On Fri, 2009-02-13 at 11:08 +0100, Heinrich Apfelmus wrote: > Jonathan Cast wrote: > > > > NB: This example is *precisely* why I will never adopt MathML as an > > authoring format. Bowing and scraping at the alter of W3C is not worth > > using such a terrible syntax, not ever. > > > > (Indented, that's > > > > <math> > > <mrow> > > <msup> > > <mi>x</mi> > > <mn>2</mn> > > </msup> > > <mo>+</mo> > > <mrow> > > <mn>4</mn> > > <mo>⁢</mo> > > <mi>x</mi> > > </mrow> > > <mo>+</mo> > > <mn>4</mn> > > </mrow> > > </math> > > > > Which is still unforgivably horrible. I *think* it's trying to say $x^2 > > + 4x + 4$, but I'm not confident even of that. > > Yeah, MathML looks like a machine-only format to me, begging the > question why they don't use a more compact format. > > > I'm also unconvinced > > it's actually easier to parse than $x^2 + 4x + 4$.) > > While parsing is a solved problem in theory, a lot of people use some > regular expression kludges or similar atrocities in practice.
Yeah, we even seem to have adopted one of their syntaxen [markdown]. > Writing a > proper parser is too complicated if your language doesn't have parser > combinators. :) Haddock, I believe, is written in a language that does. If MathML output is desired at some point (e.g., if browsers start doing better at rendering it than at rendering images with TeX source-code alt-texts :) the I think Haddock will still be capable of handling a reasonable input language. jcc _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
