[XeTeX] XeTeX in lshort

[Tobias Schoel]

Am 03.10.2010 12:43, schrieb Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd):
>
>
> Philipp Stephani wrote:
>
>> Yes, but is that really "structure"? Of course it's basically a
>> question of definition, but if you look at other technologies that are
>> supposed to be able to express structure (e.g. XML), then you'll find
>> data modeling, schema, transformation and querying languages, all of
>> which are nonexistent in the TeX world. What I want to say is that
>> macros can give a pretty good *simulation* of structure, but that
>> simulation is leaky. In the middle of a LaTeX document you can say
>>
>> \let\chapter\section
>>
>> and all subsequent sections turn into chapters. This lack of
>> referential transparency makes LaTeX documents pretty complex and hard
>> to process compared to XML languages.
>
> Agreed. Because TeX is not only a declarative language but also
> a procedural language, one can abuse it to change the semantics
> of one's markup mid-stream. That one should not so do is by
> the by : one can. However, TeX purists such as myself prefer
> to keep the declarative and procedural aspects entirely separate,
> whence the fact that my own documents are frequently marked up
> using a totally different syntax to Don's backslash and braces :
> I prefer an SGML/HTML/XML-like syntax that I have described elsewhere
> as "ATML" or "XTML" ({A|eXtensible} TeX Markup Language).
>
> In giving the world TeX, Don gave us a loaded gun; it is
> up to us to use it wisely.
>
> ** Phil.
>
>
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Agreed as well, but that's another question of style, which is important 
in structured thinking:

If I want the document to have a uniform layout of its structural 
elements (such that every reader can extract the structure easily from 
the document), I shouldn't redefine the structural elements in the 
middle of the document.

I write the content, I structure the content by \chapter, \section, 
etc., I redefine what these macros do in the preamble.

I don't know enough about xml and the other concepts you named as part 
of structure, but these LaTeX-Macros _are_ structural elements. Even a 
simple full stop "." in text is a structural element, although it works 
at another level.

bye Toscho