>>>>> "SR" == Sebastian Rahtz <[log in to unmask]> writes:

SR> Chris Rowley writes:
>> > which is the important bit? which is the "unique public de facto
>> > archival and communication language", exactly?
>>
>> You forgot
>>
>> 6 None of the above

SR> You are ducking the (semi-serious) issue. What *do* you mean by the
SR> archival and communication language? the fact that the word "TeX" is
SR> recognized by mathematicians the world over? so long as they don't try
SR> to exchange files....

SR> In case anyone thinks I am just being cynical, my personal interests
SR> are 1) and 5), and the rest can go overboard....

But that does not imply that many people do not need

 3 TeX the archival-files-which-must-format-identically

and

 7 the math part of the TeX typesetting markup language
 8 the math part of the TeX typesetting markup language, combined
   with the markup of the AMS document classes

which is some wierd kind of intersection between 2, 5, and 6.

And for certain areas in scientific research 7 and 8 is a
communication method, and not just a means to typeset some papers.


And, while I'm at it: IMO, neither XML will take over role 5
completely, and MathML will not take role 7 or 8. Well, hopefully,
they won't.

As an authoring language, XML is inadequate beyond recognition. It's
reasonably good for exchange of data and well suited for archiving
documents, but not made for human consumption. And Sebastian, please
don't come with XML-aware editors that'll hide the markup for the
author. I'm waiting since more than a decade for such beasts (i.e.,
SGML/XML editors) that are both usable and easily deployable -- and
still psgmls on (X)Emacs is one of the best authoring environments
around; that's a shame. I had more than my share of XML deployment
projects in industrial (i.e., real-world, not academic) environments;
and all showed that the hype that's spread by XML fanatics isn't worth
the paper it's printed on (or the disk space it's stored in). I'll
tell you, these projects were more than depressing...

Cheers,
        Joachim

--
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Joachim Schrod                                  Email: [log in to unmask]
Net & Publication Consultance GmbH              Tel.:  +49-6074-861530
Roedermark, Germany                             Fax:   +49-6074-861531