On Mon, 3 Feb 2014 20:39:09 +0100 Liviu Andronic <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 8:02 PM, Richard Heck <[email protected]> wrote: > >> 1) If LyX insists on having a native format of XML, which by its > >> nature is human-confusing, it should at least be *well formed* XML > >> so that it can be handled by an XML parser, and if the programmer > >> is more skilled than I, XSLT. The day LyX native format is well > >> formed, and maybe even with a DTD, I'll make the converter: me, > >> myself and I. > > > > > > Unclear if this will ever happen. I started the project, but then > > got busy with other things. It is pretty monumental. But the goal > > would be to use Qt's built-in XML writing and reading, which means > > it will be well-formed. > > > The advantages to having an XML-based native format are numerous: > proper diff of LyX files; more standardized converters to and from > other XML-based formats; tools like pLyX would likely benefit from > this standardization, too. Some of our long-standing issues would be > addressed by such a change, so well worth a try I'd say. Liviu, You *do* mean *well formed* XML-based native format, right? Yeah, we might as well: We've already done about all the human readability damage we can do to the format. If it were well formed, at least it would be simple to make a pretty-print for it. If we *do* get well formed XML for LyX files, at the same time we should probably make layout files XML too. Each paragraph character and character style (do we really still want to call paragraph styles by the LaTeX centric name "environment?") would have one section describing its appearance in LyX, and sections describing its appearance in each of several other output formats. The one for LaTeX would be LaTeX. The one for Xhtml would be CSS. If it were done like this, an arbitrary conversion program for a "new" format could just list the styles, show the file with those styles applied, and allow the converter program to supply its own definitions of each style. This would go a long way toward changing the "mission statement" of LyX from "a front end for LaTeX" to "the fastest and easiest way to author absolutely anything". SteveT Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/ Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance
