[XeTeX] XeTeX in lshort

[Keith J. Schultz]

Hi All,
 
	I chime in here.

	This is all OT.

	At the risk of being mark as a TROLL, here goes.

	Evidently, the participants of this discussion come from varying
	backgrounds and the terminology is getting all messed up.

	1) structure of a document
		a) syntactic and semantic (linguistic)
		b) formatting structure (tex elements used to describe 1a

	2) computing	science
		a) defining structures
		b) syntax and semantic

	3) TeX
		a) TeX is a program, engine, ML-language
		b) is extensible

	3) XML
		a) is a Mark-up language
		b) extensible ("X")
		c) strictly typed and uniform (well-formedness)
		d) You need a parser of some sort to do anything meaningful
		     with except describe and define structure.

	TeX was developed as a subset of SGML or if you wish clone, variant, etc.
	TeX is a declarative and procedural programming language. What is more
	important it is dynamic! That is it is possible to change the definitions of the
	macros used while the program is running. Thereby giving you the ability to change
	the semantics of the command itself as well as the semantics of the document structure!

	With XML you are suppose to adhere to the defined structure and semantics, well-formedness.
	Yet, by properly designing the structure of your XML-document one can implement
	dynamic structures. It is just a matter of complexity. XML extensibility is based on this fact, otherwise
	one could not define arbitrary structures. Schemas and XSYT are similar to what LaTeX et al. to TeX is.
	The XML Query language could be consider something like a engine. Do not forget XML does nothing,
	you need a program to process the information inside it. That is what the TeX-program and its variants
	do!

	TeX was designed with typesetting and wordprocessing in its true sense in mind. TeX in its pure form is
	very low level and highly powerful, though many do not harness it to its full potential.

	Any comments please off-list, thank you.

	regards
		Keith.


Am 03.10.2010 um 13:41 schrieb 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
> 
> 
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