X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["1767" "Thu" "26" "June" "1997" "14:11:08" "+0200" "Chris Rowley" "C.A.Rowley@OPEN.AC.UK" nil "44" "Re: what is a latex command" "^Date:" nil nil "6" nil nil nil nil nil] nil) Received: from listserv.gmd.de (listserv.gmd.de [192.88.97.1]) by mail.Uni-Mainz.DE (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA16000; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 14:11:57 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from lsv1.listserv.gmd.de by listserv.gmd.de (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <8.5E20AAB5@listserv.gmd.de>; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 14:11:56 +0200 Received: from RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE by RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 1.8b) with spool id 159704 for LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 14:11:50 +0200 Received: from ixgate01.dfnrelay.d400.de (ixgate01.dfnrelay.d400.de [193.174.248.1]) by relay.urz.uni-heidelberg.de (8.7.6/8.7.4) with ESMTP id OAA17454 for ; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 14:11:43 +0200 (MET DST) X400-Received: by mta d400relay in /PRMD=dfnrelay/ADMD=d400/C=de/; Relayed; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 14:11:20 +0200 X400-Received: by mta venus in /PRMD=uk.ac/ADMD= /C=gb/; Relayed; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 14:10:45 +0200 X400-Received: by mta fell.open.ac.uk in /PRMD=UK.AC/ADMD= /C=GB/; Relayed; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 14:09:30 +0200 X400-Received: by mta UK.AC.MHS-RELAY.SUN2 in /PRMD=uk.ac/ADMD= /C=gb/; Relayed; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 14:11:08 +0200 X400-Originator: C.A.Rowley@open.ac.uk X400-Recipients: non-disclosure:; X400-MTS-Identifier: [/PRMD=UK.AC/ADMD= /C=GB/;<199706261209.NAA03028@fell.open] X400-Content-Type: P2-1988 (22) Content-Identifier: Re: what is a... Alternate-Recipient: Allowed References: , <199706251348.OAA22853@knott.elsevier.co.uk>, <199706261043.LAA02841@fell.open.ac.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Message-ID: <199706261209.NAA03028@fell.open.ac.uk> Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project In-Reply-To: <199706261107.MAA24582@knott.elsevier.co.uk> Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 14:11:08 +0200 From: Chris Rowley Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L Subject: Re: what is a latex command Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 2209 Sebastian Rahtz wrote -- > > Were I a betting person I would put quite a lot of money on there > > being a lot of people using comparatively dumb editors to enter > > LaTeX (and AMSTeX) code in 3 years time. > > yes, but `a lot' could be the same number of people now programming > use MS Basic on their 8086 computers. do you care about them? As much as I care about any other large number of people doing things with documents, yes. > so as i suspected, you dont wan't to see markup at all! you are now > saying TeX is an _interchange_ format, like RTF, which humans don't > read or write. Thats a whole different kettle of fish I may not want to see mark-up (although I did not actaully say that: it depends a lot on what scren I am using, etc) but that is just me. I do not want to stop other people doing so if they wish to; I do not want them to curse me like I curse the people who think I should be encouraged to point at things with a mouse simply because someone thinks it is easier for me than other methods of communicating commands to my softeware. > the conclusion i would draw from that is the best we can do is make > (La)TeX an even better formatting engine, since that is the one thing > we all agree that it is needed for. hence back to issues like > algorithms for float placement.... Whilst I would not draw this conclusion I would very much like to do as you suggest, but if that is all we need then we should leave out the TeX bit and just: make an even better formatting engine This endeavour would start from the TeX formatting engines (note the plural) but not necessarily from any other parts of TeX > hence back to issues like > algorithms for float placement.... Oh please, yes please! No one ever sent me one yet. chris