Re: Document formatting in Scheme

[Riku.Saikkonen@hut.fi (Riku Saikkonen)]

Kirill Lisovsky <lisovsky@acm.org> writes:
>On 27 Oct 2001, Riku Saikkonen wrote:
>> I think you need both. I think TeX is a pretty good solution for the
>> more low-level stuff (like tables or math formulas), but it still
>> needs a more high-level interface for specifying structure that is
...
>Well, I do agree that some typesetting language is necessary 
>and I agree that TeX is one of solutions possible. 
>But is it an appropriate solution for a system which is targeted to Web
>publishing rather than to paper documentation? 

Hmm, probably not, at least for a system targeted _only_ or primarly
for Web publishing (where good typography seems to be impossible to
achieve, at least currently). I was thinking of a generic package for
documenting Scheme code (especially APIs), and I think paper
documentation is very important in such a system. (And who knows,
maybe one day we'll have a Web with good typography...)

>> thousands of mathematical symbols and typographical features (no-break
>> space, different lengths of dashes, \@, hyphenation hints, etc.) and
>IMHO, it is better to use a programming language and minimal structural
>markup in source code, and describe layout in external stylesheets
>or elucidative documents (in Kurt Noermark's style, for example)
>using some typesetting/presentational markup language.

Yes, the basic idea sounds pretty good. But you still need the
typographical hints in the source language to get good-quality output:
The documentation system can't guess which period ends a sentence and
which doesn't, for example. On a somewhat higher level, you also need
presentation-level features like tables and math formulas in the
source language: some documentation just needs to use them...


Well, I guess I should shut up now. :) I may be asking too much,
especially since I don't really have the time to contribute any code
to this project... I just wanted to bring up some disadvantages of
creating yet another new markup language, and to encourage paying
attention to typography and good-quality output.

-- 
-=- Rjs -=- Riku.Saikkonen@hut.fi
"From cavern pale the moist moon eyes / the white mists that from earth arise /
to hide the morrow's sun and drip / all the grey day from each twig's tip."
    -- J. R. R. Tolkien