From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Marcin Borkowski Subject: Re: Leslie Lamport has a foot in the 21st century Date: Sun, 09 Oct 2016 18:32:55 +0200 Message-ID: <87pon9wki0.fsf@mbork.pl> References: <57F8B0F4.9090407@free.fr> <878ttxk39i.fsf@desiato.home.uhoreg.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:41571) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1btH29-0001NK-7m for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Sun, 09 Oct 2016 12:33:06 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1btH23-0001i6-4D for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Sun, 09 Oct 2016 12:33:04 -0400 Received: from mail.mojserwer.eu ([2a01:5e00:2:52::8]:56969) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1btH22-0001h2-U1 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Sun, 09 Oct 2016 12:32:59 -0400 In-reply-to: <878ttxk39i.fsf@desiato.home.uhoreg.ca> List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Emacs-orgmode" To: Hubert Chathi Cc: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org On 2016-10-09, at 16:26, Hubert Chathi wrote: > On Sat, 8 Oct 2016 10:50:09 -0500, Grant Rettke said: > >> On Sat, Oct 8, 2016 at 3:40 AM, Thierry Banel 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? Please be careful to make the distinction between TeX and LaTeX here. Basically, LaTeX 2.09 *should* be dead, and LaTeX2e *is* dead weight to some extent. And you might want to ping the LaTeX team, who are working on LaTeX3 (and the high level markup is still undecided at this point in time - and it will probably be so for the next few years), about Lamport's ideas and implementing them. I don't remember exactly what Lamport has written about proofs (I read it more than a year ago AFAIR), but isn't it true that what he proposes is (from typographical point of view) just a (possibly hyperlinked) tree structure? If so, LaTeX should be perfectly suited as markup language, and I would not expect a huge amount of work to implement the missing bits (though I might be mistaken). Of course, the hard part would be the actual hide/show part; HTML+JS might be better suited to that indeed. I guess that using ConTeXt would a better route here. Just my 2 cents. Best, -- Marcin Borkowski