Re: A Modest Proposal

BILL@INNOSOFT.COM
Mon, 30 Jan 1995 20:21:23 +0100


> At 1:23 AM 1/27/95, Bill Brooks wrote:
> >
> >There certainly is a "cross-platform standard for defining an
> >equation, it's called "LaTeX". I've often wondered why the authors of
> >HTML just didn't adopt and/or adapt it instead of reinventing the
> >wheel and coming up with Yet Another Language.

> LaTeX is only one of several mathematical typesetting languages that were
> studied and considered carefully by Dave Raggett in designing HTML+, and in
> current work on HTML 3.0. The reason not to use LaTeX (or any other)
> straight out of the box is that they are all too complex. One of the
> primary goals of HTML is to balance power with simplicity.

We really are talking about TeX's method of presenting mathematics.
LaTeX does not really add anything to the math tool box of TeX.

It seems to me that TeX is the standard for representing mathematics in
a machine independant format. Certainly the American Mathematical
Society believes this since the journals that they print start out as
TeX documents. To not use TeX's methods for describing the presentation
of mathematics really needs to be explained. I am not suggesting that
there are no compromises to be made in getting the information on the
screen, but to implement yet another standard to describe mathematical
notation really should be questioned, especially since the problem has
been solved so completely already.

Bill

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