games, bell-ringing,
sewing/knitting instructions, ...


> ... Unicode plain text has support for almost anything linguists
> need, and  TeX-like math can be encoded as per
> <http://unicode.org/notes/tn28>.

By all means, Unicode can provide the transportation mechanism,
but authors cannot be expected to have to compose directly in it.


The input method should be whatever is most appropriate
for a person to express his/her ideas reliably.

Similarly, the final viewable output should be what is most
appropriate for a person to view that kind of data, on the
particular device being used.

Processors (via plug-ins) sit between the human interfaces
at either end, either generating or decoding Unicode strings,
for the greatest level of compatibilty and reliability of
the electronic transportation.


>
> --Joel


Cheers,

	Ross

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Ross Moore                                         ross at maths.mq.edu.au
Mathematics Department                             office: E7A-419
Macquarie University                               tel: +61 +2 9850 8955
Sydney, Australia  2109                            fax: +61 +2 9850 8114
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