Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: Pamphlet format discussion

[Stephen Wilson]

"Andrey G. Grozin" <address@hidden> writes:
[...]
> An additional advantage is that in the simplest case (which
> means 100% of cases now, but may decrease to 99% in the future) we can
> directly run LaTeX on pamphlet files, thus saving build time.

You might save one or two seconds on a file 20000 lines long.  Latex
will take over a minute to process the beast.  What you gain is hardly
even noticeable.

> I don't see why references to chunks from other files can be a
> problem - just \usepackage{hyperref} and get nice hyperlinks in dvi
> or pdf. It should be also quite easy (in principle) to generate,
> say, hyperdoc pages from LaTeX pamphlets - we can invent LaTeX
> structures for hyperref-specific purposes, such as uses/used-by
> lists or running axiom commands from hyperdoc. Of course, this
> requires some programming, but quite trivial - LaTeX syntax is very
> simple and regular (unless we play dirty low-level TeX games with
> re-defining character classes, etc.; such tricks should be certainly
> banned in pamphlet files). 

Latex is far from trivial, IMHO.  Perhaps that is my lack of
experience speaking, but I can think of many, many languages I would
rather _program_ in then LaTeX.

> If some more complicated processing of pamphlets is needed, such as
> extracting some special kind of chunks from many pamphlets (for some
> other kind of documentation in The Crystall :-), it can be done by a
> program. In this sense, weaving will be available when we need it
> (of course, it should be programmed, but this is certainly not
> difficult). 

Weaving costs nothing.  It does not result in a more restrictive
environment.  All the power of latex is at your disposal.  Writing in
pure latex gains nothing.  

> But in the majority of cases, weaving will by just the
> identity transformation. I think this is a Good Thing - saving build
> time and the necessity to learn one more syntax.

Every literate programmer knows the basic syntax already.  Noweb, for
example, introduces two new constructs.  This is minor, totally
trivial.  Your not learning a new programming language.  One can
memorize and be completely fluent writing a pamphlet in about ten
minutes.


Take care,
Steve