Co-developers wanted: document markup language

[Torsten Bronger]

Hallöchen!

Some LaTeX users in Aachen thought about a general-use markup
language this spring. I wrote some code and a rough project
description, however, we could need some help.

If you are interested, visit the provisional project page at
http://latex-bronger.sourceforge.net/gummi/

Tschö,
Torsten.

Crosspost & Followup-To: comp.lang.python
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[Aahz]

In article <87************@wilson.homeunix.com>,
Torsten Bronger <br*****@physik.rwth-aachen.dewrote:

>
Some LaTeX users in Aachen thought about a general-use markup
language this spring. I wrote some code and a rough project
description, however, we could need some help.

http://docutils.sourceforge.net/
--
Aahz (aa**@pythoncraft.com) <* http://www.pythoncraft.com/

"If you don't know what your program is supposed to do, you'd better not
start writing it." --Dijkstra

[Torsten Bronger]

Hallöchen!

Aahz writes:

In article <87************@wilson.homeunix.com>,
Torsten Bronger <br*****@physik.rwth-aachen.dewrote:

>Some LaTeX users in Aachen thought about a general-use markup
language this spring. I wrote some code and a rough project
description, however, we could need some help.

http://docutils.sourceforge.net/

The provisional project page already points to
http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html which is sufficient I
think.

Tschö,
Torsten.

--
Torsten Bronger, aquisgrana, europa vetus
Jabber ID: br*****@jabber.org
(See http://ime.webhop.org for ICQ, MSN, etc.)

[Wildemar Wildenburger]

olive wrote:

What you need is good structured text editor which hides as much as
possible the underlying XML (or other) format.

What you do there is pose extra requirements on the user ("Use a text
editor with some far-out functions"). That will prevent your (well,
Torsten's ;)) standard from spreading easily. Plain text (read: less
intrusive) markup is a way better approach there, IMHO, because it can
be done in any old editor.

/W

[J. Robertson]

olive wrote:

>>[snip]

>
But few people are used to Plain Text Markup (excepted in some
scientific area maybe) and it is error prone.

It looks very much like Gummi's authors and target audience actually are
part of the few people you are talking about: i.e. console-happy folks
that are perfectly fine with how the math system goes in LaTeX, say, but
are annoyed by the clutter besides that. I can't imagine they would
want to go anywhere near an equation editor, for example.

Looks like a worthwhile project to me :-)

[Jeremy Sanders]

Torsten Bronger wrote:

Some LaTeX users in Aachen thought about a general-use markup
language this spring. I wrote some code and a rough project
description, however, we could need some help.

If you are interested, visit the provisional project page at
http://latex-bronger.sourceforge.net/gummi/

Sounds a good idea - LaTeX has so many historical hangovers. How many people
on earth can actually write a LaTeX style file?

I'm not sure about writing LaTeX output, however, due to the crude nasty
ways it handles fonts and so on. How are you going to get enough controls
for users over what they always complain about: fonts, page breaking, and
positioning of figures? Maybe it's an okay first step however.

Jeremy

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Jeremy Sanders
http://www.jeremysanders.net/

[Robert Kern]

Wildemar Wildenburger wrote:

Torsten Bronger wrote:

>Hallöchen!

Yes, you're German. Have you ever noticed that (we) Germans are
virtually the only ones that feel the need to rub our nationality into
everyones faces? ;)

Howdy!

We Americans do the same. ;-)

--
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
an underlying truth."
-- Umberto Eco

[Evan Klitzke]

On 8/23/07, Torsten Bronger <br*****@physik.rwth-aachen.dewrote:

Some LaTeX users in Aachen thought about a general-use markup
language this spring. I wrote some code and a rough project
description, however, we could need some help.

Torsten,

I have another question about your markup language. Are there any
plans on adding provisions for layout and positioning? The difficulty
of learning advanced layout has been one of my major frustrations with
LaTeX (I'm referring to LaTeX's weird box system, I'm not sure exactly
what the proper terminology for it is).

--
Evan Klitzke <ev**@yelp.com>

[Wildemar Wildenburger]

Robert Kern wrote:

Wildemar Wildenburger wrote:

>Torsten Bronger wrote:

>>Hallöchen!

Yes, you're German. Have you ever noticed that (we) Germans are
virtually the only ones that feel the need to rub our nationality into
everyones faces? ;)

Howdy!

We Americans do the same. ;-)

Weeell, you guys mostly rub your ignorance about the rest of the world
into everyones faces. That's a little different.

There, I did it. Now I got my country invaded. But maybe that's a good
thing ... at least we will get democracy and finally find happiness.

/W
(OK, sorry. I couldn't resist. Don't take it personally. Take it
nationally. ;) )

[Steve Holden]

Wildemar Wildenburger wrote:

Robert Kern wrote:

>Wildemar Wildenburger wrote:

>>Torsten Bronger wrote:

Hallöchen!
Yes, you're German. Have you ever noticed that (we) Germans are
virtually the only ones that feel the need to rub our nationality into
everyones faces? ;)

Howdy!

We Americans do the same. ;-)

Weeell, you guys mostly rub your ignorance about the rest of the world
into everyones faces. That's a little different.

There, I did it. Now I got my country invaded. But maybe that's a good
thing ... at least we will get democracy and finally find happiness.

/W
(OK, sorry. I couldn't resist. Don't take it personally. Take it
nationally. ;) )

Unfortunately Americans are also well known for their inability to
detect irony, so your pointed remarks about democracy and happiness will
probably go mostly unnoticed.

regards
Steve
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[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

In message <7x************@ruckus.brouhaha.com>, Paul Rubin wrote:

TeX/LateX have been around forever and are well established standards,
as awful as they are. Why do we want ANOTHER markup language? We
need fewer, not more.

Because time marches on, and the deficiencies of the old way of doing things
become more obvious, not less. For all the wonderful layout capabilities of
TEX, I've never seen a decent font done with METAFONT--not a single one.
They all looked like rubbish compared to what was available with those
early PostScript-based Apple LaserWriters.

By the way, did you know there was life before TEX? Back in that era, the
main open-source markup system in use was ... troff. Still not quite dead
today, it lives on in the definition of Unix/Linux man pages.

[Roy Smith]

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ld*@geek-central.gen.new_zealandwrote:

By the way, did you know there was life before TEX? Back in that era, the
main open-source markup system in use was ... troff. Still not quite dead
today, it lives on in the definition of Unix/Linux man pages.

I would hardly call troff "open source", at least not "back in that era".
When I first started using roff and nroff, you had to sign all sorts of
non-disclosure paperwork to get a copy of Unix. It wasn't until much later
that things like the BSD and GNU projects started coming out with open
source versions.

Of course, the whole roff family is based on the old runoff program (which
in turn was probably based on something else).

Anybody remember Scribe?

[Aahz]

In article <ro***********************@news.panix.com>,
Roy Smith <ro*@panix.comwrote:

>
Anybody remember Scribe?

Not directly....

http://groups.google.com/group/comp....2201a697384a6a
--
Aahz (aa**@pythoncraft.com) <* http://www.pythoncraft.com/

"If you don't know what your program is supposed to do, you'd better not
start writing it." --Dijkstra