From: Hubert Chathi <hubert@uhoreg.ca>
To: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Leslie Lamport has a foot in the 21st century
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2016 10:56:36 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87vawzhr2z.fsf@desiato.home.uhoreg.ca> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 87pon9wki0.fsf@mbork.pl
On Sun, 09 Oct 2016 18:32:55 +0200, Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> said:
> On 2016-10-09, at 16:26, Hubert Chathi <hubert@uhoreg.ca> wrote:
>> 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.
Yes, I was careful to distinguish between TeX and LaTeX, and I said
"TeX" when I meant "TeX". I'm sure that LaTeX is perfectly capable of
representing Lamport's proposed proof structure. But the question is,
why use LaTeX when half the reason for using LaTeX is that it can
generate beautiful printed output through TeX, and Lamport's
hierarchical proof would translate pretty badly to print. (As I
mentioned, it would be possible to translated it to a printed version,
but reading a printed version would likely be rather painful.)
I don't know much about LaTeX3, but it looks like it's still targeting
print, and so it would have the same problems. Not only that, but the
existing LaTeX-to-HTML tools might not work with LaTeX3, so if you're
getting rid of half of your toolset, why switch to LaTeX3 instead of
some other format that targets HTML more directly?
I'm sure that there may be good reasons for sticking with LaTeX
(e.g. being able to easily copy-and-paste into for-print articles,
familiarity with the language, etc.), but there are also disadvantages,
and it will be interesting to see what factors determine what type of
system, whether it be LaTeX or something closer to HTML, ends up being
used to write hierarchical proofs.
I suspect that it will be a long time before hierarchical proofs gain
much popularity though, given that Lamport has been talking about them
since at least the 90's, and I haven't seen one "in the wild" yet. So I
don't know how much of a factor it will be "killing" LaTeX, if LaTeX
ever does get killed.
--
Hubert Chathi - Email: hubert@uhoreg.ca - https://www.uhoreg.ca/
Jabber: hubert@uhoreg.ca - Matrix: @uhoreg:matrix.org
PGP/GnuPG key: 4096R/113A1368 (Key available at pool.sks-keyservers.net)
Fingerprint: F24C F749 6C73 DDB8 DCB8 72DE B2DE 88D3 113A 1368
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2016-10-11 14:57 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 10+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2016-10-08 8:40 Leslie Lamport has a foot in the 21st century Thierry Banel
2016-10-08 15:50 ` Grant Rettke
2016-10-08 16:38 ` Thomas S. Dye
2016-10-09 14:26 ` Hubert Chathi
2016-10-09 16:32 ` Marcin Borkowski
2016-10-11 14:56 ` Hubert Chathi [this message]
2016-10-11 15:23 ` Clément Pit--Claudel
2017-10-24 16:39 ` Marcin Borkowski
2017-11-11 22:20 ` Adonay Felipe Nogueira
2016-10-09 17:29 ` Thomas S. Dye
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
List information: https://www.orgmode.org/
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=87vawzhr2z.fsf@desiato.home.uhoreg.ca \
--to=hubert@uhoreg.ca \
--cc=emacs-orgmode@gnu.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this public inbox
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs/org-mode.git
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).