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Subject:
From:
Lars Hellström <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sat, 19 Jul 2003 23:33:35 +0200
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At 15.54 +0200 2003-07-19, Torsten Bronger wrote:
>The intersting thing are editors for *special* XML applications.
>Let me dream a bit: All scientific publishers agree on an XML format
>and order a simple-to-use GUI program that can create these
>documents.  It runs on Linux, Windows, Mac, etc (because it's simple
>itself).  Authors can download it and write their articles with it.

Hmmm... Apart from copyright and the technical issue of using XML as file
format, this sounds a lot like actual state of things with MS Word today
(it certainly dominates non-mathematical scientific publishing). We know
from experience however that it is no good.

>Then there are no authors anymore that use exotic file formats,
>format their text in a very strange way, no employees of the
>publishers have to re-type the articles, authors don't lose time
>with superfluous typographical fine tuning, guideline can be made
>much simpler, archiving and retrieving is much simpler etc.

How on earth is changing a technical detail (using XML instead of the
admittedly exotic "Word memory dump" format) which most users are supposed
to never encounter going to effect such dramatic improvements in author
practices? (Of course, this bit could be where the dreaming is applied.)

Lars Hellström

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