On 4/02/2014 10:33 p.m., Vincent van Ravesteijn wrote:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 11:04 PM, Andrew Parsloe <apars...@clear.net.nz
<mailto:apars...@clear.net.nz>> wrote:
I don't recall seeing any mention of LaTeX3 on either developers or
users lists over the decade I've been following them. I "discovered"
LaTeX3 last year and was struck by how much easier it is to code in
TeX using the expl3 language of LaTeX3 rather than directly in
TeX/LaTeX2e, and also by the potential for LyX development in LaTeX3
packages like xparse (for the treatment of arguments in insets), and
xtemplate (underlying a future LyX layout editor perhaps?).
There is currently a discussion taking place on the LaTeX3 mailing
list about graphical front ends to LaTeX3 in which LyX has been
mentioned a number of times (generally to be dismissed as not quite
"cutting the mustard"). It started with
Sean Allred "Feasibility of GUIs for authors and class designers in
LaTeX3" (28/01/2014) on late...@listserv.uni-__HEIDELBERG.DE
<mailto:late...@listserv.uni-heidelberg.de>
and has had a number of responses since, including from Frank
Mittelbach. (Registering for this list is a bit fiddly.)
Andrew
I'm trying to read into LaTeX3 but if someone could give me a summary on
what this could mean for LyX, I would be happy.
The particular points that struck me about LaTeX3 were the packages
xparse and xtemplate (contained in l3packages).
xparse handles arguments for LaTeX commands in a far more versatile and
clear way than LaTeX2e. The new treatment of arguments in LyX 2.1 was a
big step in this direction but there are still desirable enhancements
(e.g. star * arguments, other delimiters for the main argument than {}).
The xtemplate documentation lists three layers to producing a document:
1. authoring of the text with mark-up
2. document layout design
3. implementation (with TeX programming) of the design
and goes on to say "The idea behind xtemplate is to clearly separate the
three layers ... so that document authors who are not programmers can
easily change the design of their documents." I wondered if xtemplate
might form the basis for the much talked about LyX layout editor. (The
xfrac package, also in l3packages, gives an example of using xtemplate.)
There are other l3 packages of interest, like l3fp (in l3kernel) and
l3sort (in l3experimental). l3fp is a built-in floating point package
which makes the current calc package seem clunky. l3sort fills the
"sorting gap" in LaTeX. (Using the expl3 language, I've created a
package from it that allows one to sort tables in LyX, i.e. in the pdf
output or instant preview. I'll put it on the wiki.)
However, xtemplate seems to be the really significant package with its
idea of the different layers of document construction, and which
underlies the current discussion on the LaTeX3 mailing list.
Andrew
Maybe it would be a good Google Summer of Code project to make an
initial support of LaTeX3 ??
Anyone that want to compose a description for the project ? Any mentor
for such a project ?
Vincent
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