Re: [O] Leslie Lamport has a foot in the 21st century

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2016-10-09, at 16:26, Hubert Chathi <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Sat, 8 Oct 2016 10:50:09 -0500, Grant Rettke <address@hidden> said:
>
>> On Sat, Oct 8, 2016 at 3:40 AM, Thierry Banel <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> But... Is Leslie killing LaTex?
>
>> No. LaTeX is a markup/programming-language and it /could/ be compiled
>> directly to whatever new ideal format arises, too.
>
> It's not a matter of compiling to the right file format, but rather
> whether LaTeX is the right tool for the type of document structure that
> Lamport is proposing.  His system requires people to be able to expand
> and collapse things, which TeX is unable to handle.  You might be able
> to fake it in TeX by using hyperlinks, but that might drive the PDF/dead
> tree readers crazy once they get a couple of levels deep in your proof,
> having to keep track of all the links that they had to follow.  Not to
> mention, it would probably require a lot of TeX black magic to
> implement.  It would require adding some new environments and/or
> commands to LaTeX, which the current LaTeX-to-HTML converters wouldn't
> be able to handle -- you'd need to implement those bits.  So given that
> you'd need to create a bunch of new infrastructure, and TeX would
> basically just be dead weight, the question is: is it worth still using
> LaTeX, or is it better to start with something else entirely that's
> better suited to handle hierarchical proofs?

Please be careful to make the distinction between TeX and LaTeX here.
Basically, LaTeX 2.09 *should* be dead, and LaTeX2e *is* dead weight to
some extent.  And you might want to ping the LaTeX team, who are working
on LaTeX3 (and the high level markup is still undecided at this point in
time - and it will probably be so for the next few years), about
Lamport's ideas and implementing them.

I don't remember exactly what Lamport has written about proofs (I read
it more than a year ago AFAIR), but isn't it true that what he proposes
is (from typographical point of view) just a (possibly hyperlinked) tree
structure?  If so, LaTeX should be perfectly suited as markup language,
and I would not expect a huge amount of work to implement the missing
bits (though I might be mistaken).  Of course, the hard part would be
the actual hide/show part; HTML+JS might be better suited to that
indeed.

I guess that using ConTeXt would a better route here.

Just my 2 cents.

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski