Re: Video interview about Texinfo

[Gavin Smith]

On Thu, Jun 03, 2021 at 10:45:12PM +0200, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 01, 2021 at 07:04:57PM +0100, Gavin Smith wrote:
> > I did an interview with Joshua Branson where we discussed many issues
> > around Texinfo, may be of interest to some.
> > 
> > https://video.hardlimit.com/videos/watch/a10761b7-f6e2-472a-be06-69b0bfbcfe9d
> 
> Very nice, you talked about a lot of things.  And it is cool to see you!

Thanks.

> 
> The interview is quite long, but maybe something you could have expanded
> a bit more, maybe taking the opportunity of the question on Texinfo
> versus TeX and LaTeX is an explanation that Texinfo is semantic "markup"
> for software documentation while LaTeX (or html) is more presentation
> markup.  You mentioned it, I think, but did not really explain.
> 


Good point, it's maybe because I haven't thought much about what
it means.  Semantic markup is tied into the idea of customizability
of the output and this is sometimes limited, other than using CSS
in the HTML output and the HTML customization features of texi2any.
Better output customization for HTML and TeX is one possible area
of improvement for Texinfo.  Texinfo source is also semantic in that
output is represented in different ways in different output formats.

HTML is also a semantic format especially in HTML 4 onwards, from what I
understand.  Some tags correspond exactly to Texinfo command like <code> and
<kbd>.  TeX and LaTeX can be used in a semantic way or a presentational
way.  If HTML, TeX or LaTeX are viewed as "back ends" then they are
closer to presentation than the Texinfo source but those languages
are also used to author documents using semantic markup.

I believe an early proponent of the semantic markup philosophy was a
language called Scribe which was an influence on LaTeX and also on
Texinfo.

The document source language could be thought to exist on a continuum
between semantics and presentation.  For example, TeX automatically
breaks the lines in a paragraph, meaning that aspect of the presentation
does not have to be specified in the source, so making the source more
semantic, even if other low-level commands, e.g. specifying exact spacing,
are also used.

One reason to eschew presentational markup is that it would make the
markup language much more complicated and also less independent of output
format.  Some features are not supported in Texinfo, like underlined text
or coloured text.

We have not been religious about purging the Texinfo language of
presentational markup, as has happened with HTML standards, and there
is the odd command like @t or @noindent which is presentational in
nature.