X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["3221" "Wed" "11" "November" "1998" "19:40:19" "+0100" "Chris Rowley" "C.A.Rowley@OPEN.AC.UK" nil "77" "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 TAA24371; Wed, 11 Nov 1998 19:40:46 +0100 (MET) Received: from lsv1.listserv.gmd.de (192.88.97.2) by listserv.gmd.de (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <2.A3A06CC4@listserv.gmd.de>; Wed, 11 Nov 1998 19:40:45 +0100 Received: from RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE by RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 1.8b) with spool id 408083 for LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE; Wed, 11 Nov 1998 19:40:40 +0100 Received: from ixgate02.dfnrelay.d400.de (ixgate02.dfnrelay.d400.de [193.174.248.2]) by relay.urz.uni-heidelberg.de (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id TAA06494 for ; Wed, 11 Nov 1998 19:40:38 +0100 (MET) X400-Received: by mta d400relay in /PRMD=dfnrelay/ADMD=d400/C=de/; Relayed; Wed, 11 Nov 1998 19:40:25 +0100 X400-Received: by mta venus in /PRMD=uk.ac/ADMD= /C=gb/; Relayed; Wed, 11 Nov 1998 19:40:15 +0100 X400-Received: by mta fell.open.ac.uk in /PRMD=UK.AC/ADMD= /C=GB/; Relayed; Wed, 11 Nov 1998 19:39:48 +0100 X400-Received: by mta UK.AC.MHS-RELAY.SUN2 in /PRMD=uk.ac/ADMD= /C=gb/; Relayed; Wed, 11 Nov 1998 19:40:19 +0100 X400-Originator: C.A.Rowley@open.ac.uk X400-Recipients: non-disclosure:; X400-MTS-Identifier: [/PRMD=UK.AC/ADMD= /C=GB/;<13897.54299.17382.707190@fell.o] X400-Content-Type: P2-1988 (22) Content-Identifier: Re: XML (was ... Alternate-Recipient: Allowed References: <009CF091.2D3DA080.184@ROSE.IPM.AC.IR>, <13897.33070.82784.22548@srahtz> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: VM 6.44 under Emacs 19.34.1 Message-ID: <13897.54299.17382.707190@fell.open.ac.uk> Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project In-Reply-To: <13897.33070.82784.22548@srahtz> Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 19:40:19 +0100 From: Chris Rowley 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: 2869 Sebastian Rahtz wrote -- > Chris Rowley writes: > > Only in the "real soon now" world; I would say that, even with the > > mega-bucks behind it, it still needs to be `real-world tested'. > > > an awful lot of people have their shirts on XML. its extremely widely > deployed. are you still waiting for Java to be real-world tested too? Me, I am not waiting for anything. I have laready wittered on too long about the differences betwen a computer programming langauge and a document description language so I will just say that this is irrelevant. > some people are still waiting for everything except FORTRAN to be > real-world tested. Not me, but XML is nothing if it is not both usable and used in a wide variety of contexts. I hope it will be but mega-shirst are not the only thing needed to make this happebn. > > > MathML and Sebastian's ideas of semantic mark-up cater very well for > > the ideal of what Physicists and Computer Scientists (ie people who > > designed Mathematica and Maple) think maths and maths notation is. > leaving me out of it, since I have no views, That never stopped you expressing them, did it? > why is your math more > "real" than their math? your view comes over as awfully elitist and > snobbish :-} Did I say it was more or less real? All I said was that their philosophy of and hence (probably) their use of notation is different, no quantitative assessment was given. Maybe to a publisher maths is maths is maths, but not to those who have to try and teach it to a vast range of people. An interesting example of a major difference between different uses of math notation, in countries that use Cyrillic script, was brought to my attention recently and may be of interest to some: amongst the more classical users of maths, such as physicists, mathematicians, etc, only occasional, specialised use is made of Cyrrilic letters within math notation; however, within subjects such as economics, it is common for the basic variables such as x, y to be replaced by Cyrillic letters, and for operators such as min, max, sin, cos etc etc to also be replaced by the local name in Cyrrilc script. > > > level). It's use of notation and its relation to the semantics are > > very complex and probably;y not well-understood (they are more like > > the relationship of natural language to the real world than like the > fine. you carry on with presentation mathml. no-one forces you to use > content mathml. i dont see any conflict Neither do I, but them I am not trying to generate or look for conflict, maybe you are? Your opinion is interestingly different to Dr Carlisle's: he said I need to go the other the way, beyond content MathML to OpenMath. But what I do is neither here nor there: I am not interested in any particular constituency, publishers, academics, Ms users, etc, etc. So let us depersonalise and depoliticise this and broaden the discussion beyond your commercial, anti-academic, anti-elitist, spin-doctored, text-bites:-)? > presumably you would agree, then, that one possibility is a new LaTeX > (presentation) math markup learning the lessons of MathML? I always agree with you, don't I? It's just that you never agree with me:-). chris