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Re: Non XML syntaxes

• To: davidc@n... (David Carlisle)
• Subject: Re: Non XML syntaxes
• From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
• Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 11:39:22 -0400 (EDT)
• Cc: jcowan@r..., xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <200210081533.QAA21587@p...> from "David Carlisle" at Oct 08, 2002 04:33:00 PM

David Carlisle scripsit:

> > It's a lot easier to use
> > eqn than TeX to express mathematical text, 
> 
> Not sure about that really (certainly TeX is vastly more popular with
> mathematicians than eqn) 

The design point for eqn was secretaries who had to type mathematics
without knowing any mathematics.  Eqn does have usability bugs: if you
type (foo sub 2) it makes the ) part of the subscript, and you have to
use braces or say (foo sub 2 ).  But K  C observed that although mathematicians
liked the system (but did complain about the output), it was a complete
success with secretaries.

Nowadays, of course, we are all our own secretaries (and telephone operators,
too, but that's a different tale).

> However your main point is still valid, and both eqn
> and TeX are a lot easier to author by hand than MathML (although pretty
> much impossible to process by anything other than the specified
> application).

TeX is Turing-complete.  I could imagine a version of eqn that looked for
$$$ ... $$$ brackets and generated TeX, though.

-- 
He made the Legislature meet at one-horse       John Cowan
tank-towns out in the alfalfa belt, so that     jcowan@r...
hardly nobody could get there and most of       http://www.reutershealth.com
the leaders would stay home and let him go      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
to work and do things as he pleased.    --Mencken, _Declaration of Independence_

• References:
  • Re: Non XML syntaxes
    • From: David Carlisle <davidc@n...>

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