Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: db2latex

[Michel Goossens <Michel dot Goossens at cern dot ch>]

>  > Urgent work to be done today is:
>  >
>  > 1) Complete the XSL-FO part of Norm's stylesheets (as I said, tables need
>  >    some work, since TeX's table model imposes constraints that make a
>  >    general implementation quite involved).
>
> I don't think Norm should be limited by what TeX can do. If we want
> TeX to survive, we have to make it do whats required. I am fairly sure
> that TeX's table handling should simply be abandoned, and tables built
> up of cells by hand
I did not say that we should be limited by the straightjacket of LaTeX.    
Thus, I accept that, if I decide for whatever reasons to use LaTeX, I
might have to put some constraints on the DocBook (table) markup I can
enter. Of course, son/daughter of TeX (Omega, NTS, TeX++) will give me
all the tools to achieve what I need, one day...

>  > 2) expand xmltex (especialy the math bit) 
> 
> xmltex is a dead end, unless someone can understand it, since its
> author will presumably not be developing it further
DC promised to have a look at it a few weeks back... I agree that for
a general DTD writing the TeX macro code necessary to support it might
not be a good investment. Yet for the presentation markup part of MathML,
I still feel that such work would be useful, since it could be used
together with any DTD (even TEI), since the MathML vocabulary is quite
orthogonal to that of hierarchical DTDs.
>  > 3) complete db2latex (also in particular the math bit)
> true, but that only solves the problem for Docbook
That's what the db of db2latex stands for, docbook :+}... 

More seriously, the Math part of the XSLT stylesheets would be more
generic (since orthogonal). We would have to write templates for handling
all presentation markup MathML constructs in XSLT, which and this is
probably not so easy as to parse it with xmltex. I really do not have a
ready-made answer. Trying my hand at both approaches, I admit that I found
problems with both methods for math of medium complexity.
>  > I think that a coordination of the effort spent in all of these areas
>  > would be worthwhile to optimize resources.
> true. if you think the TeX-based route has any real future.
Yes, but I want to typeset DocBook (TEI, eBook,...) documents containing
Math today, not in three years. m

Dr. Michel Goossens              Phone:(+41 22) 767-4902
CERN, IT Division                Fax:  (+41 22) 767-8630
CH-1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland   Email: michel.goossens@cern.ch


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