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Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?

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  Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2015-02-12 12:13 -0800
    Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2015-02-12 12:56 -0800
      Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? empty-buffers <empty.buffersYOU-DONT-WANT-THIS@gmail.NEITHER-THIS.com> - 2015-02-12 21:32 +0000
        Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2015-02-13 13:08 -0500
          Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-13 19:39 +0100
            Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2015-02-13 14:14 -0500
              Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-13 21:28 +0100
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2015-02-13 14:22 -0800
                  Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-14 01:34 +0100
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? hughaguilar96@gmail.com - 2015-02-13 22:42 -0800
                HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2015-02-14 10:21 +0000
                  Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-14 19:37 +0100
                    Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2015-02-14 11:13 -0800
                      Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-14 21:07 +0100
                        Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2015-02-14 12:50 -0800
                          Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-14 22:32 +0100
                            Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2015-02-14 15:10 -0800
                    Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2015-02-15 10:34 +0000
                      Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-15 22:15 +0100
                        Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2015-02-16 12:45 +0000
                      Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-15 13:55 -0800
                        Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2015-02-16 13:52 +0000
                          Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-16 15:47 +0100
                      Re: HTML vs. LaTeX Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2015-02-16 09:05 -0800
                        Re: HTML vs. LaTeX anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2015-02-17 12:21 +0000
                          Re: HTML vs. LaTeX Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2015-02-20 13:23 -0800
                            Re: HTML vs. LaTeX Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-20 22:33 +0100
                          Re: HTML vs. LaTeX anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2015-02-21 15:14 +0000
                            Re: HTML vs. LaTeX Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-21 20:23 +0100
                            Re: HTML vs. LaTeX Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2015-02-21 11:33 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-14 10:14 -0800
                  Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2015-02-22 01:57 -0500
                    Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-22 18:35 -0800
                      Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2015-02-23 01:58 -0500
                        Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-23 04:59 -0800
                          Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2015-02-23 19:18 -0500
                            Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-23 18:09 -0800
                            Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2015-02-24 01:04 -0800
                              Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-24 02:51 -0800
                                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2015-02-24 10:23 -0800
                      Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-23 21:19 +0100
                        Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-23 17:58 -0800
                          Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2015-02-24 01:07 -0800
                            Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-24 02:19 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Paul E Bennett <Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk> - 2015-02-15 12:18 +0000
          Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? empty-buffers <empty.buffersYOU-DONT-WANT-THIS@gmail.NEITHER-THIS.com> - 2015-02-13 18:55 +0000
            Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Melzzzzz <mel@zzzzz.com> - 2015-02-13 20:27 +0100
          Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2015-02-13 09:53 -1000
    Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? "WJ" <w_a_x_man@yahoo.com> - 2015-02-13 14:18 +0000
      Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2015-02-13 11:03 -0800
      Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? hughaguilar96@gmail.com - 2015-02-13 22:46 -0800
      Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2015-02-14 02:35 -0800
        Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Coos Haak <chforth@hccnet.nl> - 2015-02-14 18:47 +0100
        Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? hughaguilar96@gmail.com - 2015-02-14 18:56 -0800
    Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Ilya Tarasov <ilya74.tarasov@gmail.com> - 2015-02-15 17:10 -0800
      Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2015-02-16 01:20 -0800
        Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> - 2015-02-16 12:35 +0100
        Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2015-02-16 08:12 -1000
        Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Ilya Tarasov <ilya74.tarasov@gmail.com> - 2015-02-16 15:17 -0800

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#36586 — Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?)

On Sunday, February 15, 2015 at 5:08:15 AM UTC-6, Anton Ertl wrote:

> 
> The whole style nonsense came with the "web designers", who wanted a
> specific layout and wanted to force it down the reader's throat.  That
> idea is alien to both the original HTML and LaTeX.  Actually
> Postscript and PDF are perfect formats for that, but somehow the web
> designers and Adobe did not meet (at least not before Adobe bought
> Macromedia).

Why is the idea of "style" nonsense? It is a perfectly sensible thing to separate content from layout and appearance, and it is exactly what LaTeX accomplishes. I can take an entire LaTeX document and simply change one line, the \documentclass{} line to give the document an entirely new appearance.
This can be accomplished on the browser side, rather than the server side, in principle, giving the consumer of the content greater control of how he/she views the content. LaTeX is designed from the outset with this goal in mind, and, as such, seems perfectly well suited for specifying web pages. All of the document class files could reside on the browser side.

Krishna

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#36602 — Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?)

krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org writes:
>On Sunday, February 15, 2015 at 5:08:15 AM UTC-6, Anton Ertl wrote:
>
>>=20
>> The whole style nonsense came with the "web designers", who wanted a
>> specific layout and wanted to force it down the reader's throat.  That
>> idea is alien to both the original HTML and LaTeX.  Actually
>> Postscript and PDF are perfect formats for that, but somehow the web
>> designers and Adobe did not meet (at least not before Adobe bought
>> Macromedia).
>
>Why is the idea of "style" nonsense? It is a perfectly sensible thing to se=
>parate content from layout and appearance, and it is exactly what LaTeX acc=
>omplishes. I can take an entire LaTeX document and simply change one line, =
>the \documentclass{} line to give the document an entirely new appearance.

Yes, that's what we get in LaTeX.

In HTML, we originally had only content, with a standard layout
(slightly modifyable by users), but that was too boring for "web
designers", so Netscape added bunch of layout features which
completely abandoned the idea of separation between layout and
content.

Then CSS was added in an attempt to get the separation back, but now
the style comes from the server, not from the user.  And we still have
the "web designers", who don't value this separation, and thus we get
web pages that are unreadable with style information enabled (e.g.,
stylish dark blue writing on black background or vice versa; or web
pages that do not adapt to the window width and hide important
information in parts of the page that is not shown), and web pages
that don't work when the user overrides some of the site style stuff
(e.g., obligatory fields marked in a certain colour that is not
visible when I ask the browser to obey my colour preferences).  While
the basic idea may have had some merit, the overall result is
nonsense.

Worse: It seems that the browser makers (on smart phones) are catering
to the nonsense, and format vanilla HTML (like TeXinfo output, e.g.,
our Gforth manual) to assume a pretty wide window, and that has to be
scaled down to 2pt fonts or so in order to be readable (if your eyes
are good enough).

>This can be accomplished on the browser side, rather than the server side, =
>in principle, giving the consumer of the content greater control of how he/=
>she views the content. LaTeX is designed from the outset with this goal in =
>mind, and, as such, seems perfectly well suited for specifying web pages. A=
>ll of the document class files could reside on the browser side.

Yes, good principles, but unfortunately, the reality of HTML+CSS is
different.

- anton
-- 
M. Anton Ertl  http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
     New standard: http://www.forth200x.org/forth200x.html
   EuroForth 2014: http://www.euroforth.org/ef14/

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#36604 — Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?)

Anton Ertl wrote:
> Worse: It seems that the browser makers (on smart phones) are catering
> to the nonsense, and format vanilla HTML (like TeXinfo output, e.g.,
> our Gforth manual) to assume a pretty wide window, and that has to be
> scaled down to 2pt fonts or so in order to be readable (if your eyes
> are good enough).

Indeed, we probably should add a style sheet which defines reasonable 
defaults for smart phones, too... something the smartphone browser maker 
should do.

-- 
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://bernd-paysan.de/
net2o ID: kQusJzA;7*?t=uy@X}1GWr!+0qqp_Cn176t4(dQ*

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#36613 — Re: HTML vs. LaTeX

anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
> Knuth had expected people to take TeX and changing it for their needs.

What makes you think that?  I had the opposite impression, that Knuth
didn't want changed versions of TeX in circulation but instead he wanted
it to be extended with macros.

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#36635 — Re: HTML vs. LaTeX

Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> writes:
>anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
>> Knuth had expected people to take TeX and changing it for their needs.
>
>What makes you think that?

I read it in some article he wrote, probably in one of the articles
(re)printed in Digital Typography.

> I had the opposite impression, that Knuth
>didn't want changed versions of TeX in circulation but instead he wanted
>it to be extended with macros.

What makes you think that?

- anton
-- 
M. Anton Ertl  http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
     New standard: http://www.forth200x.org/forth200x.html
   EuroForth 2014: http://www.euroforth.org/ef14/

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#36725 — Re: HTML vs. LaTeX

anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
>> I had the opposite impression, that Knuth didn't want changed
>>versions of TeX in circulation but instead he wanted it to be extended
>>with macros.
> What makes you think that?

For one thing, IIRC he didn't allow modified versions of tex.web to be
distributed.  You instead had to distribute the original along with a
patch file containing your changes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX#License has some info that's closer
to your interpretation, but it still seems a bit muddled.

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#36726 — Re: HTML vs. LaTeX

Paul Rubin wrote:

> anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
>>> I had the opposite impression, that Knuth didn't want changed
>>>versions of TeX in circulation but instead he wanted it to be extended
>>>with macros.
>> What makes you think that?
> 
> For one thing, IIRC he didn't allow modified versions of tex.web to be
> distributed.  You instead had to distribute the original along with a
> patch file containing your changes.

You either had to keep the tex.web as is, pass the trip test, or rename it.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX#License has some info that's closer
> to your interpretation, but it still seems a bit muddled.

These conditions above have always been regarded as "free software license".  
Especially if you make incompatible changes (so you don't pass the trip 
test), requiring to rename it is 100% fair.

Even today, when free software project forks (including very liberal 
licenses), people rename the fork.

-- 
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://bernd-paysan.de/
net2o ID: kQusJzA;7*?t=uy@X}1GWr!+0qqp_Cn176t4(dQ*

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#36745 — Re: HTML vs. LaTeX

anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
>Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> writes:
>>anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
>>> Knuth had expected people to take TeX and changing it for their needs.
>>
>>What makes you think that?
>
>I read it in some article he wrote, probably in one of the articles
>(re)printed in Digital Typography.

Later you give a reference to
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX>, which says

|includes a real, Turing-complete programming language, following
|intense lobbying by Guy Steele.[8]

|8. # ^ Donald E. Knuth, Knuth meets NTG members, NTG: MAPS. 16 (1996),
|38-49. Reprinted as Questions and Answers, III, chapter 33 of Digital
|Typography, p. 648.

So I followed that <http://maps.aanhet.net/maps/pdf/16_15.pdf>, and it
says:

|Piet van Oostrum: I don't know if you have ever looked
|into the LATEX code inside, but if you look into that, you
|get the impression that TEX is not the most appropriate pro-
|gramming language to design such a large system. Did you
|ever think of TEX being used to program such large systems
|and if not, would you think of giving it a better program-
|ming language?
|Knuth: In some sense I put in many of the programming
|features kicking and screaming, and I'll try to explain the
|background. I know how Leslie went about writing LATEX 
|-- first he would write the algorithms out in a high-level
|programming language, with while's and if-then's and so
|on, and then he would pretty much mechanically convert
|this to TEX macros. If I had suspected that such a style was
|going to be the most common use of TEX, I probably would
|have worried a lot in those days. Now, computers are so
|fast that I don't worry so much about the running time, be-
|cause it still seems to go zip!
|In the 70s, I had a negative reaction to systems that tried to
|be all things to all people. Every system I looked at had its
|own universal Turing machine built into it somehow, and
|everybody's was a little different from everybody else's.
|So I thought, "Well, I'm not going to design a programming
|language; I wanted to have just a typesetting language."
|Little by little, I needed more features and so the program-
|ming constructs grew. Guy Steele began lobbying for more
|capabilities early on, and I put many such things into the
|second version of TEX, TEX82, because of his urging. That
|made it possible to calculate prime numbers as well as do
|complicated things with page layout and figure placements.
|But the reason I didn't introduce programming features at
|first was because, as a programmer, I was tired of having
|to learn ten different almost-the-same programming lan-
|guages for every system I looked at; I was going to try to
|avoid that. Later, I realised that it was sort of inevitable,
|but I tried to keep it as close to the paradigm of TEX as a
|character-by-character macro language as I could. As I said
|before, I was expecting that the really special applications
|would be done by changing things in the machine language
|code. But people didn't do that, they wanted to put low-
|level things in at a higher level.

The second-to-last sentence answers your question (I guess this is
also found earlier in the same paper, but I have not found it in a
quick skim), but the rest is also relevant to our discussion.

- anton
-- 
M. Anton Ertl  http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
     New standard: http://www.forth200x.org/forth200x.html
   EuroForth 2014: http://www.euroforth.org/ef14/

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#36753 — Re: HTML vs. LaTeX

Anton Ertl wrote:
> So I followed that <http://maps.aanhet.net/maps/pdf/16_15.pdf>, and it
> says:
> 
> |As I said
> |before, I was expecting that the really special applications
> |would be done by changing things in the machine language
> |code. But people didn't do that, they wanted to put low-
> |level things in at a higher level.
> 
> The second-to-last sentence answers your question (I guess this is
> also found earlier in the same paper, but I have not found it in a
> quick skim), but the rest is also relevant to our discussion.

This paper is one of the reasons why I always say you must add a fully 
turing compatible programming language, you must be prepared for that, and 
not try to dodge it.  The observation of Knuth was that everybody does it, 
and he thought he could resist it.  He couldn't.

The lession from "I don't want to learn yet another language" is that this 
language you add should not be your own invention.  It can be your 
implementation and you can add extensions to it, but the basics should be 
common ground.

The next question to be learned is: "how low-level should this be?"

And my answer is:  The integrated language should be used to implement the 
actual applications.  Using foreign libraries (typically C libraries) is ok; 
as long as that interface is exposed, and can be used to include other 
libraries.  I.e. if you want to use fonts in your typesetting engine, 
loading a font handling library like freetype is perfectly acceptable to 
deal with the lower-level stuff in a font library.

With the typically conflicting requirements of such a language - it must be 
low-level enough to do the low-level stuff, it must be fast enough to run 
the 99% which can't be done in assembler (or similarly inconvenient 
programming languages like C), it must be high-level enough to support the 
actual application, it must compile fast enough to load all the user-
provided extensions, and it must be extensible enough to create the DSL you 
want for your actual application - my reasoning is that there is no other 
contender than Forth.

The top-level DSL doesn't have to look like Forth.  You just have to be able 
to dive down to Forth to do the lower-level stuff.

-- 
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://bernd-paysan.de/
net2o ID: kQusJzA;7*?t=uy@X}1GWr!+0qqp_Cn176t4(dQ*

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#36754 — Re: HTML vs. LaTeX

anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
> |I was expecting that the really special applications would be done by
> |changing things in the machine language code.
> The second-to-last sentence answers your question 

Thanks!

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#36569

What an interesting idea to use LaTeX as the  page typesetting language for a web browser. It makes a lot of sense, although, as Anton pointed out, TeX itself is probably not a suitable language for adding extensions. A browser supporting LaTeX ... it should be done.

Krishna

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#36757

On 2/14/2015 1:14 PM, krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org wrote:
> What an interesting idea to use LaTeX as the  page typesetting language for a web browser. It makes a lot of sense, although, as Anton pointed out, TeX itself is probably not a suitable language for adding extensions. A browser supporting LaTeX ... it should be done.

And then how are the many other features of HTML to be implemented?

I think it is a bit of egotism to think that somehow using Tex for one 
small aspect of a web language would solve any problems.

-- 

Rick

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#36767

On Sunday, February 22, 2015 at 12:57:49 AM UTC-6, rickman wrote:
> On 2/14/2015 1:14 PM, krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org wrote:
> > What an interesting idea to use LaTeX as the  page typesetting language for a web browser. It makes a lot of sense, although, as Anton pointed out, TeX itself is probably not a suitable language for adding extensions. A browser supporting LaTeX ... it should be done.
> 
> And then how are the many other features of HTML to be implemented?
> 

Isn't implementation a browser side issue? HTML simply provides the tags, per my understanding. TeX is extensible. There is no reason I can think of why it cannot be extended to provide features like forms. Of course, the browser would have to support the new specification for the layout of forms.

> I think it is a bit of egotism to think that somehow using Tex for one 
> small aspect of a web language would solve any problems.
> 

What does ego have to do with a discussion of replacing HTML typesetting tags with the much-richer and customizable language of TeX/LaTeX? Have you ever used either to produce a document? This is no small aspect of rendering a web page, as the afterthought add-on of CSS should indicate. 

Krishna

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#36768

On 2/22/2015 9:35 PM, krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org wrote:
> On Sunday, February 22, 2015 at 12:57:49 AM UTC-6, rickman wrote:
>> On 2/14/2015 1:14 PM, krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org wrote:
>>> What an interesting idea to use LaTeX as the  page typesetting language for a web browser. It makes a lot of sense, although, as Anton pointed out, TeX itself is probably not a suitable language for adding extensions. A browser supporting LaTeX ... it should be done.
>>
>> And then how are the many other features of HTML to be implemented?
>>
>
> Isn't implementation a browser side issue? HTML simply provides the tags, per my understanding. TeX is extensible. There is no reason I can think of why it cannot be extended to provide features like forms. Of course, the browser would have to support the new specification for the layout of forms.

And once you do that you end up with something much like HTML, no?  I 
don't follow what the problem is that is in need of fixing much less how 
LaTex would do that.


>> I think it is a bit of egotism to think that somehow using Tex for one
>> small aspect of a web language would solve any problems.
>>
>
> What does ego have to do with a discussion of replacing HTML typesetting tags with the much-richer and customizable language of TeX/LaTeX? Have you ever used either to produce a document? This is no small aspect of rendering a web page, as the afterthought add-on of CSS should indicate.

HTML has gone far beyond just defining how a page looks.  It defines how 
a page can be interacted with.  Ego is thinking that the few people in 
this group have a good idea of what the problems are or how they can be 
fixed.

-- 

Rick

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#36770

On Monday, February 23, 2015 at 12:58:19 AM UTC-6, rickman wrote:
> On 2/22/2015 9:35 PM, krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org wrote:
> > On Sunday, February 22, 2015 at 12:57:49 AM UTC-6, rickman wrote:
> >> On 2/14/2015 1:14 PM, krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org wrote:
> >>> What an interesting idea to use LaTeX as the  page typesetting language for a web browser. It makes a lot of sense, although, as Anton pointed out, TeX itself is probably not a suitable language for adding extensions. A browser supporting LaTeX ... it should be done.
> >>
> >> And then how are the many other features of HTML to be implemented?
> >>
> >
> > Isn't implementation a browser side issue? HTML simply provides the tags, per my understanding. TeX is extensible. There is no reason I can think of why it cannot be extended to provide features like forms. Of course, the browser would have to support the new specification for the layout of forms.
> 
> And once you do that you end up with something much like HTML, no?  I 
> don't follow what the problem is that is in need of fixing much less how 
> LaTex would do that.
>

No, you do not end up with something like HTML -- that's the point. You apparently do not understand the difference between TeX/LaTeX and HTML. The latter is a crude approximation to a typesetting language. We already went over several issues about rendering web pages that would be better handled by TeX/LaTeX: 1) a unified approach to style (e.g. CSS) 2)  separates content specification from appearance allowing the user to view a web page under his/her desired style, 3) integrated mathematics support, and 4) print-quality appearance. To see the latter, you might look at the difference between a printed html page and a printed TeX page. But apparently, you missed all of that from our earlier discussion.


> 
> >> I think it is a bit of egotism to think that somehow using Tex for one
> >> small aspect of a web language would solve any problems.
> >>
> >
> > What does ego have to do with a discussion of replacing HTML typesetting tags with the much-richer and customizable language of TeX/LaTeX? Have you ever used either to produce a document? This is no small aspect of rendering a web page, as the afterthought add-on of CSS should indicate.
> 
> HTML has gone far beyond just defining how a page looks.  It defines how 
> a page can be interacted with.  Ego is thinking that the few people in 
> this group have a good idea of what the problems are or how they can be 
> fixed.
> 

Granted there may be other aspects of HTML that I am not considering at the moment. But, in case you haven't heard of web publishing, that's a pretty big part of the web. But, apparently you choose to cover up your lack of knowledge about TeX/LaTeX by resorting to personal criticism instead. Next time, try making a constructive contribution by 1) first learning about TeX, 2) pointing out specific area(s) for which no advantage is gained. I really hope you are not a troll -- c.l.f. has enough of these.


Krishna

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#36779

On 2/23/2015 7:59 AM, krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org wrote:
> On Monday, February 23, 2015 at 12:58:19 AM UTC-6, rickman wrote:
>> On 2/22/2015 9:35 PM, krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org wrote:
>>> On Sunday, February 22, 2015 at 12:57:49 AM UTC-6, rickman wrote:
>>>> On 2/14/2015 1:14 PM, krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org wrote:
>>>>> What an interesting idea to use LaTeX as the  page typesetting language for a web browser. It makes a lot of sense, although, as Anton pointed out, TeX itself is probably not a suitable language for adding extensions. A browser supporting LaTeX ... it should be done.
>>>>
>>>> And then how are the many other features of HTML to be implemented?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Isn't implementation a browser side issue? HTML simply provides the tags, per my understanding. TeX is extensible. There is no reason I can think of why it cannot be extended to provide features like forms. Of course, the browser would have to support the new specification for the layout of forms.
>>
>> And once you do that you end up with something much like HTML, no?  I
>> don't follow what the problem is that is in need of fixing much less how
>> LaTex would do that.
>>
>
> No, you do not end up with something like HTML -- that's the point. You apparently do not understand the difference between TeX/LaTeX and HTML. The latter is a crude approximation to a typesetting language. We already went over several issues about rendering web pages that would be better handled by TeX/LaTeX: 1) a unified approach to style (e.g. CSS) 2)  separates content specification from appearance allowing the user to view a web page under his/her desired style, 3) integrated mathematics support, and 4) print-quality appearance. To see the latter, you might look at the difference between a printed html page and a printed TeX page. But apparently, you missed all of that from our earlier discussion.

This entire comment misses my point or even *your* point of having to 
*add* to LaTex the missing functionality.  You keep talking about the 
things that LaTex already does ignoring the issue of what is missing to 
work as a web browser.


>>>> I think it is a bit of egotism to think that somehow using Tex for one
>>>> small aspect of a web language would solve any problems.
>>>>
>>>
>>> What does ego have to do with a discussion of replacing HTML typesetting tags with the much-richer and customizable language of TeX/LaTeX? Have you ever used either to produce a document? This is no small aspect of rendering a web page, as the afterthought add-on of CSS should indicate.
>>
>> HTML has gone far beyond just defining how a page looks.  It defines how
>> a page can be interacted with.  Ego is thinking that the few people in
>> this group have a good idea of what the problems are or how they can be
>> fixed.
>>
>
> Granted there may be other aspects of HTML that I am not considering at the moment.

Now you are starting to understand...


> But, in case you haven't heard of web publishing, that's a pretty big part of the web. But, apparently you choose to cover up your lack of knowledge about TeX/LaTeX by resorting to personal criticism instead. Next time, try making a constructive contribution by 1) first learning about TeX, 2) pointing out specific area(s) for which no advantage is gained. I really hope you are not a troll -- c.l.f. has enough of these.

Rather I suggest that you learn something about what HTML does that 
can't be done with LaTex and understand the differences between 
typesetting a document and operating a web site.

-- 

Rick

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#36783

On Monday, February 23, 2015 at 6:18:45 PM UTC-6, rickman wrote:
> On 2/23/2015 7:59 AM, krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org wrote:
> > On Monday, February 23, 2015 at 12:58:19 AM UTC-6, rickman wrote:
> >> On 2/22/2015 9:35 PM, krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org wrote:
> >>> On Sunday, February 22, 2015 at 12:57:49 AM UTC-6, rickman wrote:
> >>>> On 2/14/2015 1:14 PM, krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org wrote:
> >>>>> What an interesting idea to use LaTeX as the  page typesetting language for a web browser. It makes a lot of sense, although, as Anton pointed out, TeX itself is probably not a suitable language for adding extensions. A browser supporting LaTeX ... it should be done.
> >>>>
> >>>> And then how are the many other features of HTML to be implemented?
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> Isn't implementation a browser side issue? HTML simply provides the tags, per my understanding. TeX is extensible. There is no reason I can think of why it cannot be extended to provide features like forms. Of course, the browser would have to support the new specification for the layout of forms.
> >>
> >> And once you do that you end up with something much like HTML, no?  I
> >> don't follow what the problem is that is in need of fixing much less how
> >> LaTex would do that.
> >>
> >
> > No, you do not end up with something like HTML -- that's the point. You apparently do not understand the difference between TeX/LaTeX and HTML. The latter is a crude approximation to a typesetting language. We already went over several issues about rendering web pages that would be better handled by TeX/LaTeX: 1) a unified approach to style (e.g. CSS) 2)  separates content specification from appearance allowing the user to view a web page under his/her desired style, 3) integrated mathematics support, and 4) print-quality appearance. To see the latter, you might look at the difference between a printed html page and a printed TeX page. But apparently, you missed all of that from our earlier discussion.
> 
> This entire comment misses my point or even *your* point of having to 
> *add* to LaTex the missing functionality.  You keep talking about the 
> things that LaTex already does ignoring the issue of what is missing to 
> work as a web browser.
>

Let's start over again, from my first sentence in this thread, which I will repeat here:

"What an interesting idea to use LaTeX as the  page typesetting language for a web browser. ..."

LaTeX is not the web-browser itself, but the language understood by the browser. The rendering engine for LaTeX is but one part of the browser.
  

> >
> > Granted there may be other aspects of HTML that I am not considering at the moment.
> 
> Now you are starting to understand...
> 
> 
> > But, in case you haven't heard of web publishing, that's a pretty big part of the web. But, apparently you choose to cover up your lack of knowledge about TeX/LaTeX by resorting to personal criticism instead. Next time, try making a constructive contribution by 1) first learning about TeX, 2) pointing out specific area(s) for which no advantage is gained. I really hope you are not a troll -- c.l.f. has enough of these.
> 
> Rather I suggest that you learn something about what HTML does that 
> can't be done with LaTex and understand the differences between 
> typesetting a document and operating a web site.
> 

Having done html with CSS, forms, and cgi in perl, and having operated two websites (at different times), I believe I do understand a good bit about what is needed for an interactive website. I've also written a number of documents in LaTeX, so I can claim to have *some* knowledge of both. From your posts, I see no evidence that you know much about either building a website or typesetting with LaTeX. Since you have nothing constructive to add, there's little point in further discussion.

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#36792

On Tuesday, 24 February 2015 00:18:45 UTC, rickman  wrote:
> > No, you do not end up with something like HTML -- that's the point. You apparently do not understand the difference between TeX/LaTeX and HTML. The latter is a crude approximation to a typesetting language. 

No it isn't. It's a means of rendering information neatly and simply on a computer screen. That's what Berners-Lee invented. Typesetting refers to
formatting for *printed* output. Like books. HTML isn't for that. It's
for screens!

> 
> This entire comment misses my point or even *your* point of having to 
> *add* to LaTex the missing functionality.  You keep talking about the 
> things that LaTex already does ignoring the issue of what is missing to 
> work as a web browser.

Indeed. Get back to me when LaTex can render YouTube.

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#36797

On Tuesday, February 24, 2015 at 3:04:06 AM UTC-6, Mark Wills wrote:
> On Tuesday, 24 February 2015 00:18:45 UTC, rickman  wrote:
> > > No, you do not end up with something like HTML -- that's the point. You apparently do not understand the difference between TeX/LaTeX and HTML. The latter is a crude approximation to a typesetting language. 
> 
> No it isn't. It's a means of rendering information neatly and simply on a computer screen. That's what Berners-Lee invented. Typesetting refers to
> formatting for *printed* output. Like books. HTML isn't for that. It's
> for screens!
> 

Mark,

You responded to rickman's message, but are replying to me.

First, let's clear up some terminology that appears to be confusing people. The term, "LaTeX", refers to a macro language, written in the TeX *language*. A document using LaTeX markup does not specify the detailed appearance of the document. A LaTeX document specifies the *content* of the document, in much the same way that HTML specifies content by its tags. Through a choice of a document style (or class, as it is called) and by referring other external programs written in the TeX language (typically called packages), a LaTeX file may specify how the document is to be rendered.

LaTeX is not a browser, or even a rendering program. It is a language. TeX, on the other hand, may refer to both a language or a programmable environment, embodied by Knuth's original program, written in Pascal. The TeX program processes a LaTeX file and provides a device-independent (dvi) output file. This file may be rendered by a program to be displayed on the screen or output on a print device. The TeX program, macro definitions for LaTeX, and any other external TeX programs, and rendering programs all reside on the same system, typically.

Now, to respond to your point above, I do not have any disagreement with your statement about the purpose of HTML. HTML was not originally designed for typesetting. However, I do disagree with your statement about typesetting being only for printed output. To understand why, one only needs to view the output from a LaTeX file, processed by TeX into a dvi file, and viewed on a good-quality graphics display via xdvi (or through a dvi to ps or pdf converter). In particular, compare the dvi output next to a display of a plain html file in a browser. The output generated from a LaTeX file is far superior in appearance quality to the relatively crude display of the html output. Fine. With style sheets and other enhancements to the html file, the appearance of the html can be improved tremendously, but still not to the same quality as the output generated from LaTeX. A browser capable of processing an input LaTeX file and displaying it on the screen provides a much more appealing and readable document on the screen, and not just for the printed page.

> > 
> > This entire comment misses my point or even *your* point of having to 
> > *add* to LaTex the missing functionality.  You keep talking about the 
> > things that LaTex already does ignoring the issue of what is missing to 
> > work as a web browser.
> 
> Indeed. Get back to me when LaTex can render YouTube.

These statements are meaningless. LaTeX is not a browser. HTML is not a browser.


Krishna

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#36800

Oh gawd!

Please please! If you get far ahead with this, include the
ability to stick your fonts into your extension, so that you
don't have to link to Google and wait for their servers to click
just to be able to display a neat font in your website.  

Jason

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