> --- Gary King <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Feb 2, 2006, at 4:27 PM, Matthew Astley wrote:
> > > I was pondering TeX too, but that's not my project. The aim of that project is to make TeX's typesetting functions callable from a modern language, as described in the paper at http://www.pytex.org/doc/eurotex2005.pdf (linked from http://www.pytex.org/doc/index.html#eurotex2005 ) My view: if doing typesetting by outputting LaTeX source code has failed to deliver what you need, then you may replace that part which is programming language and just use TeX's typesetting engine. Replace with whichever language you prefer. Jonathan prefers Python, hence he's making PyTeX. Currently it works in exactly the same way that LTk provides Lisp/Tk, because that's the easiest start. The analogy holds quite well, Tcl/Tk : Lisp/Tk :: La/TeX : Py/TeX At some point Py/TeX could move to a more Perl/Tk-like binding of the functionality, without needing to change the Python API. > > Not that this is really on topic, but you might want to explore CL- > > Typesetting. (This typesetting thread was sparked by the idea of merging languages. Last time it was source -> documentation, but I kept quiet to avoid going off topic.) As far as I can make out, TeX is as good a typesetting engine as anyone might want - mature and featureful. Why start from scratch? Why implement another typesetting engine in Lisp? I can't find "why" on the web site, in the mail archives or the repository. I wasn't around when cl-typesetting started, and I can see that the mail archives don't cover everything... I guess you must have had a good reason to write 4k lines. I do very little typesetting myself, but Johnathan does it for a living. He's a friend of mine and clearly I've picked up his view of the story, so I'm asking for another view. (this is not a top post) On Thu, Feb 02, 2006 at 04:56:06PM -0800, C Y wrote: > [...] I finally got a copy of TeX - The Program in dead tree form, > and [...] I think it would be an awesome project to implement all > the abilities of TeX in cl-typesetting. Lout also deserves > consideration. So... you're explicitly considering porting chunks (swathes?) of TeX. If not porting then maybe implementing something similar, but then will it be better? > This is actually what I would consider an important first step to a > high quality mathematical document interface to Axiom (my real goal) ...you're after maths content which is TeX's forte, > since things like linebreaking need lots of information about the > typesetting details linebreaking within an environment is (I'm told) the most basic functionality you might need access to. > and a cl-typesetting program would be the perfect foundation - given > proper handling it might very well be possible to have TeXmacs-like > typesetting rendering in a WYSIWYG environment. The TeX Instant Preview demonstration is relevant, http://www.pytex.org/doc/index.html#tug2001 http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/pytex/pytex/ I mention Instant Preview because it's a fairly important prerequisite for WYSIWYG (or other related document views). The paper discusses this. Unfortunately the xdvi in Debian Sarge doesn't do file reloads immediately when the file changes, you have to reveal part of the window to provoke the refresh. Not an Instant Preview bug, but still not pretty. Woody worked fine, I think unstable (tetex-bin 3.0) would work with the "-watchfile 1" option but I haven't tried it. > Of course it would take a fair bit of work to duplicate all of the > LaTeX and LaTeX package functionality that has been created over the > last couple decades, but I suspect given the flexibility of lisp it > would be quite possible. Possible, of course. But if you can just *use* those parts of TeX that you actually want - this large body of implemented and tested code - wouldn't that be a really neat shortcut? There's also Joel Spolsky's view to consider, http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html Things You Should Never Do, Part I [rewrite software product] Maybe it's not relevant for personal projects, but if your real goal is something else then you may be looking for an efficient route. Matthew #8-) _______________________________________________ Gardeners mailing list [email protected] http://www.lispniks.com/mailman/listinfo/gardeners
