On Thursday 01 November 2001 16:13, Mike Orr wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 01, 2001 at 03:54:24PM -0800, Tavis Rudd wrote:
> > On Thursday 01 November 2001 15:06, Chuck Esterbrook wrote:
> > I'll agree to disagree :-)  ... what do other people think?? (I'm
> > really curious)
>
> If you and I can agree to disagree about Cheetah, you and Chuck can
> agree to disagree about Webware. :) :)   [meaning the 'WebKit' name]

of course, but vigorous debate is also good up to a point.  If Ian 
had accepted my initial BDFL pronouncement about the parser 
architecture in Cheetah a lot of good things would have been missed.  
Of course, this issue is completely different.  It's a subjective 
feeling about a name rather than an architectural issue.

> > Good!  What do you think about using LaTeX?
>
> It works, and it makes multiple output formats, but it's kind of
> kludgey for that, especially since it uses an anachronistic syntax
> (pre-XML). TeX's strengths are (1) mathematical formulas and (2)
> sophistocated typesetting.  (1) doesn't apply because we aren't
> using complex mathematical formulas.  (2) doesn't apply because
> nobody has a DVI-capable printer.  Instead, people convert them to
> Postscript, using Postscript fonts instead of TeX fonts, and
> throwing away all the beautiful typesetting and kerning information
> TeX so painfully constructed, because the information is specific
> to the size and relative proportion of TeX font characters.
>
> If only XML had been available when TeX was designed, then we could
> have a universal rich text format that would work for both.

Spot on!! Its features are very powerful, but its syntax sucks!

> Are there any SGML/XML-based formats (e.g., DocBook) that would be
> suitable without being overly complicated?
Not that I know of.  At this stage it's much easier to stick with 
LaTeX.

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