Karl Winterling <kwinterl...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Yeah, some alternatives (like MathML and Lout) are emerging, but you > should stick to LaTeX for anything serious until those are well > supported.
Actually, the author of Lout has moved on to a different (still free software, as far as I know) typesetting project. I don't know how far it has progressed, but it's worth watching. XML has some advantages, mostly inherited from SGML. Unfortunately, MathML is horribly verbose syntactically, so the only reasonable way to create it is to write the mathematics in TeX or a similar format and then convert it to MathML. ITeX2MML is a simple translator that does this from a TeX-like format. As to typesetting, it is possible to start with XML, or a format such as RestructedText or one of the simple wiki-based markup languages from which XML can be derived. The typesetting process then usually involves the conversion of the XML to TeX macros, or alternatively, direct conversion to PDF via Fop, which is still under development and intended to implement the full XSL specification. If the typesetting is to be accomplished by TeX anyway, then I don't see much advantage in starting with XML rather than writing LaTeX in the first place, especially when one considers that LaTeX can be converted to XHTML+MathML with tex4ht. Thus I don't think there will be a viable TeX substitute until a new typesetting system becomes available or Fop becomes compelling. If you only need to deliver some form of HTML to the Web, then writing HTML directly, or RestructredText or a similar format, would be best in my opinion. Most of my writing is not mathematical in nature, but it is primarily intended to be printed or viewed in typeset form as PDF files. This is why I prepare it in LaTeX. On the accessibility side, returning to the topic of this thread, formats such as RestructuredText could be easier to edit than XML, particularly for users of alternative input devices, although again, the Emacs nxml mode offers validation and text completion for element and attribute names, so as long as you don't need to write MathML XML might not pose any serious difficulties. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-accessibility-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
