X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["928" "Wed" "11" "November" "1998" "12:31:46" "-0500" "William F. Hammond" "hammond@CSC.ALBANY.EDU" nil "23" "Re: XML (was quotes, a very long time ago)" "^Date:" nil nil "11" nil "XML (was quotes, a very long time ago)" nil nil nil] nil) Received: from listserv.gmd.de (listserv.gmd.de [192.88.97.1]) by mail.Uni-Mainz.DE (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id SAA13628; Wed, 11 Nov 1998 18:33:29 +0100 (MET) Received: from lsv1.listserv.gmd.de (192.88.97.2) by listserv.gmd.de (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <1.3C419278@listserv.gmd.de>; Wed, 11 Nov 1998 18:33:26 +0100 Received: from RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE by RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 1.8b) with spool id 407992 for LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE; Wed, 11 Nov 1998 18:32:00 +0100 Received: from sarah.albany.edu (sarah.albany.edu [169.226.1.103]) by relay.urz.uni-heidelberg.de (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id SAA00271 for ; Wed, 11 Nov 1998 18:31:58 +0100 (MET) Received: from hilbert.math.albany.edu (hilbert.math.albany.edu [169.226.23.52]) by sarah.albany.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA19825 for ; Wed, 11 Nov 1998 12:31:47 -0500 (EST) Received: (from hammond@localhost) by hilbert.math.albany.edu (8.8.4/8.8.3) id MAA10898 for LATEX-L@URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE; Wed, 11 Nov 1998 12:31:46 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <199811111731.MAA10898@hilbert.math.albany.edu> Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 12:31:46 -0500 From: "William F. Hammond" Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L Subject: Re: XML (was quotes, a very long time ago) Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 2864 Robin Fairbains writes: > let's not lose sight of what we're discussing, though: we need to know > if the xml-related efforts can provide us with models of what we want > to do within latex, or whether it's too restrictive for the full > generality of what latex does for people today. My guess is that most of LaTeX admits rational translations to XML but not fully regular ones, a metaphorical illusion to some pre-20th century mathematics that is not always well understood. For example, consider the problem of birationally mapping P^2 ---> P^1 X P^1 (where you know what P^N = N-dimensional projective space is, right?) I claim that we need to follow something like this procedure with markup. I do not have a proof. But I think that with successive approximations one will find that the LaTeX we know and love is a complicated categorical limit of XML's. -- Bill