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Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sat, 1 Feb 2014 18:32:26 -0800
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Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <[log in to unmask]>
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From:
William F Hammond <[log in to unmask]>
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There are two long-standing questions underlying this discussion.

1. Can present LaTeX users learn to write well-structured user-level LaTeX?

2. Can well-structured markup be written in a GUI?

I believe the answer to the first is "yes".  For one thing, I think the
LaTeX being submitted to arXiv (arxiv.org) is improving.  I commonly look
at arXiv source and try to run it through tex4ht toward html+mathml with
mathjax.  I see success there as a sign of well-structured LaTeX.  But I've
not made a systematic investigation on this point.

I hope with user-level documents in LaTeX3 that on-target pertinent markup
diagnostics (without obscure package or engine diagnostics) will keep users
honest.  Of course, in order to maintain service on old documents, this
should only be the case for users who ask for it.

As to the second question, my opinion is that a user who understands
well-structured markup might be able to generate it in a suitable GUI, but
a user without such understanding will not be able to generate good
markup.  For example, the naive user would be able to write something that
appears formatted as an enumerated list, but without invocation of a
list-making widget in the GUI, it won't be a list.

Personally, I expect that I would find using a GUI to be inefficient.

     -- Bill


-- 
William F Hammond
Email: [log in to unmask]
https://www.facebook.com/william.f.hammond
http://www.albany.edu/~hammond/


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