Re: [Texmacs-dev] HTML, XML, XSLT (was: texmacs installation problem)

[Álvaro Tejero Cantero]

On Sat, 2002-11-16 at 12:23, Felix Breuer wrote:
> Hello Joris and David! 
> 
> I do not want to be rude by barging in on your discussion, I just want
> to chip in and add my 2 cents. So, here are some opinions of mine:

This discussion is most interesting for us, indeed some considerations
(chiefly related to usage, not technicalities) follow.

In the alqua [1] project for the publishing of free books we want to
switch to using TeXmacs for primarily mathematical content. This is
because of a structural reason, not merely because of technical ones.
TeXmacs merges visualization and edition, and thus lends itself better
than (source+output) approaches to the edition cycle of open content (I
see this is wrong, I change it immediatly). 
We will state this in our web page as soon as we have time (this is why
TeXmacs is our preferred editor). 
We also share with Joris the concern for collaborative edition
environments which should further open content creation in the style of
what has being done with code up to now.

However, when converting our ordinary differential equations [2] course
to TeXmacs (from LyX) we find the following problem: the most accesed
version is, understandably, the HTML one [3]. In the present stage of
TeXmacs export capabilities, we would lose the HTML version or have to
introduce yet another conversion stage (TeXmacs->LaTeX->HTML). 

My question is if math is being considered in the whole discussion, or
only the most basic HTML structure, so that the website (which is simple
in structure) can  be exported from TeXmacs. Would XSLT be able to
generate a reasonable representation for math? (note that alqua.com
pages use the mathematical features of HTML 3.2, not images. Hevea or
TTH prefer this approach, while LaTeX2html uses raster formats for the
formulas).

I do not see clearly which is the best route, but anyway, I wrote this
to introduce a user perspective on the whole HTML output issue. Of
course, it is sensible to start with the webpage, because it is the
easiest to do.

Finally, I would like to note that if some XML work is done perhaps
TeXmacs would spark some interest in the (big) XML community and receive
some helping hands to advance XML integration. On the other hand, having
a simple HTML output that supports bulleted/enumerated, sectioning,
italic/bold and links would do at least partially for all non
mathematical folks (a book on Geography of Spain is being written with
TeXmacs for the alqua project) and certainly for the website, and may
come faster.

Cheers, álvaro.


-----
[1] http://alqua.com and the manifesto (in spanish) at
http://alqua.com/manifiesto

[2] http://alqua.com/EDO
[3] http://alqua.com/EDO/html/EDO-1_00.html contains the metadata and
    see http://alqua.com/EDO/html/s-lineales.html for a chapter on
systems of linear equations.


-- 
álvaro.tejero.cantero
alqua.com, la red en estudio
"La perfection est atteinte non quand il ne reste rien à
ajouter, mais quand il ne reste rien à enlever"
Saint-Exupéry.