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From: Chris Rowley <C.A.Rowley@OPEN.AC.UK>
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Subject:      Re: what is a latex command
Status: R

Vladimir

I am putting some information here not just to educate:-) you but
because I think that these developments are also of crucial importance
to the future of LaTeX, and they counter Sebastian-the-publisher's
thesis that "TeX is everywhere under attack and in decline".

> > but your point that there is only one such interpreter is simply
> > wrong. there is, for example, a voice rendering system that turns
> > latex including math and all into speech --- very impressive in fact,
> > and it deals with the full latex language as defined above.
>
> I did not see this system :-) Is it available at CTAN?
>
This system was in fact developed precisely as a way of allowing access
to mathematical knowledge for people who have difficulty reading
printed material; but it can also do lots of interesting things to
render audible the structure of other aspects of documents.

For further information, try:

  http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/People/raman/raman.html

or raman@adobe.com

Another well-established system that parses LaTeX directly is the GUI
manager of TCI's products: Scientific Workplace and Scientific
Notepad.

Other systems that parse LaTeX (not necessarily whole documents) are
"computer algebra" systems.

There are also now systems that read LaTeX documents and render them
directly for screen viewing: these are being developed as web browser
plug-ins or helpers.  An interesting and available example is
TechExplorer (for Windows at present; I do not have the url accessible
for this right now, maybe others do?).  This is definitely an area
where interest in TeX has increased; I admit to being as surprised by
the quantity and quality of the activity in this area as Don Knuth and
Leslie Lamport are that anyone still used TeX/LaTeX!

Therefore in looking forward to LaTeX3 we need to be aware not only of
new Tex-based systems but of other systems reading LaTeX.


chris