At 09:47 +0000 1998/12/16, Robin Fairbairns wrote:
>hans aberg writes:
>
>> Well, speaking of an _authoring_ language, one would expect [...]
>>
>> So from this point of view, HTML and PDF and DVI are incomplete.
>
>umm, in iso 8613[*] terms, pdf and dvi are `final forms', the output
>of a formatting process.  pace various people's odd ideas, they are
>not (as a practical proposition) intended to be edited.  as authoring
>languages they are complete crocks (though people do do daft things: i
>have a friend who regularly writes bits of exam papers in
>postscript...).

Has anybody said anything different?

>html is a `revisable form'.  indeed, some people (such as i, who have
>no other tools than emacs) author in it[*].  but it's an awful
>authoring language, even with the sorts of dances i can persuade emacs
>to do for me....

Right.

>however, html _does_ in principle provide an awful lot of what one
>might like.  it fails in its lack of stable extensibility ... which is
>what this crazy argument started from (but, shock horror, in terms of
>latex's stability and extensibility).

Right again: People use HTML as an authoring language, in the lack of the
real thing.

  Hans Aberg
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