Re: [Axiom-developer] On syntactic coloring of language

[William Sit]

Hi Ralf:

I don't think Tim is talking about the "product" (such as 
a compiled pdf from LaTeX, or a rendered html web page), 
but about the source files. The style in a publication is 
rightly the choice of the author, as a personal artistic 
preference. While it is possible (I won't say "easy") to 
change the style of a published work (as a web page, by 
changing css file), I doubt a reader would waste time if 
the reader finds the rendition really subjectively 
offending. The work will most likely be ignored. But that 
is not an issue: the author most likely just wanted to 
appeal to "flocks of the same feather" and used the style 
as a filter.

If the source (ASCII text with markups) is the product, 
then I agree with you. By using a different editor, one 
can change the style or even make it plain text with 
relative ease (say cut and paste to Notepad). The main 
issue in that case is the ubiquitous LF/CR problem.

William

On Mon, 19 May 2014 16:26:15 +0200
 Ralf Hemmecke <address@hidden> wrote:
> > I agree that those who choose color highlighting should 
> > choose colors
> > carefully. I would prefer background coloring only and 
> > not text
> > coloring, to avoid the precise problems you illustrated. 
> > Text emphasis
> > should be shown using different typefaces, and in rare 
> > situations, a
> > solid color like red.
>
> We are no longer in the early days of computers.
> And we are dealing with open source.
>
> I think that it's nowadays totally easy to separate 
> style elements from
> the content and let the *reader* decide what style 
> he/she wants. In
> LaTeX we have .sty files, for HTML there is .css etc. 
> etc.
>
> The only issue is if the reader has no choice than to 
> read badly styled
> text.
>
> Ralf
>
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William Sit, Professor Emeritus
Mathematics, City College of New York
Office: R6/291D Tel: 212-650-5179
Home Page: http://scisun.sci.ccny.cuny.edu/~wyscc/