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Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 16:33:55 +0100
From: Sebastian Rahtz <s.rahtz@ELSEVIER.CO.UK>
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Subject:      Re: ideal future document processing
Status: R

Hans Aberg writes:
 > as a formula, for example. So formulas are in much wider use that in just

fair point, given your revised version of formula

 > math, and it is good for LaTeX, or any documentprocessing system, to
 > support that, mainly because it is costly not having the author entering
 > the formulas.

equally, it is very expensive to separate out the meat of a `formula'
from the ad hoc formatting imposed on it by the author; yes, i do know
that often the presentation matters, but equally often it is sheer
flimmery and the author herself is happy to see it go.

while it is true that saving the cost of capturing the `formula' is a
good thing, it is often outweighed by the cost of dealing with the
rest of the abysmally LaTeXed article. I am, I confess, getting very
tired of having to defend the conventional publishers like my
employers, but you must realize that rekeying of material by quite
low-level workers in the Philippines is surprisingly often more cost
effective than dealing with the LaTeX submission.

 >   So the ideal for the author, is probably to quickly output the semantic
 > contents, and it should be possible to somehow enter the other stuff
 > independently of this (also so that it is possible to choose a
 > suitable

so, you enter the semantic content in SGML, and twitch a DSSSL style
sheet which describes the layout, to your hearts content

Sebastian