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In-Reply-To:  Your message of "Fri, 27 Nov 1998 14:04:17 GMT." 
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Date:         Fri, 27 Nov 1998 14:20:02 +0000
From: Robin Fairbairns <Robin.Fairbairns@CL.CAM.AC.UK>
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To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L
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Subject:      Re: What is "base" LaTeX
Status: R

> Robin Fairbairns writes:
>  > i've today been told that "converting whole documents to pdf is
>  > entirely the wrong idea".
> do they think Pinochet should be sent home too?

i dunno.  when are they going to charge thatcher with war crimes,
that's what i want to know?

>  > the imaging model is fine; there are those who don't think the
>  > hypertextual model is good enough, it seems.  who am i to gainsay
>  > them?  (i haven't been a `mathematician' since 1967, so i hardly
>
> i'm slightly bemused to hear that mathematicians now require special
> _hypertext_ as well as everything else. but I'd point out that a link
> embedded in a PDF document should be able to be expressed in XPointer
> syntax perfectly well, which helps a little. I'd agree that internally
> the PDF model is simplistic - but then who *has* implemented anything
> better in mainstream software?

i was merely relaying a comment i'd just read (and spent some time
responding to).

in essence, everyone wants everything, *now*.  acting in a support
role, the best one can hope to do is to tell them about the limited
subset they can _have_ now; but the potential of the future offerings
(mathml, and then something along the openmath lines later) is a nice
thing to have to blind 'em with science when they carry on whinging.

people ask me direct, i tell 'em "use pdf".

r