Re: [Axiom-developer] website <-> latex

[Michel . Lavaud]

Hello Bill,

> Well, I know where you are coming from, but I seriously doubt
> that you will be able to convince the current generation of
> web users of that!

I think it would be more adapted to consider only the current generation of
scientists, rather than web users (most won't care about Axiom, I suppose?).
And I can assure you, from my experience and the experience of colleagues, that
it is very easy to have students in science learn TeX in a few days, and write
their reports in TeX. Not more easy, not less easy to learn than any other
computer language like Fortran or C, and certainly much simpler to learn than
Quantum Field Theory or C* algebras :-)

>  The move is still very strongly away from
> traditional LaTeX and towards XML-based extensions of HTML
> such as MATHML.

Well, XML is driven by the Microsoft mammouth and a few others, and I agree
that, in theory, it would be very attractive to merge portions of XML documents
generated by Word with portions of documents generated by other software such
as LaTeX, Amaya, Lyx, TeXmacs, etc.

However, in practice, my experience with the much simpler example of just
trying to import, into Word, HTML documents issued from other software, is that
one usually obtains error messages saying approximately "The document you are
trying to import contains errors, correct them and try later" ; even if it is a
perfectly correct html document, that you displayed with Internet Explorer or
Mozilla a few minutes before, so that it's clear the bugs come from Word, not
from the  html document.

As for importing / exporting XML documents to exchange documents between
various software, it seems to me reasonable to fear that bugged software (such
as Word, but not only) can create bugged XML documents, and thus bugged
formulas, so that for ex. a formula that is correctly displayed with Word
version N could be displayed incorrectly with another version of Word, or some
other editor or display software (Amaya or other). So, my reaction to your
remark "The move is still very strongly away from traditional LaTeX and towards
XML-based extensions" would be that, if your remark is true, then it is a very
strong argument to completely avoid XML, if one wants to privilege rigor in
math documents and in Axiom :-)  Just look at Basic and what it became in the
hands of Microsoft : I have a personal theorem that asserts that any program
written in MS Basic (i.e. using MS extensions) is bound to fail with any
succeeding version of MS Basic one or two years later...

Furthermore, I still don't see the advantages, for mathematicians, of
Mathml/Xml over TeX, it seems to me nothing else than a (still) unachieved and
very verbose way of trying to do the same, with the considerable disadvantage
IMHO of making math formulas completely unreadable by humans, so that we are
forced to read them through software, which are inevitably buggy, and so might
represent incorrectly the formulae etc etc. (goto previous paragraph !). TeX
has been created by a mathematician for mathematicians, and a TeX formula is
very similar to the way one would read a formula to a colleague by telephone
(cf. "history of TeX" on TUG site), so it's easy for a human to read it from
its TeX source, not from its mathml source : one line of TeX is roughly one
page of Mathml.

The experience of TechExplorer is IMHO a good example of what can happen when
trying to follow fashion driven by commercial products and stick to them : it
could display directly some LaTeX documents into the first versions of Internet
Explorer, but it ultimately failed, in part (if I understood well) because of
modifications from Internet Explorer 5 to 6. Just replace LaTeX with Mathml,
and imagine what could happen.

To summarize, I think that, for Open Source mathematical software,  we ought to
privilege rigorous developments, rather than vigorous developments. I vote for
Tim's approach, considering TeX documents as source, and html as dead-end,
write-only format ; and I propose to consider Xml and Mathml on the same
footing as html, because Xml/Mathml documents can be created from TeX source by
TeX4ht, and because this prevents Axiom from becoming dependent of future
evolution of Xml/Mathml and commercial software, so that it continues to be
built on a zero-bug, rock-solid basis.

Best wishes,
Michel
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