On Sat, 8 Oct 2016 10:50:09 -0500, Grant Rettke <g...@wisdomandwonder.com> said:
> On Sat, Oct 8, 2016 at 3:40 AM, Thierry Banel <tbanelweb...@free.fr> wrote: >> But... Is Leslie killing LaTex? > No. LaTeX is a markup/programming-language and it /could/ be compiled > directly to whatever new ideal format arises, too. It's not a matter of compiling to the right file format, but rather whether LaTeX is the right tool for the type of document structure that Lamport is proposing. His system requires people to be able to expand and collapse things, which TeX is unable to handle. You might be able to fake it in TeX by using hyperlinks, but that might drive the PDF/dead tree readers crazy once they get a couple of levels deep in your proof, having to keep track of all the links that they had to follow. Not to mention, it would probably require a lot of TeX black magic to implement. It would require adding some new environments and/or commands to LaTeX, which the current LaTeX-to-HTML converters wouldn't be able to handle -- you'd need to implement those bits. So given that you'd need to create a bunch of new infrastructure, and TeX would basically just be dead weight, the question is: is it worth still using LaTeX, or is it better to start with something else entirely that's better suited to handle hierarchical proofs? BTW, Lamport has been talking about hierarchical proofs since the early 90's http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/lamport-how-to-write.pdf BTW, Grant, if you're interested in different types of scientific communication, you may be interested in Bret Victor's work, e.g. http://worrydream.com/#!/ScientificCommunicationAsSequentialArt -- Hubert Chathi - Email: hub...@uhoreg.ca - https://www.uhoreg.ca/ Jabber: hub...@uhoreg.ca - Matrix: @uhoreg:matrix.org PGP/GnuPG key: 4096R/113A1368 (Key available at pool.sks-keyservers.net) Fingerprint: F24C F749 6C73 DDB8 DCB8 72DE B2DE 88D3 113A 1368
